whiff of something
we didn't."

"There's something in that, though I don't like to boast," said Bud.
"I'm pretty sure that's what it was--a queer smell the ponies didn't
like, and feared, and so they ran away from it."

"But what kind of a smell could it be?" asked Dick.

"Maybe we'll find out when we get back to where the thing
happened--that is if the ponies will go back," spoke Bud.

However there seemed to be no trouble on this score, for, as the boys
came nearer and nearer to the place whence the animals had started on
their dash, there was no sign of fear or nervousness. The steeds
trotted on as they had done over any other stretch of the range, and
the deepest breathing of which the boys were capable betrayed to their
alert noses not the slightest taint in the air.

"This is mighty queer!" murmured Bud as he guided his mount to and fro
around the locality. "Mighty queer!"

"It's almost as if we had dreamed it," remarked Nort.

"It was no dream the way I had to pull my horse back!" declared Dick,
and the others agreed with him.

"Well, I guess we'll have to give it up and put it down as part of the
unsolved mystery of Dot and Dash," said Bud as he wheeled his horse
around and headed for the ranch house.

"Unless you want to take a ride up there again," suggested Nort.

"Where do you mean?"

Nort pointed to the defile--that gulch which the boys had named
Smugglers' Glen--and added:

"We might catch the old man in Elixer Cave."

"What good would that do?" asked Dick. "You don't imagine he had
anything to do with scaring our horses; do you?"

"Not exactly," replied his brother. "But, seeing we're so near the
place, I thought we might give it the once over."

"Not much point to it," said Bud. "There's nothing to be learned up
there. No, I guess it was some sort of queer weed or flower I smelled
and which also frightened the ponies. I wish I knew more about botany.
I might find out what it was," and he looked at the trampled grass over
which they were now riding. But it gave no clew.

"If there's a weed, the mere smell of which causes a horse to bolt,"
said Nort, "it may be the thing that's causing the cattle to die.
Maybe it's the poison weed that caused so many deaths here."

"I can't believe anything as strange as that," declared Bud. "But
after we get things running well I'm going to have a doctor, or a
chemist or somebody who knows about such things come out here and look
the place o