You say the water stopped last night?"

"Stopped complete, Billee," Bud answered back over the wire.

"Well then, if there's any comin' over the spillway, now, it's a sign
she's runnin' here ag'in, I take it!"

"Sure thing. But is she running?" asked Bud, anxiously.

"Wait a minute, an' I'll take a look. Hold on to that there wire!"

"I'll hold it!" promised Bud, smiling at his cousins.

There was a moment of anxious waiting and, in fancy, the boy ranchers
could see Old Billee going to the tent flap and looking toward the
reservoir.

"Hello, Bud!" presently came the call over the wire.

"Hello, Billee. What about it?"

"Water's there all right! Must 'a' come back in th' night! She's
runnin' fine now!"

CHAPTER V

ANOTHER WARNING

Bud Merkel was about to hang up the receiver, with a blank and
uncomprehending look on his face, when Babe caught the black rubber
earpiece from him.

"Wait a minute, Billee!" called Babe into the transmitter. "See
anything of anybody around there? Anything suspicious?"

The others could not hear what the old cowboy's answer was, but Babe
soon enlightened them.

"He says it's all serene," Babe declared as he now hung up the
receiver. "Nobody in sight, an' the water is runnin' through the pipe
as natural as can be."

"I can't understand it!" declared Bud. "It was almost as dry as a bone
when we left last night."

"But it's running in here from the river dam," said Nort.

"Then there must have been a break somewhere in the tunnel natural
water course," declared Bud. "Well, if it mended itself so much the
better. But that doesn't explain this," and he held out the scrawled
warning. "And if the water stopped once it may stop again."

"Yes," agreed Babe, "but if anybody wanted to stop it they'd have to do
it either at this end, where the pipe takes water from the river, or at
your end, Bud, where it delivers water to your reservoir."

"Unless somebody stopped the stream inside the tunnel," suggested Dick.

"Then it would back up here at the river end," said Nort, quickly, "and
it hasn't done that."

"No, it hasn't," agreed Bud. "It sure is queer. I'm beginning to
think there may be more in that black rabbit than I believed first."

"What rabbit is that?" asked Babe.

"The one Old Billee said would bring me bad luck," Bud answered.
"Well," he went on to his cousins, "we might as well go back to camp.
We can't do anything here."

"If you've got wa