."

"Oh! Yes, it might," agreed the foreman after a moment of thought.
"Wa'al, I can send one of the boys back for the medicine. Here they
come now," he added, as, with whoops of delight at the prospect of a
fight, a troop of other cowboys from the Diamond X ranch rode up. As
Bud had surmised, his mother had sent them after the advance party.

"What's the row?" cried "Yellin' Kid" Watson, as he unlimbered his gun.
It needed but one utterance of his to establish his nickname. He
shouted almost every word he used.

"All over," said Slim, succinctly. "Don't know just what it's about,
but it's all over."

The newcomers rode their horses into the camp, and Yellin' Kid, whose
animal was a bit restive, nearly brought down one of the small tents.
As it swayed, a flap opening because of the breaking of one of the
ropes, Professor Wright sprang forward with a sharp cry.

"Don't go in there! No one must enter that tent!" sharply commanded
the scientist.

"I wasn't aimin' to," remarked Yellin' Kid somewhat tartly and in
rather grieved tones. "Come out of that, you soap footer!" he cried to
his steed. "What do you mean, slippin' all over creation?"

He backed his animal away, but Professor Wright, summoning to his side
Professor Blair, quickly fastened the tent shut again, paying no heed
during this operation, to the cowboys.

"Seems mighty much afraid we'll see something we hadn't a right to,"
commented Bud to his cousins.

"Yes, he does act queer," agreed Dick.

"Suspicious, I call it!" whispered Nort. He was impulsive, and much
more prone, than was his brother, to ascribe motives to others.
"Maybe, after all, they have gold in there!" he said.

CHAPTER V

HITTING THE TRAIL

Bud Merkel shook his head as Nort Shannon offered this possible
explanation of the action of Professor Wright.

"Never's been any gold found in these regions all the years I've lived
here," he said.

"There's always a first time," countered Nort, while the cowboys gazed
about them, talking in low voices.

"It must be something else," said Bud. "This is a prospecting bunch,
it's easy to see that, but they're not after gold. These two
professors are from some eastern college, I take it," he went on.
"They may be after specimens of plants, or stones. Using their
vacation this way. I've heard of it being done."

"That's right!" chimed in Dick. "Two of the professors from our
Academy spent all one summer in the Adirondacks