suggested Dick, willing to accept
a theory of less valuable metal. "Or diamonds!" and his eyes gleamed
as he overmatched his brother's guess.

"Nothing doin!" laughed Bud. "Of course there are silver mines not far
from here, down Mexico way, and diamonds have been found in the United
States, but not around this locality."

"Well, what's your theory?" asked Nort of the more experienced boy
rancher. "Here we've been gassing along, saying what we thought, and
we don't know any of the ins and outs of the matter. You're right on
the ground, and you've lived here all your life, so you ought to have
some idea of what it all means."

"But I don't!" exclaimed Bud. "Wish I did," he added, as he joined his
cousins on foot, walking about the debris of the camp, while the ponies
sniffed, here and there, sometimes finding a choice morsel which they
daintily lipped before eating.

"You'd say they were hunting for something, wouldn't you?" asked Nort.

"Yes, I'd go that far," admitted Bud.

"And they didn't find it," put in Dick.

"What makes you think so?" asked the young rancher quickly.

"Well, there isn't any hole, or any excavation, where they could have
taken out a treasure chest, or bags of hidden gold; not to say mined
gold," went on Dick. "In all the stories of recovered treasure I ever
read, they always left a hole where they took out the stuff. There
isn't any hole like that here, though there's enough to show that
plenty of digging went on."

"I don't believe they've been after any gold, or anything like that,"
declared Bud. "That professor man said so, but----"

"But was he telling the truth?" asked Nort. "That's what we got to
figure on."

"I s'pose," agreed Bud. "And from what I know of the country and
sizing up this outfit, I'd say he was--they aren't after gold."

"What then?" asked Dick. "A man--two men like Professor Blair and
Professor Wright don't hire an outfit such as they had, and prospect
for nothing!"

"You are right," quietly agreed Bud. "They're after something, but I
reckon it's something we don't know anything about."

"Maybe they were trying to run off some of your cattle, or some steers
from the Circle T," suggested Nort. "Cattle rustlers; eh, Bud?"

"If they're cattle rustlers they're a new kind," said the ranch boy.
"But of course it's possible. It may be they've gone into cattle
rustling on a new scale, to throw everybody off the track, and finding
out we were on to th