echoed Dick, following his brother's example and guiding his
animal toward those silent forms on the grassy hillside.

Bud, however, held his animal back and shouted to his cousins:

"Hold on a minute! Don't be rash! Hold on!"

Nort pulled his pony back so suddenly that the creature reared high in
the air. Some time ago Nort would have been unseated by such a trick,
but now he stuck to the saddle like a burr to a cow's tail.

"What's the matter?" Nort shot back over his shoulder.

"Don't you want to find out what killed those cattle?" asked Dick,
riding back to join his cousin.

"Sure!" Bud replied. "But I don't want to keel over myself. There
must be something there that killed those cows, that is if they're
dead. And what killed them may kill us, if we go too close, just as it
has killed others and nearly did for Sam."

"Those cows are dead all right," declared Nort who, now that his pony
was quiet, had taken a pair of field glasses from the case slung at his
shoulder and was examining the silent forms. "They're as dead as a
last year's sunflower."

"But maybe Bud's right about wanting to be careful before we go any
closer," suggested Dick. "You know Uncle Henry warned us not to run
our necks in any noose."

"But we got to find out what killed these cows, so we'll know how to
guard the others against the same danger," declared Nort. "And if it
was poison water they drank, or maybe poison grass they ate, why, we
don't want our other animals to do the same thing, or get any poison
water ourselves."

"No," agreed Bud, who, having taken the glasses from his cousin, was
now making a careful observation, "we don't want to drink any poison
water or have cattle eat any poison grass, if there are such things on
the ranch. But we can stop a bullet just as easy as a cow can and with
just the same bad results for us."

"Bullet?" questioned Nort, wonderingly.

"Do you think those cows were shot?" asked Dick.

"They might have been."

"Who'd do such a thing?" demanded Nort.

"If it was done at all--which I'm not saying for a fact--it probably
was done by the same man, or men, who have been doing the other
killings in Death Valley."

"But what in the world for?" exclaimed Dick.

"Search me!" answered Bud.

"The other cows weren't shot!" asserted Nort. "Sam's horse that died
wasn't shot, and no bullet nipped him or even creased him."

"No," agreed Bud. "I guess I'm out when it comes to guessing th