ere when you go back
than you left there."

"Oh, stop croaking, Billee, and spill the beans!" begged Nort.

"'Twon't take long," Billee answered. "I forget just how many years
ago it is," he said, looking off toward the distant hills that bordered
Diamond X, "when, in the course of my wanderings, I struck Los Pompan.
There was a ranch there then, called Dot and Dash, just as there is
now, but it was run by a fellow named Golas. Maybe he was a Mex.
Anyhow I signed up with him and started to ridin' herd. But I didn't
stay long."

"Couldn't you hold down the job?" chuckled Babe Milton, who was Slim
Degnan's assistant, and as fat as Degnan was lean.

"None of your wise cracks!" snapped Billee. "I can cut out a bunch of
cattle better'n what you can any day and I'm a heap sight older 'n'
wiser. No, the reason I quit was on account of what kept happenin' at
Dot and Dash."

"And what happened?" asked Dick.

"Death is what happened!" said Billee, solemnly. "Mysterious death!"

"Death can happen on any ranch," observed Mr. Merkel quietly. "We
have, unfortunately, had deaths here."

"Yes, but they were natural deaths!" declared Billee. "And they didn't
keep happenin' one after another like at Dot and Dash."

"How many deaths were there?" Bud wanted to know.

"I don't rightly remember, but there was plenty."

"You said they were mysterious," commented Nort. "In what way?"

"That's what nobody could find out," resumed the veteran puncher.
"First some poor devil of a puncher would be found dead off in some
lonely swale. Then we'd find a bunch of cows stretched out, and then
we'd find another dead man."

"Rustlers," suggested Slim.

"Rustlers nothin'!" scoffed Billee. "Rustlers drive off cattle--they
don't kill 'em--what would be the good?"

"I meant the rustlers did up the cowboys," suggested the foreman.

"Well, if these fellows, who were found dead, got shot, why wasn't
there bullet holes in 'em?" asked Billee, teasingly.

"Wasn't there?" asked Dick.

"Not a hole."

"How about a knife thrust?" Nort wanted to know.

"Not a scratch or any kind of mark on 'em!" declared the old man. "And
yet their faces showed they'd died in agony. That's what I meant by
mysterious deaths."

"It does sound rather queer," admitted Mr. Merkel. "But didn't you
find out what caused all this, Billee?"

"No, Boss, I didn't stay long enough. And neither did nobody else I
ever heard of, who worked at Dot and Dash.