Valley was living up to its name," said Nort to
Bud as he and the other lads followed the men out of the silent and
deserted house.

"Can't tell yet," was Bud's rejoinder. "This may be just a natural
death, and somebody that has no connection with this ranch. Lots of
passing strangers stop at our place and he may have stopped here."

"Well, even then, that doesn't say what killed him," protested Nort.

"We'll soon find out," went on Bud. "Come on."

Billee Dobb was leading the way toward his startling discovery, and a
moment later the whole outfit from Diamond X came upon the body. It
lay, as Billee had said, near a corral the fence of which was much in
need of repairs. The man was a typical cowboy, with a bright red
neckerchief and sheepskin chaps. His gun had fallen from the holster
and lay beside him. His horse was nowhere to be seen, and a cowboy
without a pony between his legs, or at least in his immediate vicinity,
is like Hamlet with the melancholy Dane left out.

"There he is," said Billee in a low voice.

Snake and Yellin' Kid stopped in their tracks. But Bud, who, perhaps,
was too young to feel any squeamishness at the proximity to death,
hurried forward and knelt beside the motionless figure. Seeing what
their chum had done, Nort and Dick started to follow. But they were
halted, when they had almost reached the man, by Bud's voice exclaiming:

"He isn't dead at all! He's breathing!"

"He is?" cried Nort.

"Sure! He isn't dead at all! Get me some water. We ought to have a
doctor, but maybe we can pull him around until we can find one. But
get some water--_pronto_!"

Dick slung his canteen around, pulled out the stopper and, an instant
later, was kneeling beside Bud and the stranger. Nort helped Bud, on
the opposite side, support the man's head, which appeared to be but
loosely attached to his body and the boys finally succeeded in forcing
a little water between the almost lifeless lips.

"We ought to have some sort of a stimulant," said Bud as he noticed a
faint flickering of the man's eyelids, as though life was struggling
hard to return to the frame it had almost decided to vacate.

"I got some aromatic ammonia in my saddle bags," said Dick. "Your
mother put it in with a lot of other medicine, thinking we might need
it."

"We do, now, and mighty bad!" exclaimed Bud. "Rustle it here, Dick."

A little later the powerful heart stimulant, mixed with a little water,
was being a