With Bud in the advance, urging his pony to topmost speed, Nort and Dick followed. Bud shot along the trail, up one rise, down another, all the while coming nearer to the noise which increased in intensity. Clearly something was wrong either among a bunch of Diamond X cattle, or with some of the horses belonging to the ranch outfit. And that some human individual was concerned in the "fracas" was evident by the shouts and yells that, now and then, punctured the air.
"By the Great Horned Toad! Look at that!" cried Bud, when he was within viewing distance.
"He'll be killed!" added Nort.
"No, he's out of it now!" yelled Dick. "But maybe it's the end of him!"
As the three boy ranchers thus gave vent to their surprise, and almost while they were in the act of exclaiming, a ragged figure of a man had shot over a stout corral fence, and had fallen in a heap just on the other side and out of the reach of the teeth and hoofs of a number of half wild cow ponies. The thud of the animals' bodies, as they threw themselves against the fence, in the stoppage of their mad race to get the ragged man, could plainly be heard.
"Whew!" cried Bud, reigning his pony to a sliding stop, as he saw that, for the present at least, the man was safe, though his inert form might indicate serious injury. "That was a close call!"
"What was he doing in that corral?" asked Nort, and his hand, almost by instinct, slid to the handle of his .45 protruding from the holster.
"And who is he?" asked Dick, who had followed his brother's lead.
"That's what we've got to find out," said Bud, who, perhaps from longer association with western conditions, had manifested no inclination to draw his gun. "Guess he'll wait for us," he added, as he slid from the saddle, having ridden close to the prostrate form.
But, even as Bud spoke, and as Dick and Nort dismounted, the stranger rose to a sitting position, rubbed his hand across his forehead, tried to smile at the boys and then, in what would have been a jolly voice under other circumstances said: