"On purpose, do you mean?" asked Nort.
"Well, that's to be found out," remarked Billee musingly.
"Billee, you're 'way off there!" cried Bud. "Professor Wright is as right as his name—we proved that before when he was here after the prehistoric Triceratops bones."
"He may have changed since then," declared Billee. "What did he want to come in and lead us off on a false trail for, when we was hot after the robbers?"
"He didn't do it purposely," asserted Nort, who, with his brother, shared Bud's views as to the integrity of Professor Wright. "It was because he got lost."
"Yes, to hear him tell it," sneered Billee.
"Why, look here!" cried Bud. "What good would it do Professor Wright to get hold of Dad's papers proving ownership to the Spur Creek lands? Why would he want the land? If anybody wants it they must be those who are coming in under the new government ruling—sheep herders maybe, and it's to them we have to look."
"That Wright is just the kind of a chap who'd go in for sheep herding, and spoiling a cattle country," complained Billee, as he pulled up the head of his horse, when the animal showed a tendency to stumble over a prairie dog's hole.
"You're away off!" laughed Bud. "It may have been sheep herders who got Dad's papers, hoping thus to be able to claim a lot of land for their woolly feeders, but Professor Wright had no hand in it."
Billee's only answer was a sniff.