"Or strung up!" added Dick.
"I don't care what they do to him!" said Bud. "I'm going to turn him over to Old Billee and the boys!"
"Don't do that!" begged the bound figure of Pocut Pete. "They—they may lynch me. Take me right to the sheriff!"
"Too far," said Bud shortly. "I don't care what the boys do to you! I'm through!"
The prisoner vainly struggled with his bonds, but they held firm.
It need not be written that there was a surprised bunch of cow punchers who gathered in the camp of the boy ranchers a little later, when Pocut Pete was delivered to them. Indignant voices and looks were noted on all sides as his crime was recounted by Bud.
In brief it was this:
From the time of Pocut Pete's arrival Bud had taken a dislike to him, and had suspected him, wrongly it appeared now, of being an addict to some form of drug, slangily termed "dope." For he had found fragments of thin-glass bottles, and had discovered in part of a broken phial, the same evil-smelling mixture that, later, was associated with the diseased cattle.
Then Bud did not know enough of the danger to act promptly, and even when Pocut Pete was discovered, "cutting a wart off a steer," as he falsely said, Bud did not know what to make of that. An older person might have been suspicious enough to have acted with more promptness, but Bud, naturally, had lots to learn.
However, as appeared later, Pocut Pete had secured from some of the disease-killed cattle some pus, filled with millions of germs. This unpleasant mixture he kept in tiny phials.