"I like fun!" he remarked in his loud, good-natured voice, "but I don't play such jokes as this. My idea of fun would be to help dig up another one of them queer, slidin'-trombone insects with the three horns that the professor fellers discovered. But this—why, Bud, this may be serious business!"
"That black rabbit—I told you!" croaked Old Billee.
"Do you really think it means anything?" asked the boy rancher, while his young partners in the new venture leaned eagerly forward to listen to the answer.
"I sure do," declared Yellin' Kid. "All of us have known, Bud, an' your father among 'em, that puttin' a dam in Pocut River, an' taking water for you here, at Flume Valley, made the Double Z outfit mad enough t' rear up on their hind legs an' howl! Hank Fisher has claimed, all along, that th' Diamond X outfit hadn't any right t' take water from th' river, t' shunt over on th' other side of Snake Mountain, where we are, here."
"Yes, I heard dad say that," spoke Bud. "But if Hank Fisher had any rights that we violated, why didn't he go to law about it?"
"That isn't Hank's way," commented Yellin' Kid. "He'd more likely try some such tricks as that," and the cowboy nodded toward the warning on the board.
"Do you think he left that?" asked Nort.
"And was he, or Del Pinzo, in our camp last night?" cried Dick.
"As to that I couldn't say," replied Yellin' Kid. "I slept like two tops last night, after I got t' sleep. I didn't even hear you fellows snore," he added, for the three boy ranchers had a tent to themselves, while Old Billee and Yellin' Kid bunked in an adjoining one, Buck Tooth having his own special dugout near the camp fire.
"We never snore!" declared Nort.