"Why not? Did you shoot 'em up?" asked Snake, with the beginning of a delighted grin.
"No," Bud replied. "But they aren't there now. They lit out. That's how I could get away."
"Say, there's more to this than you're telling us!" said Nort.
"Go ahead. Spill the whole yarn—that is if you're able," begged Dick.
"Oh, yes, I feel better now. Give me a little more water and I'll tell you what happened to me."
CHAPTER XVII
THE AVENGERS
Bud Merkel took a long drink, shook his head several times as though to clear his brain of some benumbing influence and began his story.
"I guess you all know," he said, "how I started over here yesterday to size up our stock to get ready for the first shipment to go from Dot and Dash under the new ownership." His hearers nodded. By this time several other cowboys from the other searching parties had arrived to hear the good news of the finding of Bud.
"Well," went on the young rancher, "I got to the range all right, looked the herd over and found there were more steers ready to ship than we had counted on," and he looked toward his cousins. "Then I thought I'd spend the rest of the morning in exploring Smugglers' Glen. I wanted to see if I could find out where the old Elixer man disappeared to that time he ran away from us," and again he looked at Nort and Dick. The story of the herb doctor was known to most of the cowboys.