"I never took much stock in it," he told his son over the telephone. "But I'm glad you've solved the mystery of Death Valley. I'll send some engineers over, we'll change the course of that stream and go in for cattle raising. That's our business, anyhow, not mining."
In a few weeks the dam was constructed, the stream, where it ran in the open, was shifted several hundred feet and there was no longer any danger of it dissolving the chemicals and carrying the deadly gas underground, to send it up out of fissures to the detriment of man and beast. While the work was going on, all cattle were removed from the vicinity of the defile, which was found to be the only danger spot on Dot and Dash.
The boys recalled the time when, in riding over the range, their horses had taken such a sudden fright. They could not determine whether at that time some poison gas might have seeped out, alarming the sensitive beasts, or whether it was something like a snake which might have startled the ponies. It was one of the things that remained unsolved, but it was a minor phase of the main problem which had been brought to a successful conclusion.
And so, in this comparatively simple manner, was the mystery solved and an end put to Death Valley, though it retained that name for many years.
Some time after all danger was removed, when cattle roamed freely over the range, as near the defile as they cared to go, and when Old Tosh was again allowed to brew his Elixer in the cave, a man was arrested in Los Pompan for horse stealing. He was convicted and it developed he was one of the men who had used the poison gas tanks against the boy ranchers. He was one of a gang.
They had nothing to do with and knew nothing of the emanations of natural gas in Death Valley. They had heard the sinister reputation of the place, but that did not keep them out, and they discovered the cave and at once jumped to the conclusion that it contained gold. They frightened away Old Tosh and when Bud stumbled on their operations they adopted the sinister form of defense they used later. One of the men in the gang had served in the chemical warfare division of the A.E.F. overseas. He was an expert chemist and developed a gas that would knock a man out but not kill him. Thus Bud was made a prisoner, escaping when the men left him for a time.
The gang had taken considerable of the yellow ore out of the cave, and, doubtless after the battle in which they were worsted, they discovered it to be valueless. So they had no reason to return to the territory. The gang dispersed. None of them, it appeared, had ever suffered from the effects of the natural gas.
Soon after the course of the stream was changed, Dot and Dash ranch was a busy place. Several new herds were bought and pastured and more men were hired. There was no trouble, now, in getting men from near by, for the story of the passing of the menacing gas was told all over.
Old Tosh was kept busy making his Elixer, for though the men knew it was comparatively useless as a medicine, some of them thought it did them good, and they rather liked the root beer taste it had.
"Why don't you put your full name on your labels?" asked Nort of the queer old codger one day, when the boys were visiting him in his, or, rather, their cave, which he had fitted up to live in while he did his brewing. "You just call it 'Tosh Elixer.'"