"Look at 'em!" shouted Bud. "They're going to fight us all right!"
Indeed, it did appear that the party in the camp established by the professors, taken by surprise as they were, meant to resist to the utmost. Men could be seen running back to the tents, whence some reappeared with guns or big .45s. Others, including the two professors themselves, remained at the scene where some of the Diamond X cattle were attached by ropes to the apparatus that looked like the derrick.
"Are they trying to brand your cattle over again, Bud?" asked Dick as he and his cousin rode alongside of the young rancher.
"I don't know," was the answer. "If they are, they're going about it in a new way. I wonder what they are up to, anyhow?"
Well might he ask that, for as the raiding party made its rush into the valley several men near the professors, were urging forward the steers that were harnessed, or yoked together in some manner, to cause them to act as a lifting force. By means of ropes rigged over the derrick-like structure, something heavy was being hoisted from a great hole in the ground.
The steers, unused to this work, for which gentle oxen might have been admirably fitted, were acting wildly, and the Greasers, and other campers, were having their hands full. This with the shouts of the attacking party, the thud of the feet of many galloping horses and the firing of shots into the air by the wildly enthusiastic cowboys from Diamond X, made the place one of great confusion.
"Rout 'em out, boys!"
"Haze 'em into the brook!"
"Cut out our cattle!"
"Rope 'em an' hog-tie 'em!"