"It doesn't take very long to size up that you've been rustling our cattle!" said Slim, sharply.
"Rustling!" murmured the professor. "Rustling? Oh, I see, a western term for borrowing."
"Borrowing! Oh, Zip Foster!" murmured Bud, but his father motioned for him to remain quiet.
But Professor Wright had caught Bud's remark, and it seemed to give a new light to the scientist. He stepped forward, having seen to it that the rope, by which something, "ten million years old," was being hoisted from the earth, was made fast. The steers, which had been straining to lift the weight, were now comparatively quiet, and the second bunch, driven in by Del Pinzo's men, were cropping grass near the stream.
"There seems to have been some mistake," said Professor Wright. "We intended to pay you for the use of your cattle, Mr. Merkel, as I understand your name to be. And, now that we have almost accomplished our search, we shall have no further need of your beasts. I don't know why my helper sent after more, for those we have are amply able to lift out the fossils. We shall be through with your animals in a few hours, and will then pay anything in reason for their borrowed use."
A light seemed also to break over Bud's father, and the boy ranchers looked at one another with a new understanding.
"Do you mean to say," began the owner of the Diamond X ranch, "that you only wanted to use my cattle as you might use oxen—as draft animals?"
"Of course," said Professor Blair. "That is all we wanted them for.
Did you think we intended to keep them?"
"Well—er—you'll excuse me saying so, but we certainly did!" declared Bud's father. "Rustling, we call it here, and it means driving off another man's branded stock. It isn't all clear to me yet. What are you after, anyhow? What's down in that hole, and what is it that is ten million years old?"
"A Triceratops," answered Professor Wright. "We have been on the track of one for a long time, and now we have found it. Almost the only complete remains of the most perfect Triceratops it has ever been the fortune of anyone to discover! If you will only have a little patience, and grant us the use of your steers a short time longer, until we hoist from its ancient bed the remains, you may soon look upon one of nature's wonders—a Triceratops!"