"Who's Zip Foster?" asked Nort.
"That's what a lot of us would give a deal to know, son," chuckled Babe, who was rapidly making a survey of the camp. "He's a secret friend of Bud's, an'——"
"Oh, cut it out!" exclaimed Bud, and even his tan did not altogether hide the blood that surged into his face.
While the two professors were conversing together in low tones, and their helpers, including two white men (evidently the Ed Newton and Silas Thorp spoken of by Professor Blair) were putting to rights the somewhat disrupted camp, Slim, the foreman, came from the tent.
"They're not much hurt," he declared. "Only flesh wounds, but they ought to be treated with some dope I've got at the ranch house. They can ride over, and I'll fix 'em up as best I can," he offered.
"You are very kind," murmured Professor Wright. "But it might be dangerous for them to do so."
"Dangerous!" exclaimed Slim.
"Yes, I mean it might inflame their wounds."
"Oh! Yes, it might," agreed the foreman after a moment of thought. "Wa'al, I can send one of the boys back for the medicine. Here they come now," he added, as, with whoops of delight at the prospect of a fight, a troop of other cowboys from the Diamond X ranch rode up. As Bud had surmised, his mother had sent them after the advance party.
"What's the row?" cried "Yellin' Kid" Watson, as he unlimbered his gun. It needed but one utterance of his to establish his nickname. He shouted almost every word he used.