"Well, they don't mine this way—that is, I've never seen any done in this fashion, and I've been in several mining localities," spoke Bud. "This looks more like they'd been prospecting for water, digging here, there and everywhere. But there wasn't any need of that, for here's a good spring of water, and the river isn't so far away. This is a good watered country, and that's what makes it so valuable for cattle—you've got to have grass and water and we've got that on Diamond X."
"But what do you s'pose this all means?" asked Nort again, as he slipped from his saddle, and, by pulling the reins forward, over his pony's head, thus gave that animal the universal sign of the plains that it was not to wander.
"I don't know," Bud was frank to say, as he shook his head. "They sure have been tearing up the ground," he added, as he noticed on the side hill, where there was an outcropping of red sandstone, that many excavations had been made.
"If it isn't gold maybe it's silver," suggested Dick, willing to accept a theory of less valuable metal. "Or diamonds!" and his eyes gleamed as he overmatched his brother's guess.
"Nothing doin!" laughed Bud. "Of course there are silver mines not far from here, down Mexico way, and diamonds have been found in the United States, but not around this locality."
"Well, what's your theory?" asked Nort of the more experienced boy rancher. "Here we've been gassing along, saying what we thought, and we don't know any of the ins and outs of the matter. You're right on the ground, and you've lived here all your life, so you ought to have some idea of what it all means."
"But I don't!" exclaimed Bud. "Wish I did," he added, as he joined his cousins on foot, walking about the debris of the camp, while the ponies sniffed, here and there, sometimes finding a choice morsel which they daintily lipped before eating.
"You'd say they were hunting for something, wouldn't you?" asked Nort.
"Yes, I'd go that far," admitted Bud.
"And they didn't find it," put in Dick.