"What makes you think so?" asked the young rancher quickly.
"Well, there isn't any hole, or any excavation, where they could have taken out a treasure chest, or bags of hidden gold; not to say mined gold," went on Dick. "In all the stories of recovered treasure I ever read, they always left a hole where they took out the stuff. There isn't any hole like that here, though there's enough to show that plenty of digging went on."
"I don't believe they've been after any gold, or anything like that," declared Bud. "That professor man said so, but——"
"But was he telling the truth?" asked Nort. "That's what we got to figure on."
"I s'pose," agreed Bud. "And from what I know of the country and sizing up this outfit, I'd say he was—they aren't after gold."
"What then?" asked Dick. "A man—two men like Professor Blair and Professor Wright don't hire an outfit such as they had, and prospect for nothing!"
"You are right," quietly agreed Bud. "They're after something, but I reckon it's something we don't know anything about."
"Maybe they were trying to run off some of your cattle, or some steers from the Circle T," suggested Nort. "Cattle rustlers; eh, Bud?"
"If they're cattle rustlers they're a new kind," said the ranch boy. "But of course it's possible. It may be they've gone into cattle rustling on a new scale, to throw everybody off the track, and finding out we were on to their curves, or maybe on account of having a fight among themselves, they couldn't turn the trick."
"That's right!" exclaimed Nort, in his impulsive way. "Maybe instead of being attacked by Greasers and Indians, who thought they could get some gold, the professor's bunch had a fight among themselves, and that's how those two men got hurt."