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      The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek Or Fighting the Sheep Herders

      CHAPTER I

      SHOTS IN THE NIGHT

      With a rattle and a clatter the muddy flivver stopped with a squeak of brakes in front of Diamond X ranch house. From the car leaped three boys, one of them carrying a small leather pouch.

      "Here's the mail!" yelled this lad – Bud Merkel by name, and his cousins, Nort and Dick Shannon, added the duet of their voices to his as they cried:

      "Mail's in! Lots of letters!"

      "Any for me?" asked Nell, reaching out her hand toward Bud. "Don't tell me there isn't!" she pleaded.

      "Well, I'm sorry, Sis," began Bud, teasingly, "there was one for you, but driving in we ran over a rattler and – "

      "Don't you believe him, Nell!" consoled Nort, who didn't altogether agree with Bud's teasing of his sister. "Your letters are safe in the pouch."

      "Oh, there are letters, then, are there – not just one?" cried Nell with shining eyes. "Thanks a whole lot."

      "Don't thank me – thank the postmaster – or whoever wrote you the letters!" laughed Nort.

      Bud had sat down on a bench outside the ranch house and was opening the mail pouch. His mother came to the door of the kitchen, wiping flour from her hands, for though Mrs. Merkel kept a "hired girl," and though Nell assisted, yet the mother of Bud insisted on doing much of the work herself, and very able she was, too.

      "Any letters for your father?" she asked.

      "Two or three," answered Bud, as he looked over the envelopes. "And one for you, Mother."

      "Well, take your father's mail to him when you've finished sorting," suggested Mrs. Merkel. "He said he was expecting something of importance. You'll find him over in the bunk house looking after Mr. Watson."

      "Mr. Watson!" shouted Bud with a laugh. "Do you mean Yellin' Kid?"

      "Oh, I guess that's what you call him," assented Mrs. Merkel as she opened her letter. "But his name's Watson."

      "Guess you're the only one who remembers that, Ma," chuckled Dick Shannon, for though Mrs. Merkel was only his aunt, she was almost universally called "Ma" on the ranch of Diamond X.

      "Yellin' Kid isn't any worse, is he?" asked Bud.

      "Oh, no, but your father wanted to change the bandages and it takes some time. You'll find him pretty nearly finished, I guess, though you'd better take his mail to him there."

      There had been a slight accident the week before, in which the horse of Yellin' Kid had crowded him against a post in a corral fence, badly bruising and cutting the leg of the cowboy. A doctor had been called, and after the first dressing of the wound had said Mr. Merkel or some of the men could attend to it as much as was necessary, and the ranch owner was now in performance of this duty.

      "I'll take the boys' mail, Bud," offered Old Billee, one of the veteran cow punchers of Diamond X. "Don't reckon you got any for me, have you?" he asked with a sort of wistful hope in his voice.

      "Sorry, Billee, but there doesn't seem to be any," answered Bud. "Better luck next time."

      "No, I don't reckon there will be," sighed Old Billee. "All my friends is dead an' gone, an' nobody else wants t' write t' an ole timer like me." He took the letters destined for the other cowboys who were engaged in various duties about the ranch, saying he would distribute them, while Bud took those destined for his father to the sleeping quarters of the men, where Yellin' Kid was forced to remain temporarily in his bunk.

      Nort and Dick had letters from "home," as they called their residence in the East, though they had been west so long now that they might almost be said to live on the ranch. And while Bud's cousins were going over their missives, Mr. Merkel was doing the same with those his son handed him.

      "How are you, Kid?" asked Bud of the injured cowboy as Mr. Merkel sat at a table tearing open the various envelopes.

      "Oh, I'll be up and around again shortly," was the answer. "If you figure on starting off after any more Indians I could get ready in about two quivers of a steer's nose."

      "Guess there won't be any more Indians around here for a while," observed Bud. "We taught those Yaquis a lesson."

      "Now you're shoutin'!" exclaimed Yellin' Kid, though it was he, rather than Bud, who spoke in a loud voice – hence the Kid's name. He just couldn't seem to speak in ordinary tones, but appeared to take it for granted that every one was deaf, and so shouted at them.

      Suddenly the quiet reading and attention that Mr. Merkel had been giving his letters was broken as he jumped up, scattering the papers to the floor of the bunk house. He held in his hand a single sheet that seemed to cause him great surprise, not to say anger, and he exclaimed:

      "Well, it's come, just as I feared it would! Now we're in for some hot times!"

      "What's the matter, Dad?" asked Bud, looking toward the door in which his cousins now stood, having finished reading their letters.

      "Not another Indian uprising, is it?" asked Bud.

      "Almost as bad!" his father answered. "We're going to have trouble. I might have known things were too good to last!"

      "What sort of trouble?" inquired Nort.

      "With sheep herders," answered Mr. Merkel.

      "Sheep herders!" cried Bud, and if you know anything about the cattle business you will realize his tone of voice. For, as I will explain later, sheep herders are hated and despised by cattle men and horse breeders alike, and with good reason, in spite of the rights the sheep men have. "What do you mean?" asked Bud, fully alive to the danger implied by his father's words. "There isn't a sheep within a hundred miles of here, thank goodness!"

      "No, but there soon will be," said Mr. Merkel grimly.

      "What makes you say that?" and Bud clearly showed his fear and interest.

      "Here's an official notice," his father said, waving the paper in his hand. "It just came in the mail yon brought. The government announces that it has thrown open to the public the old Indian lands bordering on Spur Creek, and it won't be a month before the place is over-run with Mexicans, Greasers, and worse, with their stinking sheep! Pah! It makes me sick, after all the work we've done at Diamond X to have it spoiled this way! But I'm not going to sit back and stand it! I'm going to fight!"

      "That's right, Dad! I'm with you! I'll fight, too! Won't we, fellows?" he appealed to Nort and Dick.

      "Sure we will!" was their answer. And it was, in a way, as much their battle as it was that of Mr. Merkel and his son. For Bud, Nort and Dick had a small ranch of their own in Happy Valley, not far from the main holdings at Diamond X.

      "But why do you think we'll be over-run with sheep just because they've opened up the Indian lands?" asked Nort.

      "It just naturally follows," his uncle answered. "Every low-down onery sheep man for a hundred miles around has had his eyes on these lands for the last five years, waiting for Uncle Sam to put 'em in the open market. Now the government has finally paid the Indians' claims and those fellows at Washington have decided to make it a free-for-all-race."

      "Well, in that case," said Bud, "can't you and the other cattlemen around here jump in and claim the land so there won't be any danger of the sheep men coming in?"

      "Well, there's just one hitch," answered Mr. Merkel. "I said it was a free and open race, but it isn't – exactly. Ranchmen who own more than a certain amount of acreage, grazing ground and range, are barred from taking any of this Indian land."

      "But there may be enough good cattle men and horse breeders who will take up all the claims and so shut out the sheep," suggested Nort.

      "That might happen, but I haven't told you all," said his uncle. "You see boundary lines out here are pretty uncertain. In some places there never has been a survey made. So not only may the sheep men jump in and claim the Indian land that the government has opened, but they'll over-run land that we now use for grazing cattle and horses. And I needn't tell you that once sheep

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