"A rocket!" cried Bud, all excited. "It means something, Nort! Maybe the sheep herders are coming!" CHAPTER VII A PARLEY For a moment the two boys remained motionless and quiet, waiting for what might develop. But the dying sparks of the rocket--if such it was--were followed by no other demonstration. "We'd better call Billee and the others," murmured Bud. "That's right," agreed Nort in a low voice, though there was no need for this, as the rocket-senders must have been several miles away. Billee Dobb awakened at the slightest whisper near his bunk, and in a few moments Dick, Yellin' Kid and the other cowboys, of whom there were half a dozen at the "fort," as it was called, were awake. It did not take them long to hustle into their clothes, and then, draped in ponchos, for it was still raining hard, they stood out in the darkness, waiting for what might happen next. "Couldn't have been a rocket," murmured Old Billee, as the rain pelted down. "It's too wet for that." "Must have been some Greasers around a camp fire--though how in the name of a maverick they got one to burn I don't see," observed Yellin' Kid, making his voice only a little lower than usual. "Must 'a' been that one of 'em chucked a brand up in the air." "It wasn't like a fire brand," declared Nort. "It was just like a regular rocket," added Bud. Old Billee was about to say something, probably to the effect that it was a false alarm, and that they'd all do better to be back in their warm bunks when the blackness of the night was suddenly dispelled off to the south by a sliver of flame, followed by a trail of red sparks. "There she goes again!" cried Bud. "The same as before," added Nort. "That's a rocket right enough," admitted Billee. "Like the time we was after cattle rustlers," said Yellin' Kid, referring to an occasion, not fully set forth in any of the books, when, as the Diamond X took after a gang of cattle thieves, rockets were used as signals by the marauders to communicate with separated bands. "What do you reckon it means?" asked Dick, who often dropped into the vernacular of the plains. "Well, it _might_ mean almost anything," admitted Old Billee. "Can't be any of Uncle Sam's soldiers that far south, or we'd 'a' heard about it. As near as I can figure it there must be some crowd down there trying to give a signal to some crowd somewhere else." This was sufficiently vague to have covered almost anything; as sport writers spread the "dope," in talking about a coming football contest between Yale and Princeton. Yellin' Kid must have sensed this, for with a chuckle he said: "You're bound to be right, Billee, no matter which way the cat jumps. It sure is _some_ crowd signallin' to _another_ crowd." "Do you suppose they're trying to signal us?" asked Dick.