The boy ranchers, with Old Billee, rode back over the ground covered in the attack of the night. The veteran cow puncher pointed out where the rustlers had ridden into the valley, over a pass that crossed a low mountain range, which connected, in a fashion, Buffalo Ridge and Snake Mountain. This ridge formed the lower boundary of Bud's range, and once the cattle had been driven over this they could easily have been hazed to Hank Fisher's Double Z ranch. "Well, there's nothing to make sure it was any of Del Pinzo's gang, except general suspicion," remarked Bud, as they were about to ride back to camp. "What's the matter?" he asked, for, with an exclamation, Nort had leaped from his saddle. The eastern lad was picking up something from the ground that had been so lately trampled by steers and horses. "Look!" exclaimed Nort, and he held up a branding iron. "One of ours?" asked Bud, in rather a commonplace voice. "Not exactly," Nort answered. "It's marked with a double Z!" CHAPTER XVI QUEER ACTIONS What effect this announcement had on Dick and Bud can easily be imagined. Both leaped from their saddles, as Nort had done, and gathered close to him as he held the branding iron in his hand. It was of the usual type, an iron plate, which had been cast in a mould, so that the device--two Z letters--formed a depression in the smooth surface of the iron plate. On the outer edge was a circle, so that when the brand was heated, and pressed on the hide of a steer, calf or maverick it would burn the impression of a double Z inside a ring--the mark of Hank Fisher's cattle. "Whew!" exclaimed Dick. "This makes it look bad for them, Bud!" "Oh, not necessarily, though I'm glad we found it," spoke the western lad. "Why isn't it suspicious?" asked Nort, whose high hopes had been rather dashed by Bud's somewhat cool reception of Dick's statement. "Oh, it's _suspicious_ all right!" Bud hastened to say, "and don't imagine I'm making light of you finding this, Nort! I'm mighty glad you did! Only we can't make it look bad for Hank Fisher, or the Double Z crowd unless we can fasten this on them." "You mean we can't prove they dropped it here during the raid last night?" asked Nort, as he vaulted into the saddle. "That's it," spoke Bud. "It does look suspicious, I'll admit. But you see while this is our range, we couldn't make a fuss just because some cowboy from Double Z rode over it. That wouldn't be right. And what's to hinder this having been dropped by some cowboy who was merely riding over our range?" "That's possible," admitted Dick. "But I don't believe it," asserted Nort. "Nor I," chimed in Bud. "But you got to go slow in making accusations out west, unless you're ready to back your opinion up with a gun; and we don't want to do that."