Then Bud did not know enough of the danger to act promptly, and even when Pocut Pete was discovered, "cutting a wart off a steer," as he falsely said, Bud did not know what to make of that. An older person might have been suspicious enough to have acted with more promptness, but Bud, naturally, had lots to learn. However, as appeared later, Pocut Pete had secured from some of the disease-killed cattle some pus, filled with millions of germs. This unpleasant mixture he kept in tiny phials. How he learned that to inject some of this pus under the hide of a steer would infect the animal, not only causing it to die of the disease, but to transmit it to others, is not vital to the story. Sufficient that Pocut Pete did know this. And he put his evil knowledge to evil use. He was caught by Bud, Nort and Dick in the very act of infecting some of Bud's steers. For when search was made in the morning, at the scene of the capture, broken bits of phials were discovered, some with that vile, yellow substance on them. And an inspection of the cattle showed several with cuts on their flanks, into which cuts, it was assumed, the germs had been injected, or rubbed. These animals were at once isolated, to determine what would happen to them. The ground near where Pocut Pete had carried on his nefarious operations was sprayed with disinfectants, and the cattle that had been with those he inoculated were also herded by themselves. These were all the precautions that could be taken, and then Pocut Pete was hurried off to the nearest jail, there to await trial. "But what set him up to such vile work?" asked Nort, when the prisoner had been taken from camp. "What else but the desire of Hank Fisher to see our stock-raising experiment fail?" countered Bud. "This is the doing of those scoundrels at Double Z. I only wonder that Del Pinzo wasn't in on the game." "He may be yet," said Dick. "Well, we'll be on the watch from now on--doubly on the watch," asserted Bud. "They won't put anything like this over on us again!" "Not if we know it!" joined in his cousins. It could not be determined, for several days, what the turn would be in the case of the cattle into which Pocut Pete had injected germs of the disease. Dr. Tunison was sent for, but said he could do nothing more than had been done. "You'll just have to wait and see how many will die," he told Bud. "You've done all you could by isolation. And there's one thing in your favor. No more of your cattle have been infected by those five that first died. We caught that outbreak in time. And if it proves that Pocut Pete is the sole source of infection on your ranch, it means that only those he managed to cut in his last operation will die." But it took time to determine this, and while waiting for the outcome something else happened which, though it seemed to involve tragedy at the time, really resulted in clearing up the mystery and ending the water fight at Diamond X.