"Babe has a broken leg in a fight with robbers?" gasped Bud. "Shoot it along a little faster, Buck! I'm sorry I didn't let you ride harder at first. How much did they get? Was it rustlers, and I'll bet a cookie with a raisin in that Del Pinzo and his gang had a hand in the fracas! Did Babe shoot any of 'em?" "Babe him try--but too fat," said the Indian, with as near to a chuckle as ever he achieved, "Fall down--bust leg. Your _padre_ no can tell how much money gone, but big iron box not opened." "Oh, they didn't get to the safe, then!" exclaimed Bud with relief in his voice. For he knew, at this season of the spring round-up, that many thousands of dollars, from the sale of cattle, were often kept in his father's safe. "But go ahead, Buck! Tell us more about it. Step on her! Give her the gas! Open the throttle!" "Hu?" grunted the Zuni, questioningly. "I step on somet'ing?" "You're only mixing him up!" declared Nort "Let him take his own time, Bud." "If I do he'll be until noon giving us the facts. And if the robbers looted dad's office, even if they didn't get the safe open, they may have lit out with a tidy sum, and we ought to take the trail after 'em. That's what Buck came here for, likely! To get us on the chase from this end. Go ahead! Shoot!" he requested, meaning a verbal fire, not actual. Whether Buck Tooth would have succeeded, under these confusing directions, in making a quick, dear statement of the matter is a question that was not settled. For, just as the Indian was about to resume, Dick looked off toward the distant hills, which lined the trail between Diamond X proper, and Happy Valley, and the lad exclaimed: "Here comes one of the robbers now, riding like Sam Hill!" Bud and Nort leaped to the side of their partner, their hands on their weapons, but, after a glimpse of the approaching horseman, having shaded his eyes with his hands, Bud cried: "That isn't a robber! It's Yellin' Kid. I know his riding. I reckon he's come to give us the straight of it!" Which proved to be the case. "Buck outrode me," admitted Yellin' Kid as he drew rein, and his voice was not as loud as usual. "We started at th' same time, shortly after midnight when th' break was made, but that Indian's cayuse shore can step some! An' Buck can ride--let me tell you!" "You shot a ringer that time!" asserted Bud. "But what happened! And is Babe badly hurt!" "No! He just twisted his ankle gettin' out of his bunk in a hurry t' take a pot shot at th' bunch that tried to hold us up. Doc. Tunison says he'll be all right in a week." "But Tunison is a horse doctor!" objected Bud, for Babe, the fat assistant foreman of Diamond X, was a prime favorite with him and his cousins. "Yes, shore he is! Why not? A horse doctor for a cow puncher!" chuckled Yellin' Kid. "But here's the yarn." Thereupon, having turned his pony out to graze with the Indian's, Yellin' Kid told the boys what had happened.