"What's the row?" cried "Yellin' Kid" Watson, as he unlimbered his gun. It needed but one utterance of his to establish his nickname. He shouted almost every word he used.
"All over," said Slim, succinctly. "Don't know just what it's about, but it's all over."
The newcomers rode their horses into the camp, and Yellin' Kid, whose animal was a bit restive, nearly brought down one of the small tents. As it swayed, a flap opening because of the breaking of one of the ropes, Professor Wright sprang forward with a sharp cry.
"Don't go in there! No one must enter that tent!" sharply commanded the scientist.
"I wasn't aimin' to," remarked Yellin' Kid somewhat tartly and in rather grieved tones. "Come out of that, you soap footer!" he cried to his steed. "What do you mean, slippin' all over creation?"
He backed his animal away, but Professor Wright, summoning to his side Professor Blair, quickly fastened the tent shut again, paying no heed during this operation, to the cowboys.
"Seems mighty much afraid we'll see something we hadn't a right to," commented Bud to his cousins.
"Suspicious, I call it!" whispered Nort. He was impulsive, and much more prone, than was his brother, to ascribe motives to others. "Maybe, after all, they have gold in there!" he said.
Bud Merkel shook his head as Nort Shannon offered this possible explanation of the action of Professor Wright.
"Never's been any gold found in these regions all the years I've lived here," he said.
"There's always a first time," countered Nort, while the cowboys gazed about them, talking in low voices.
"It must be something else," said Bud. "This is a prospecting bunch, it's easy to see that, but they're not after gold. These two professors are from some eastern college, I take it," he went on. "They may be after specimens of plants, or stones. Using their vacation this way. I've heard of it being done."
"That's right!" chimed in Dick. "Two of the professors from our Academy spent all one summer in the Adirondacks, getting material for a new geology book they were writing. Maybe that's what these professors are doing," he suggested.
"Then why are they keeping so blamed secret about it for?" asked Nort, impulsively. "There's no crime in getting rock specimens, or in making up a new geology, only I wouldn't want to do it," he finished with a grin. "I get enough of study all winter. We came out here to have fun!"