The Boy Ranchers on the Trail | Page 6

up a
curious instrument. "Is this the start of another mystery!"
CHAPTER III

STARTLING NEWS
Leaping from their saddles, Nort and Dick hurried to the side of their
cousin, chum and partner in the ranch venture. Eagerly they looked
over his shoulder while he examined the strange object he had picked
up, almost at the very door leading into the mysterious tunnel.
The instrument--for such it seemed to be--consisted of a shiny, nickeled
part, which was what had reflected the moonlight, thus attracting Bud's
attention to it. In addition there were two flexible tubes, of soft rubber,
joining into one where they met the shiny metal.
The two tubes each terminated in hard rubber ends, pierced with a tiny
hole, and on the end of the single tube was a bright metal disk. The
whole formed a strange object, picked up as it was from the ground,
and especially when the boy ranchers feared they had some cause for
alarm.
"What in the world is it?" asked Bud, as he dangled it in front of his
cousins. "I never saw anything like it before. Wait! I have it! Yellin'
Kid said he was going to send to Kansas City for a flute he could play
on. This must be part of it! He dropped it here; though that couldn't 'a'
been him sneaking around the tunnel. But this is Yellin' Kid's musical
instrument all right! Oh, won't I rag him, though! I wonder which end
you blow in?"
"That isn't a musical instrument!" declared Nort, taking it from Bud's
hand.
"Not What is it then?" asked the western ranch lad.
"It's a stethoscope," declared Nort.
"Whew! x I didn't know Yellin' Kid could play one of them!"
exclaimed Bud. "He must be more musical than any of us thought!"
"'Tisn't musical, I tell you!" cried Nort, half laughing. "This is a
_stethoscope_--it's what a doctor listens to your lungs or heart with

when you're sick."
"He never listened to mine!" boasted Bud, "at least not since I can
remember, for I've never been sick."
"Well, I have," admitted Nort, "and so has Dick. You remember Dr.
Thompson using one of these, don't you?" he asked his stout brother.
"Sure I do! And there's some other name for it besides plain
stethoscope," declared Dick. "It's a long word--bi--di--"
"Binaural stethoscope! That's it!" broke in Nort. "I remember, now. I
thought I'd never be able to say those words, but they come back to me
now. Binaural stethoscope."
"'Tisn't good to eat, or shoot with, is it!" asked Bud, as he again took
the instrument and turned it over and over in his hands.
"Eat! Shoot!" laughed Nort. "No, I tell you it's to listen to your heart
beats, or lungs. Binaural means, simply, that it's fixed so you can listen
with both ears at the same time. And stethoscope comes from two
Greek words, stethos, the breast, and skopen, to view. It means,
literally, to view inside the chest, but of course the doctors who use the
stethoscope don't really do that. They only listen through the ear
pieces--these," and he held up the two rubber tubes ending in hard
nipples, pierced with small holes.
"What's the other end for!" asked Bud, indicating the shiny disk of
metal that dangled from the single tube.
"That's the part the doctor holds on your chest or over your heart," Dick
answered. "Sometimes the doctor puts it to your back to listen to your
breathing from that side."
"Well, who in the world would have a--a binaural stethoscope out
here!" asked Bud. "Yon reckon Doc. Tunison dropped it!" he went on,
referring to the local veterinarian. "Shucks no! Cow doctors don't use
'em, not that I ever heard of," declared Nort. "Though Doc. Tunison is

up to date."
"He sure was in discovering that it was germs which caused the
epidemic outbreak in our stock last year," remarked Bud.
"Yes, we got out of that mighty lucky," chimed in Dick. "What's
become of Pocut Pete?" he asked, referring to a scoundrel of a cowboy.
"Oh, Del Pinzo and Hank Fisher had pull enough to get him out of jail,
after he'd served only part of his term for infecting our stock," said Bud.
He had reference to something which is explained in the volume
immediately preceding this. Del Pinzo was a notorious Mexican
half-breed who, more than once, had made trouble for the boy ranchers.
Hank Fisher was the owner of Double Z ranch, adjoining that of Square
M, one of Mr. Merkel's, and also adjoining Happy Valley. Pocut Pete
was believed to be a tool of these two unscrupulous men, and Del Pinzo
had at his command Several Greasers who slipped back and forth over
the Mexican border, not far from which were located the holdings