"Did you find 'em?" cried Dick, eagerly. "The cattle or our cowboys?"
"No, but look!" yelled Nort. "We're coming to a city!"
He pointed toward the east and there, on the far side of a green valley, amid green hills, was the vision of a small city, on the banks of a good-sized river. As the boys watched they saw a steamer come up to a dock and stop, though the scene was too far away to give them more details.
But, even as he spoke the vision faded from the eyes of the startled boys. It melted from sight as do some moving pictures, when the "fade out" is used. It was as though a veil of mist came between the vision and the boys, or as if some giant hand had wiped it from a great slate with a damp sponge.
"Well, what do you know about that?" exclaimed Nort, as he turned to look at his brother, when the vision of the city on the river bank had disappeared.
"Were we dreaming, or did we really see something?" asked Dick, passing his hand over his eyes in dazed fashion.
"We saw something all right," asserted Nort, "and I'm wondering if I saw the same thing you did--a city--the steamer and----"
"I saw it, too," declared Dick, interrupting his brother's recital. "But where did it go? A fog must have rolled up between us and it. But now we know which way to ride. I don't know what town that was, but they can tell us how to get back to Diamond X ranch."
"It's queer," murmured Nort, as Dick urged his horse in the direction of the vision they had just beheld.
"Seeing that town," his brother went on. "Bud never said anything about the ranch being so near a place where they had a river steamer. There isn't a boat of that size on the river around here."
"No," assented Dick. "This must be farther down. Anyhow, let's hit the trail for there. We aren't lost any more, I reckon."
"Doesn't seem," murmured Nort. But, even as the two brothers urged their tired, broncos forward, another strange thing happened. In the very same place where they had seen the vision of the town and the steamer, only to witness it vanish, there appeared in sharp detail a large ranch, with its corrals, its bunk house and main buildings.
"There! Look!" cried Dick. "There's Diamond X!"
Nort shaded his eyes with his hands, and peered long and earnestly.