"Same here, Bob; and that's why I just jumped at the chance to beat Peg out in his game. The funny part about it is why I never thought of this racket before. But perhaps that was because I didn't have a chum to stand back of me."
"None of the boys on the ranch would go with you, then?" asked Bob.
"I should say not! Even old Hank would balk at that, and he's never been afraid of thing that flies, runs or crawls. It was old Hank who taught me all I know about range life. He showed me how to shoot, throw a rope, and do heaps of other things a prairie boy ought to know. Hank thinks lots of me, and honest now, Bob, that gruff old fellow would willingly lay down his life for me."
"I reckon he would," assented the other, readily enough.
"But Hank's a rank believer in the Injun story of the mountain, and would never come here of his own accord; but to keep an eye on me, and, stand between me and danger, he'd just crawl down the crater of a live volcano."
"Seems like the show might be over for tonight," Bob suggested.
"The row has stopped, sure enough," Frank remarked, looking up at the dimly-seen outlines of the far-away crest of the rocky elevation, where it stood out against the starry heavens.
"You don't believe, then, that there could have been some kind of storm up there; do you?" questioned Bob.
"Well, it's sure a great puzzle," replied his chum, with a long breath. "My eyes are reckoned prime, but I can't glimpse any sign of a cloud that would bring out all that noise. A mystery it's been these many years; and if so be we can learn the cause for all that queer roaring that shakes the earth, we'll be doing more'n anyone else has ever done in the past."
"That's what we're here for, if Peg gives us half a chance," remarked Bob, with the healthy assurance of youth. "And as neither of us takes any stock in the fairy story about the Manitou's anger, we ought to stand some chance of locating the thing; or 'bust the b'iler trying' as old Hank would say."