"Oh! Is that so?" mocked Bob. "Must have hurt right bad then, to make you peep like that. Now, I reckon it might have been something about Lopez?" for he had noted that hasty glance, and the disappointed frown.
"That's just what it was, Bob," Frank continued, in an even tone. "Fact is, I just remembered who Lopez put me in mind of. Only perhaps you'll laugh when I tell you. Remember that poor little girl Peg Grant was cuffing when you knocked him down? Well, if you took that colored handkerchief off Lopez, and let his black hair fall down, I give you my word he'd be a ringer for that Mexican child!"
Bob stared as if dazed, and then the light of a great discovery dawned upon him.
"Say, Frank!" he exclaimed presently. "Honest Indian, now, I believe you've sure struck pay dirt, and that's what!"
CHAPTER IX
WHAT HAPPENED TO PEG
"Then you think the same as I do, eh, Bob?" asked the saddle boy, as if pleased.
"Well, now a heap of things seem to point that way, Frank," replied the other, slowly. "Only for the life of me I can't get it through my poor old head just why a girl like that would want to carry on in such a queer way."
"Nor me, either," laughed his chum. "That's something else for us to lie awake nights puzzling our wits over. Everything around this Thunder Mountain just seems to be plastered with mystery—who little Lopez is; what he, or she may be doing away off here in the canyons of the Rockies; and more particularly the mystery of the mountain that the reds look on as sacred; where Mendoza and his band of rustlers have gone with those stolen horses; and also who the prospectors can be that this pile of grub was meant for—it's all a blank, that's what!"