"Hello! I see now what you're aiming at, Bob; you've just got a notion in your head that the lantern is being used for signalling purposes."
"Well, does that strike you as silly?" demanded Bob Archer.
"Silly? Hum! well, perhaps not, because it may be the right explanation of the thing. But whatever would anybody up there be signalling for, and who to, Bob?"
"There you've got me," laughed the other. "I'm not so far along as that yet. P'raps it might be one of the rustlers, telling something to another of the same stripe, who is located in camp out yonder on the plain. Then, again, how do we know but what it might be that Peg Grant lot? And Lopez. Don't forget little Lopez, Frank. Prospectors could have a lantern; in fact, I understand they often do carry such a thing along with 'em when they go into the mountains to pan for dust in the creek beds."
"So," said Frank, who evidently was doing considerable thinking.
They stood there for some little time, looking up at the light. Bob was merely indulging in various speculations regarding its source. On the other hand Frank busied himself in locating the strange glow, so that he might be able to know when he reached the spot, in case it was invisible at the time they arrived.
"Do we go?" asked Bob, when he, too, found his impatience getting the better of him; whereupon Frank, who had evidently been waiting for some sign, immediately took him up on it.
"If you're ready, we'll start right away," he said, quietly. "Luckily I've been studying the face of Thunder Mountain at times during the afternoon, and I reckon I can pilot the expedition all right."
But when Frank said this so confidently he failed to consider the intense darkness that might baffle all his plans of campaign. Still, Bob had the utmost confidence in his chum's ability to pull out of any ordinary difficulty. And, since his Kentucky spirit had been fully aroused, he was ready to accompany Frank anywhere, at any time.
Before they had been ten minutes on the way each of the boys sincerely wished that the idea to investigate had never appealed to them, for they began to have a rough time of it. But both were too proud to admit the fact, and so they kept crawling along over the rocks with their rifles slung on their backs, at times finding it necessary to clutch hold of bushes or saplings in order to save themselves from some tumble into holes, the actual depth of which they had no means of even guessing in the darkness.