nt to do
something everybody else lets alone. You know what I told you about
Thunder Mountain, Bob; and how it has been a mystery ever since the
country hereabout was settled by people from the East?"

"Yes," the Kentucky boy replied, "and somehow, what you told me seemed
to shake me up as I don't ever remember being stirred before. It was
like a direct challenge--just like somebody had dared me to look into
this queer old mountain, and find out what it all meant."

"That's just it," said Frank, watching the face of his chum with a show
of eagerness. "It struck me the same way long ago, and I can remember
often thinking what a great time a few of the right kind of fellows
might have if they took a notion to go nosing around that old pile of
rock, to see what does make all that row every little while."

"And you tell me nobody knows what it is?" demanded Bob.

"Why, don't you understand, the cowboys all keep away from Thunder
Mountain as much as they can. They're worse than the Injuns about it,
because while the reds say that is the voice of Manitou talking, these
fellows just up and declare the mountain is haunted. Lots of 'em
couldn't be hired to spend a night on the side of that big uplift."

"But Frank, we don't believe in any such thing, do we?" pursued Bob, as
if he had begun to suspect what all this talk was leading up to, and
wished to draw his chum on.

"We sure don't, and that's a fact," declared Frank. "Twice, now, one
of our boys has made out that he saw a ghost, but both times I managed
to turn the laugh on him. All the same, if you offered a lump sum for
any fellow to go and camp out half-way up the side of Thunder Mountain
for a week, I don't believe he could be found, not at Circle Ranch,
anyhow."

"I've seen the same kind of men myself; and the coons around our old
Kentucky home always carried a foot of a graveyard rabbit, shot in the
full of the moon, as a sure talisman against ghosts. I've seen many a
rabbit's foot. No use talking to any of them; it's in the blood and
can't be cured. But about that offering a sum for any fellow to go and
camp on the side of that old fraud of a haunted mountain, if you happen
to hear about such a snap you might just think of me, Frank."

The other saddle boy smiled broadly. He believed he knew Bob pretty
well by this time, and could no longer doubt what the Kentucky lad was
hinting at.

"Say, look here, would you take me up if I proposed something r