Hugh could not make very much out of this answer, but did not have time to ponder it long. Jethro announced that all was well with the baggage, so Hugh and Linda went out together. It was a relief to him to think that he was with a person who knew at least who he was and why he had come.
“You are very good,” he began shyly as they came out on the steps; “you should not—” but the rest of his sentence was never spoken.
The hot sleepy silence was broken suddenly by a shrill steam whistle, followed by another and another. A strident siren joined them; then came a deep blast from some steamer on the lake; then a loud clanging of bells added their voices to the tumult. For full five minutes the deafening noise continued until Hugh’s ears beat with it and his head rang. The street had become alive with people, women with aprons over their heads, men in overalls, scores of children, as though each of the little houses had sent forth a dozen inhabitants. Down at a far corner Hugh saw the two Indians come into view again, the man with his head up, listening, like a deer, the woman with a pleading hand laid upon his arm. He brushed her aside roughly, and disappeared beyond the turn, she following meekly after. No one noticed them except himself, Hugh felt certain, since every face was turned northward to the wooded rocky hill that overhung the town. Puffs of white steam rose here and there among the trees, showing the mine buildings or the lumber mills from which the whistling came.
This was no ordinary blowing of signals to mark the noon hour: the excitement, the anxious faces, the hideous insistence of the noise all told him that. Just at the instant that he felt he could not endure the tumult longer, silence fell.
“What is it, what is it?” he gasped his inquiry, and one of the men standing by the steps, the one who had spoken of Laughing Mary, began to explain.
“You see—about four days ago—” The words were cut off by a new outbreak of the clamor. It rose higher this time and lasted longer, it rolled back from the hills and seemed to echo from the ground itself. Twice it fell and twice broke out once more, a long fifteen minutes of unendurable bedlam. The man, undismayed, called his explanations into Hugh’s ear, sometimes drowned out by the uproar, sometimes left shouting alone in a moment of throbbing silence. What Hugh caught came in broken fragments.
“Two fellows—hunting—gone four days now—lost some way—these hills—blowing all the whistles at once—hoped—might hear—”
The screaming and clanging finally died away, leaving one long-drawn siren to drop alone, while Hugh’s informant also lowered his voice to ordinary speech.
“We do that hereabouts when people get lost. Every whistle in three counties is blowing right now, so if they don’t hear one and follow it, they may another. Sometimes it brings them back, more often it doesn’t. It’s an ugly thing to get lost in these hills.”
“How long did you say they had been gone?” asked Hugh.