“Suppose they did not want to cut the place up too much.”
“No. They have had to do a lot of that anyway,” Howard answered. They were going through what appeared like a natural passage over which the great branches formed an arch, and through the openings, the boys caught glimpses of numerous parrots, some plain green, almost the shade of the trees in which they perched, while others were gaily colored with bright red and yellow, their long tails hanging gorgeous and graceful.
“I should not mind having one of them to take home to Mom,” Bob remarked, “but she’d be displeased if I caught it and brought it away to live the rest of its life in a cage. My mother doesn’t like to see things confined.”
“On the Cross-Bar ranch all the pens and corrals have to be huge. Even the pigs have spacious quarters; so big they won’t fatten. The foreman built a small one where she doesn’t notice it,” Jim added with a grin.
“Doesn’t she miss them?” Howard asked.
“He’s managed so far to see that she doesn’t,” Bob replied, “but he’s lucky that she keeps away from the pigs pretty much.”
“I see—”
“O—o—” Just then a shrill scream came so clearly and sounded so startling that the Flying Buddies sprang to their feet. “O—”
“Is something the matter?” Jim asked quietly.
“That sounds like a woman’s scream,” Bob added, and their faces paled as the panic-stricken cry came again.