Tom came to a sudden standstill, and the face he turned toward his companion was as white as a sheet.
Bob was frightened, too, but he retained his wits and his power of action, and his first thought was to put a safe distance between himself and the thing, whatever it was, that could make a noise like that.
Without saying a word he arose from his seat, dived into the bushes and began scrambling up the bank. How he got to the top he never knew (he afterward affirmed that in some places the bank was as straight up and down as the side of a house), but he reached it in an incredibly short space of time, and turned about to find Tom close at his heels.
"What in the name of sense and Tom Walker was it?" panted Bob, pulling out his handkerchief and mopping his forehead, on which the perspiration stood in great beads.
"I give it up," gasped Tom. "It must be something awful, if one may judge by the screeching it is able to do. I heard a couple of laughing hyenas give a solo and chorus in a menagerie once, and I thought I should never get the sound out of my ears; but that thing in the gulf can beat them out of sight. I'm going home now, but I'll come up here to-morrow with Bugle and Uncle Hallet's Winchester, and if I can make the dog drive him out of the bushes so that I can get a fair sight at him, I'll pump him so full of holes that he'll never make any more of that noise."
Tom at once drew a bee line for his uncle's house, and Bob fell in behind him. When they reached the wood-pile, he proposed that they should sit down and rest and compare notes. He was still quite nervous and uneasy, while Bob, who had had leisure to look at the matter in all its bearings, was as serene and unruffled as usual.
"Well, what do you think of it by this time?" inquired the latter.
"I don't think anything about it," replied Tom; "it is quite beyond me. But this much I know: That thing has got to be 'neutralized' before I will consent to come up here and live as Uncle Hallet's game-warden."
"Aha!" exclaimed Bob, with a laugh, "didn't you assure me that we wouldn't hear anything go b-r-r-r?"