Then, from some remote distance there floated to him a sound strangely incongruous here in the early stillness, a subdued screech or scream, a wild, clamorous, shrieking noise which for the life of him he could not catalogue.
It was faint because it came across so great a distance and yet it was clear; it was not the throbbing cry of a mountain lion, not the scream of a horse stricken with its death, nothing that he had ever heard, and yet it suggested both of these sounds.
"Bill!" he began.
"I heard it," Royce muttered. "An' I've heard it before! In a minute——"
Royce broke off. The sound, stilled a second, came again, seeming already much closer and more hideous. Steve's horse snorted and plunged; some of the colts in the pasture flung up their heels and fled with streaming manes and tails. Royce calmly filled and lighted his pipe.
Stillness again for perhaps ten or twenty seconds. Steve, about to demand an explanation from his companion, stared as once more came the shrieking noise.
"You can hear the blame thing ten miles," grunted Royce. "It's only about half that far away now. Keep your eye glued on the road across the valley where it comes out'n Blue Bird Cañon."
And then Steve understood. Into the clear air across the valley rose a growing cloud of dust; through it, out of the cañon's shadows and into the sunlight, shot a glistening automobile, hardly more than a bright streak as it sped along the curving down-grade.
"Terry Temple?" gasped young Packard. Royce merely grunted again.
"Jus' you watch," was all he said.