Again neither spoke. A loose board creaked somewhere in the darkness. A crude little weathervane, the handiwork of some departed soldier, rattled nearby.
“Listen,” said Roy. “Do you hear that voice again?”
As he spoke a long, discordant cry could be heard somewhere in the distance, ending in a spasmodic jerk. It was like nothing human. Yet strangely it suggested something human. As if some unearthly ghoul were trying to simulate the wailing of human anguish.... Then again it was quite grotesque, bearing no resemblance to the cry of a living thing.
“What do you suppose it is?” Warde asked.
“It’s a–I don’t know,” said Roy doubtfully. “I never heard anything just like that before.”
The sound was not continuous, but came at intervals.
“Do you know what I’d like to do?” said Warde. “I’d like to get just one good look at Blythe while he’s lying asleep. I’d like to see his face calm and still like in the picture. I’d like to see it when he isn’t looking at me.”
“That’s easy,” said Roy, caught by the idea. “Let’s go. Maybe we can tell better.”
They returned to their camp, as they called it, through the dismantled frame of the first shack, and past the sleepers under the big elm. Pee-wee was there, tied in a bowline knot, the official knot of the Raven patrol, sleeping the sleep of the righteous.
“If he should hear us, remember we’re just turning in,” said Roy.