At midnight, the Peaceful Hart ranch lay broodily quiet under its rock-rimmed bluff. Down in the stable the saddle-horses were but formless blots upon the rumpled bedding in their stalls--except Huckleberry, the friendly little pinto with the white eyelashes and the blue eyes, and the great, liver-colored patches upon his sides, and the appetite which demanded food at unseasonable hours, who was now munching and nosing industriously in the depths of his manger, and making a good deal of noise about it.
Outside, one of the milch cows drew a long, sighing breath of content with life, lifted a cud in mysterious, bovine manner, and chewed dreamily. Somewhere up the bluff a bobcat squalled among the rocks, and the moon, in its dissipated season of late rising, lifted itself indolently up to where it could peer down upon the silent ranch.
In the grove where the tiny creek gurgled under the little stone bridge, someone was snoring rhythmically in his blankets, for the boys had taken to sleeping in the open air before the earliest rose had opened buds in the sunny shelter of the porch. Three feet away, a sleeper stirred restlessly, lifted his head from the pillow, and slapped half-heartedly at an early mosquito that was humming in his ear. He reached out, and jogged the shoulder of him who snored.
"Say, Gene, if you've got to sleep at the top of your voice, you better drag your bed down into the orchard," he growled. "Let up a little, can't yuh?"
"Ah, shut up and let a fellow sleep!" mumbled Gene, snuggling the covers up to his ears.
"Just what I want YOU to do. You snore like a sawmill. Darn it, you've got to get out of the grove if yuh can't--"
"Ah-h-EE-EE!" wailed a voice somewhere among the trees, the sound rising weirdly to a subdued crescendo, clinging there until one's flesh went creepy, and then sliding mournfully down to silence.
"What's that?" The two jerked themselves to a sitting position, and stared into the blackness of the grove.
"Bobcat," whispered Clark, in a tone which convinced not even himself.
"In a pig's ear," flouted Gene, under his breath. He leaned far over and poked his finger into a muffled form. "D'yuh hear that noise, Grant?"
Grant sat up instantly. "What's the matter?" he demanded, rather ill-naturedly, if the truth be told.
"Did you hear anything--a funny noise, like--"
The cry itself finished the sentence for him. It came from nowhere, it would seem, since they could see nothing; rose slowly to a subdued shriek, clung there nerve-wrackingly, and then wailed mournfully down to silence. Afterward, while their ears were still strained to the sound, the bobcat squalled an answer from among the rocks.