noon
Her fingers were almost on the bar . They could hear the soft lip-lip of the water as it welled out beneath the threshold , mingled with the tinkle and fall of the spring branch below . Johnnie turned in her uncle 's grasp and clutched him , staring down . Something shining and dark , brave with brass and flashing lamps , stood on the rocky way beneath , and purred like a great cat in the broad sunlight of noon -- Gray Stoddard 's motor car ! The two , clinging to each other on the steep above it , gazed half incredulous , now that they had found the thing they sought . It looked so unbelievably adequate and modern and alive standing there , drawing its perfectly measured breath ; it was so eloquent of power and the work of men 's hands that there seemed to yawn a gap of half a thousand years between it and the raid in which it was being made a factor . That this pet toy of the modern millionaire should be set to work out the crude vengeance of wild men in these primitive surroundings , crowded up on a little rocky path of these savage mountains , at the door of a cave spring-house -- such a food-cache as a nomad Indian might have utilized , in the gray bluff against the sky-line -- it took the breath with its sinister strangeness .