Light changing color darting back and forth across the sky.

I am now 51 years of age living in Missouri. When I was 17 living in Oklahoma one night I went to spend the night with a friend who lived out in the country. It was about 10:00 p.m. and we had all gone to bed when my friends sister yelled boys, come and and look out my window. We saw a light in the distance maybe a mile or two away. It looked to be about 100 ft. off the ground. The light was changing colors from red, blue, and white or maybe more. The exiting thing about it was how it would move so fast across the sky. It would move rapidly sideways for about 1/4 of a mile and stop instanly, then move back across the sky and stop again. At one point someone said let's get in the car and drive toward it but we chickened out.  We watched it dart back and forth for about 15 minutes then it started slowly zig zagging across the sky getting higher and higher untill it was out of sight. After all these years I wonder what would have happened if we had driven ovrer toward it.
Date is approximate.  PD