For what seemed a very long time the gaunt-bodied animal stood as still as the rock beneath it; then, silent and swift, it turned and, like a cat at home leaping down from a table, dropped into the shadows at the base of the rock, and was lost to Gloria’s sight in a little hollow.  She waited, her eyes staring.

Again, all of a sudden, she saw it.  Moving with the stealthy caution which is its birthright, it appeared fleetingly a score of feet lower on the steep slope, the body and its shadow, a twin for stealthy silence, gone in a flash, reappearing once more still lower on the slope and just beyond the pine sapling.  It was coming on.  Fascinated, Gloria sat like stone, with never a thought of the rifle lying across her knees.

The mountain-lion leaped downward softly from stage to stage of the canon-side, paused under the pine, lifted its head, and sent forth again its hunger-cry.  All this time Gloria sat breathless; the fear-fascination still held her powerless.  She watched the animal crouch and gather its strength and hurl its lean body upward.  The lion fell back, the ripping claws having missed the meat by some two or three feet, and Gloria heard the low, rumbling growl.  Again it sprang; again it missed.  And then, for a weary time of silence it sat still, its head back, its eyes on the desired meal.  In the moonlight Gloria saw the glistening saliva from the half-parted jaws.

But in the end feline craft found the way, and the cat set its paws against the tree trunk, and began to climb.  Limbs broke under the two hundred pounds of weight; the bark was torn under slipping paws, but upward the sinuous body writhed.  Swiftly now it would come to King’s kill.

King’s!  Gloria started; this was Mark’s kill:  he had stalked it, he had ploughed many miles through deep snow to get it.  To get it for her as well as for him.  To keep the life in her—­now, without it, King would die.  And now the lion was going to take it, while she watched and did nothing!

“Oh, God, help me!” She sprang to her feet, she jerked up her rifle and fired at the black bulk crawling upward in the pine.  “It shall not have Mark’s meat!  It shall not!”

At the first shot the mountain-lion dropped through crashing branches.  She had shot it—­she had driven a bullet through its heart.  God had heard her.  That was her first wild thought.  But in a flash she saw that it was on its feet again, and that with red mouth snarling it had swung about, facing her; she saw the cruel white teeth, wet and glistening.

Incoherently Gloria cried out, again sick and shaken with terror.  In another moment she would have the lean powerful body leaping upon her.  She fired again and again, taking no time for aim, as fast as she could work the lever and pull the trigger; she was trembling so that it was all that she could do to hold the gun at all.  She prayed and called on Mark and fired, all at once.

Never did bullets fly wider of the mark, but never did the roar of exploding shells do better service.  The lion, though ravenous, was not yet starved to the degree to whip it to the supreme desperation of attacking a human being and defying a rifle; it whirled and went flashing across the snow, seeking the shadows, gone in the drifts, vanishing.