Luki.  I let go of Luki’s foot and bethought myself of the gun.  But as I lay there on my side, before attempting to rise, I made a horrible discovery.  I did not have my rifle at all.  I had Luki’s iron spear, which he always had near him.  My rifle had slipped out of the hollow of my arm, and when the lion awakened me, in my confusion I picked up Luki’s spear instead.  The bloody brute dropped Luki and uttered a roar that shook the ground.  It was then I felt frightened.  For an instant I was almost paralyzed.  The lion meant to charge, and in one spring he could reach me.  Under circumstances like those a man can think many things in little time.  I knew to try to run would be fatal.  I remembered how strangely lions had been known to act upon occasion.  One had been frightened by an umbrella; one had been frightened by a blast from a cow-horn; another had been frightened by a native who in running from one lion ran right at the other which he had not seen.  Accordingly, I wondered if I could frighten the lion that meant to leap at me.  Acting upon wild impulse, I prodded him in the hind quarters with the spear.  Ladies and gentlemen, I am a blooming idiot if that lion did not cower like a whipped dog, put his tail down, and begin to slink away.  Quick to see my chance, I jumped up yelling, and made after him, prodding him again.  He let out a bellow such as you could imagine would come from an outraged king of beasts.  I prodded again, and then he loped off.  I found Luki not badly hurt.  In fact, he got well.  But I’ve never forgotten that scare.”

When Castleton finished his narrative there was a trenchant silence.  All eyes were upon Monty.  He looked beaten, disgraced, a disgusted man.  Yet there shone from his face a wonderful admiration for Castleton.

“Dook, you win!” he said; and, dropping his head, he left the camp-fire circle with the manner of a deposed emperor.

Then the cowboys exploded.  The quiet, serene, low-voiced Nels yelled like a madman and he stood upon his head.  All the other cowboys went through marvelous contortions.  Mere noise was insufficient to relieve their joy at what they considered the fall and humiliation of the tyrant Monty.

The Englishman stood there and watched them in amused consternation.  They baffled his understanding.  Plain it was to Madeline and her friends that Castleton had told the simple truth.  But never on the earth, or anywhere else, could Nels and his comrades have been persuaded that Castleton had not lied deliberately to humble their great exponent of Ananias.

Everybody seemed reluctant to break the camp-fire spell.  The logs had burned out to a great heap of opal and gold and red coals, in the heart of which quivered a glow alluring to the spirit of dreams.  As the blaze subsided the shadows of the pines encroached darker and darker upon the circle of fading light.  A cool wind fanned the embers, whipped up flakes of white ashes, and moaned through the trees.  The wild yelps of coyotes were dying in the distance, and the sky was a wonderful dark-blue dome spangled with white stars.