The crash of breaking brush and thunder of hoofs from where the hounds had come out of the forest, attracted and even frightened me.  I saw the green of a low cedar tree shake, and split, to let out a huge, gaunt horse with a big man doubled over his saddle.  The onslaught of Emett and his desert charger stirred a fear in me that checked admiration.

“Hounds running wild,” he yelled, and the dark shadows of the cedars claimed him again.

A hundred yards within the forest we came again upon Emett, dismounted, searching the ground.  Moze and Sounder were with him, apparently at fault.  Suddenly Moze left the little glade and venting his sullen, quick bark, disappeared under the trees.  Sounder sat on his haunches and yelped.

“Now what the hell is wrong?” growled Jones tumbling off his saddle.

“Shore something is,” said Jim, also dismounting.

“Here’s a lion track,” interposed Emett.

“Ha! and here’s another,” cried Jones, in great satisfaction.  “That’s the trail we were on, and here’s another crossing it at right angles.  Both are fresh:  one isn’t fifteen minutes old.  Don and Jude have split one way and Moze another.  By George! that’s great of Sounder to hang fire!”

“Put him on the fresh trail,” said Jim, vaulting into his saddle.

Jones complied, with the result that we saw Sounder start off on the trail Moze had taken.  All of us got in some pretty hard riding, and managed to stay within earshot of Sounder.  We crossed a canyon, and presently reached another which, from its depth, must have been Middle Canyon.  Sounder did not climb the opposite slope, so we followed the rim.  From a bare ridge we distinguished the line of pines above us, and decided that our location was in about the center of the plateau.

Very little time elapsed before we heard Moze.  Sounder had caught up with him.  We came to a halt where the canyon widened and was not so deep, with cliffs and cedars opposite us, and an easy slope leading down.  Sounder bayed incessantly; Moze emitted harsh, eager howls, and both hounds, in plain sight, began working in circles.

“The lion has gone up somewhere,” cried Jim.  “Look sharp!”

Repeatedly Moze worked to the edge of a low wall of stone and looked over; then he barked and ran back to the slope, only to return.  When I saw him slide down a steep place, make for the bottom of the stone wall, and jump into the low branches of a cedar I knew where to look.  Then I descried the lion a round yellow ball, cunningly curled up in a mass of dark branches.  He had leaped into the tree from the wall.

“There he is!  Treed!  Treed!” I yelled.  “Moze has found him.”

“Down boys, down into the canyon,” shouted Jones, in sharp voice.  “Make a racket, we don’t want him to jump.”

How he and Jim and Emett rolled and cracked the stone!  For a moment I could not get off my horse; I was chained to my saddle by a strange vacillation that could have been no other thing than fear.