Straight before my gaze yawned the awful expanse of the canyon.  In the soft morning light the red mesas, the yellow walls, the black domes were less harsh than in the full noonday sun, purer than in the tender shadow of twilight.  Below me were slopes and slides divided by ravines full of stones as large as houses, with here and there a lonesome leaning crag, giving irresistible proof of the downward trend, of the rolling, weathering ruins of the rim.  Above the wall bulged out full of fissures, ragged and rotten shelves, toppling columns of yellow limestone, beaded with quartz and colored by wild flowers wonderfully growing in crannies.

Wild and rare as was this environment, I gave it but a glance and a thought.  The bay of the hounds caused me to bend sharp and eager eyes to the open spaces of stone and slide below.  Luck was mine as usual; the hounds were working up toward me.  How I strained my sight!  Hearing a single cry I looked eastward to see Jones silhouetted against the blue on a black promontory.  He seemed a giant primeval man overlooking the ruin of a former world.  I signalled him to make for my point.

Black Ranger hove in sight at the top of a yellow slide.  He was at fault but hunting hard.  Jude and Sounder bayed off to his left.  I heard Don’s clear voice, permeating the thin, cool air, seemingly to leave a quality of wildness upon it; yet I could not locate him.  Ranger disappeared.  Then for a time I only heard Jim.  Moze was next to appear and he, too, was upward bound.  A jumble of stone hid him, and then Ranger again showed.  Evidently he wanted to get around the bottom of a low crag, for he jumped and jumped only to fall back.

Quite naturally my eyes searched that crag.  Stretched out upon the top of it was the long, slender body of a lion.

“Hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!” I yelled till my lungs failed me.

“Where are you?” came from above.

“Here!  Here!” I cried seeing Jones on the rim.  “Come down.  Climb down the crack.  The lion is here; on top of that round crag.  He’s fooled the hounds and they can’t find him.”

“I see him!  I see him!” yelled Jones.  Then he roared out a single call for Emett that pealed like a clear clarion along the curved broken rim wall, opening up echoes which clapped like thunder.

While Jones clattered down I turned again to the lion.  He lay with head hidden under a little shelf and he moved not a muscle.  What a place for him to choose!  But for my accidental venturing down the broken fragments and steps of the rim he could have remained safe from pursuit.

Suddenly, right under my feet, Don opened his string of yelps.  I could not see him but decided he must be above the lion on the crag.  I leaned over as far as I dared.  At that moment among the varied and thrilling sounds about me I became vaguely aware of hard, panting breaths, like coughs somewhere in my vicinity.  As Jones had set in motion bushels of stone and had already scraped his feet over the rocks behind me I thought the forced respiration came from him.  When I turned he was yet far off—­too far for me to hear him breathe.  I thought this circumstance strange but straightway forgot it.