On the moment from my right somewhere Don pealed out his bugle blast, and immediately after Sounder and Jude joining him, sent up the thrice welcome news of a treed lion.

“There ’re two!  There ’re two!” I yelled to Jones, now working down to my right.

“He’s treed down here.  I’ve got him spotted!” replied Jones.  “You stay there and watch your lion.  Yell for Emett.”

Signal after signal for Emett earned no response, though Jim far below to the left sent me an answer.

The next few minutes, or more likely half an hour, passed with Jones and me separated from each other by a wall of broken stone, waiting impatiently for Jim and Emett, while the hounds bayed one lion and I watched the other.

Calmness was impossible under such circumstances.  No man could have gazed into that marvel of color and distance, with wild life about him, with wild sounds ringing in his ears, without yielding to the throb and race of his wild blood.

Emett did not come.  Jim had not answered a yell for minutes.  No doubt he needed his breath.  He came into sight just to the left of our position, and he ran down one side of the ravine to toil up the other.  I hailed him, Jones hailed him and the hounds hailed him.

“Steer to your left Jim!” I called..  “There’s a lion on that crag above you.  He might jump.  Round the cliff to the left—­Jones is there!”

The most painful task it was for me to sit there and listen to the sound rising from below without being able to see what happened.  My lion had peeped up once, and, seeing me, had crouched closer to his crag, evidently believing he was unseen, which obviously made it imperative for me to keep my seat and hold him there as long as possible.

But to hear the various exclamations thrilled me enough.

“Hyar Moze—­get out of that.  Catch him—­hold him!  Damn these rotten limbs.  Hand me a pole—­Jones, back down—­back down! he’s comin’—­Hi!  Hi!  Whoop!  Boo—­o!  There—­now you’ve got him!  No, no; it slipped!  Now!  Look out, Jim, from under—­he’s going to jump!”

A smashing and rattling of loose stones and a fiery burst of yelps with trumpet-like yells followed close upon Jones’ last words.  Then two yellow streaks leaped down the ravine.  The first was the lion, the second was Don.  The rest of the pack came tumbling helter-skelter in their wake.  Following them raced Jim in long kangaroo leaps, with Jones in the rear, running for all he was worth.  The animated and musical procession passed up out of the ravine and gradually lengthened as the lion gained and Jones lost, till it passed altogether from my jealous sight.

On the other side of the ridge of cedars the hounds treed their quarry again, as was easy to tell by their change from sharp intermittent yelping to an unbroken, full, deep chorus.  Then presently all quieted down, and for long moments at a time the still silence enfolded the slope.  Shouts now and then floated up on the wind and an occasional bark.