Then I saw Emett sliding, leg wrapped around his lasso, down the first step of the rim.  His lasso, doubled so as to reach round a cedar above, was too short to extend to the landing below.  He dropped, raising a cloud of dust, and starting the stones.  Pulling one end of his lasso up around the cedar he gathered it in a coil on his arm and faced forward, following Don’s trail.

What strides he took!  In the clear light, with that wild red and yellow background, with the stones and gravel roaring down, streaming over the walls like waterfalls, he seemed a giant pursuing a foe.  From time to time he sent up a yell of encouragement that wound down the canyon, to be answered by Jones and the baying hounds and then the strange echoes.  At last he passed out of sight behind the crests of the trees; I heard him going down, down till the sounds came up faint and hollow.

I was left absolutely alone with my two lions and never did a hunter so delight in a situation.  I sat there in the sun watching them.  For a long time they were quiet, listening.  But as the bays and yells below diminished in volume and occurrence and then ceased altogether, they became restless.  It was then that I, remembering the lion I had held on top of the crag, began to bark like a hound.  The lions became quiet once more.

I bayed them for an hour.  My voice grew from hoarse to hoarser, and finally failed in my throat.  The lions immediately grew restless again.  The lower one hissed, spat and growled at me, and made many attempts to start down, each one of which I frustrated by throwing stones under the tree.  At length he made one more determined effort, turned head downward, and stepped from branch to branch.

I dashed down the incline with a stone in one hand and a long club in the other.  Instinctively I knew I must hurt him—­make him fear me.  If he got far enough down to jump, he would either escape or have me helpless.  I aimed deliberately at him, and hit him square in the ribs.  He exploded in a spit-roar that raised my hair.  Directly under him I wielded my club, pounded on the tree, thrashed at the branches and, like the crazy fool that I was, yelled at him: 

“Go back!  Go back!  Don’t you dare come down!  I’d break your old head for you!”

Foolish or not, this means effectually stopped the descent.  He climbed to his first perch.  It was then, realizing what I had done, that I would certainly have made tracks from under the pinon, if I had not heard the faint yelp of a hound.

I listened.  It came again, faint but clearer.  I looked up at my lions.  They too heard, for they were very still.  I saw how strained they held their heads.  I backed a little way up the slope.  Then the faint yelp floated up again in the silence.  Such dead, strange silence, that seemed never to have been broken!  I saw the lions quiver, and if I ever heard anything in my life I heard their hearts thump.  The yelp wafted up again, closer this time.  I recognized it; it belonged to Don.  The great hound on the back trail of the other lion was coming to my rescue.