Jones calmly gathered himself up, rearranged his lasso, took his long stick, and proceeded to mount the pinon again.  I waited till I saw him slip the noose over the lion’s head, then I ran down the slope to yell for Emett.  He answered at once.  I told him to hurry to Jones’ assistance.  With that I headed up the canyon.

I hung close to the broad trail left by the lion and his pursuers.  I passed perilously near the brink of precipices, but fear of them was not in me that day.  I passed out of the Bay into the mouth of Left Canyon, and began to climb.  The baying of the hounds directed me.  In the box of yellow walls the chorus seemed to come from a hundred dogs.

When I found them, close to a low cliff, baying the lion in a thick, dark pinon, Ranger leaped into my arms and next Don stood up against me with his paws on my shoulders.  These were strange actions, and though I marked it at the moment, I had ceased to wonder at our hounds.  I took one picture as the lion sat in the dark shade, and then climbed to the low cliff and sat down.  I called Don to me and held him.  In case our quarry leaped upon the cliff I wanted a hound to put quickly on his trail.

Another hour passed.  It must have been a dark hour for the lion—­he looked as if it were—­and one of impatience for the baying hounds, but for me it was a full hour.  Alone with the hounds and a lion, far from the walks of men, walled in by the wild-colored cliffs, with the dry, sweet smell of cedar and pinon, I asked no more.

Sounder and Moze, vociferously venting their arrival, were forerunners to Jones.  I saw his gray locks waving in the breeze, and yelled for him to take his time.  As he reached me the lion jumped and ran up the canyon.  This suited me, for I knew he would take to a tree soon and the farther up he went the less distance we would have to pack him.  From the cliff I saw him run up a slope, pass a big cedar, cunningly turn on his trail, and then climb into the tree and hide in its thickest part.  Don passed him, got off the trail, and ran at fault.  The others, so used to his leadership, were also baffled.  But Jude, crippled and slow, brought up the rear, and she did not go a yard beyond where the lion turned.  She opened up her deep call under the cedar, and in a moment the howling pack were around her.

Jones and I toiled laboriously upward.  He had brought my lasso, and he handed it to me with the significant remark that I would soon have need of it.

The cedar was bushy and overhung a yellow, bare slope that made Jones shake his head.  He climbed the tree, lassoed the spitting lion and then leaped down to my side.  By united and determined efforts we pulled the lion off the limb and let him down.  The hounds began to leap at him.  We both roared in a rage at them but to no use.

“Hold him there!” shouted Jones, leaving me with the lasso while he sprang forward.

The weight of the animal dragged me forward and, had I not taken a half hitch round a dead snag, would have lifted me off my feet or pulled the lasso from my hands.  As it was, the choking lion, now within reach of the furious, leaping hounds, swung to and fro before my face.  He could not see me, but his frantic lunges narrowly missed me.