At the first opportunity, Frances confided to me that Mrs. McLeod had forbidden Esther visiting them again, since some busybody had carried the news of our picnic to her ears.  But she promised me that if I could direct the hunt on the morrow within a few miles of the McLeod ranch, she would entice my sweetheart out and give me a chance to meet her.  There was a roguish look in Miss Frances’s eye during this disclosure which I was unable to fathom, but I promised during the few days’ hunt to find some means to direct the chase within striking distance of the ranch on the San Miguel.

I promptly gave this bit of news in confidence to Uncle Lance, and was told to lie low and leave matters to him.  That evening, amid clouds of tobacco smoke, the two old rancheros discussed the best hunting in the country, while we youngsters danced on the gallery to the strains of a fiddle.  I heard Mr. Vaux narrating a fight with a cougar which killed two of his best dogs during the winter just passed, and before we retired it was understood that we would give the haunts of this same old cougar our first attention.

CHAPTER IX

THE ROSE AND ITS THORN

Dawn found the ranch astir and a heavy fog hanging over the Frio valley.  Don Pierre had a remuda corralled before sun-up, and insisted on our riding his horses, an invitation which my employer alone declined.  For the first hour or two the pack scouted the river bottoms with no success, and Uncle Lance’s verdict was that the valley was too soggy for any animal belonging to the cat family, so we turned back to the divide between the Frio and San Miguel.  Here there grew among the hills many Guajio thickets, and from the first one we beat, the hounds opened on a hot trail in splendid chorus.  The pack led us through thickets for over a mile, when they suddenly turned down a ravine, heading for the river.  With the ground ill splendid condition for trailing, the dogs in full cry, the quarry sought every shelter possible; but within an hour of striking the scent, the pack came to bay in the encinal.  On coming up with the hounds, we found the animal was a large catamount.  A single shot brought him from his perch in a scraggy oak, and the first chase of the day was over.  The pelt was worthless and was not taken.

It was nearly noon when the kill was made, and Don Pierre insisted that we return to the ranch.  Uncle Lance protested against wasting the remainder of the day, but the courteous Creole urged that the ground would be in fine condition for hunting at least a week longer; this hunt he declared was merely preliminary—­to break the pack together and give them a taste of the chase before attacking the cougar.  “Ah,” said Don Pierre, with a deprecating shrug of the shoulders, “you have nothing to hurry you home.  I come by your rancho an’ stay one hol’ week.  You come by mine, al’ time hurry.  Sacre!  Let de li’l dogs rest, an’ in de mornin’, mebbe we hunt de cougar.  Ah, Meester Lance, we must haff de pack fresh for him.  By Gar, he was one dam’ wil’ fellow.  Mek one two pass, so.  Biff! two dog dead.”