“Shore you’re doin’ fine,” yelled Jim. But I fancied that Jim did not mean Ken was really doing well. Hiram’s concern changed to mirth and he roared. It was as funny to see Hal as it was to see Ken. The younger lad was beside himself with excitement and glee. He ran around Marc and his shrill yells pealed out.

  “Stay with him, Ken...Stick on...Hug him tight...Get a new hold...Look out!”

  Then Marc became a demon. He plowed the ground. Apparently he bucked five feet straight up. Before Ken had bounced. Now he began to shoot up into the air. But the lad was powerful and his hold did not break easily. Higher and higher he rose, and then the last time his heels went over his head. He went up to the full extent of his arms, and when he came down heavily his hold broke. He spun around on the broad back of the stallion and went hurtling to the ground. The soft pine-needle mat saved him from injury and he sat up. “Jiminy!” he exclaimed, “no wonder Navvy didn’t ride him.”

  When we recovered from our mirth Jim drawled out:

  “Ken, thet was the best buckin’ I ever seen a hoss do. Shore Marc could buck off a cinched saddle.”

  “Ken, I reckon you’ll hey to knuckle to Marc,” said Hiram, “an’ you better ride your own hoss.”

  “Don’t worry,” replied Ken. “I know when I have got enough.” He mounted his mustang and drove Marc and the other horses down into the hollow. When he returned we all saw Navvy sneaking into camp behind him. The Indian stopped at a near-by pine, but seeing that we appeared not to be concerned about him, he presently approached.

  We all busied ourselves with camp-fire tasks, and I helped Ken feed the hounds. To feed ordinary dogs is a matter of throwing them a few bones; our dogs, however, were not ordinary. It took time to feed them and a prodigious amount of meat. We had packed a quantity of wild-horse meat which had been cut into small pieces and strung on the branches of a scrub-oak.

  Prince had to be fed by hand. I heard Hiram say the hound would have starved if the meat had been thrown indiscriminately to the pack. Curley asserted his rights and preferred large portions at a time. Queen begged with solemn eyes, but for all her gentleness she could eat more than her share. Tan needed watching, and Ringer, because of imperfectly developed teeth, had to have his portion cut into small pieces. As for Mux-Mux — well, great dogs have their faults — he never got enough meat. He would fight poor crippled Queen, and steal even from the pups, and when he had gotten all that Ken would give him and all he could snatch, he would waddle away with bulging sides, looking like an old Dutch man-of-war.

  “Will our lions eat?” asked Hal.

  “Not for days,” replied Hiram. “Mebbe we can tempt them to eat fresh rabbits in a week or so. But they’ll drink to-night.”

  We made a hearty meal, and afterward Hiram and Ken and I walked through the woods toward the rim. A yellow promontory, huge and glistening, invited us westward, and after a detour of half a mile we reached it. The points of the rim, stretching out into the immense void, always drew me irresistibly. We found the view from this rock one of startling splendor. The corrugated rim-wall of the middle wing extended to the west, and at this moment apparently reached into the setting sun. The golden light, flashing from the millions of facets of chiseled stone, created color and brilliance too glorious and intense for the gaze of men. And looking downward was like looking into the placid, blue, bottomless depths of the Pacific.

  “Here, help me push off this stone,” I said. We heaved on a huge round stone, and were encouraged to feel it move. Fortunately we had a little slope; the boulder groaned, rocked and began to slide. Just as it toppled over I glanced at the second-hand of my watch. Then with eyes over the rim we waited. The silence was the silence of the cañon, dead and vast, intensified by our breathless ear-strain. Ten long, palpitating seconds and no sound! I gave up. The distance was too great for sound to reach us. Fifteen seconds — seventeen — eighteen —

  With that a puff of air seemed to rise, bringing a deafening peal of thunder. It rolled up and widened, deadened, to burst out and roll louder, then slowly, like mountains on wheels, rumbled under the rim-walls, passing on and on, to roar back in echo from the cliffs of the mesas. Roar and rumble — roar and rumble! For two long moments the dull and hollow echoes rolled at us, slowly to die away at the last in the far-distant cañons.

  “Thet’s a mighty deep hole,” commented Hiram.

  Twilight stole upon us idling there, silent, content to watch the red glow pass away from the buttes and peaks, the color deepening downward to meet the ebon shades of night creeping up like a dark tide.

  On turning toward camp we tried a short cut, which brought us to a deep hollow with stony walls. It seemed better to go around it. The hollow, however, was quite long, and we decided presently to cross it. We had descended a little way when suddenly the old hunter held me back with his big arm.

  “Listen,” he whispered.

  It was quiet in the woods; only a faint breeze stirred the pine-needles; and the weird, gray darkness seemed approaching under the trees.

  I heard the patter of light, hard hoofs on the scaly sides of the hollow.

  “Deer?” I asked, in a low voice.

  “Yes; see,” he replied, pointing ahead, “jest under thet broken wall of rock; right thar on this side; they’re goin’ down.”

  I descried gray, objects, the color of the rock, moving down like shadows.

  “Have they scented us?”

  “Hardly; the breeze is against us. Mebbe they heerd us break a twig. They’ve stopped, but are not lookin’ our way. Wal, I wonder—”

  Suddenly there was a rattle of stones, followed by an indistinct thud as from the impact of soft, heavy bodies, and then the sound of a struggle in the hollow.

  “Lion jumped a deer,” yelled Hiram. “Right under our eyes. Come on! Ken, pull your gun on the critter. Thar he goes! Hi! Hi! Hi!”

  Hiram ran down the incline, yelling all the way, and I kept close to him. Toward the bottom, the thicket barred our progress, so that we had to smash through. But Ken distanced us. His yell pealed out and then Crack! Crack! went his six-shooter. I saw a gray, swiftly bounding object too long and too low for a deer. Hurriedly drawing my revolver I worked the trigger as fast as I could. Ken also was shooting, and the reports blended in a roar that echoed from the cliff. But for all our shots the cougar got away.

  “Come here — this way — hurry,” called Ken.

  Hiram and I crashed out of the brush, and in another moment were bending over a gray mass huddled at Ken’s feet. It was a deer, gasping and choking.

  “A yearlin’ doe,” said Hiram. “Look hyar, low down on her neck, whar the tarnal cat bit in. Hear thet wheeze? Thet’s blood in her throat. Ken, if you hey another shot put her out of pain.”

  But neither Ken nor I had an extra cartridge about us, nor did Hiram have his clasp knife, and we had to stand there silent until the doe quivered and died.

  Then a signal cry rang down the slope. “Thet’s Jim,” said Hiram. “It didn’t take him long to git to us.”

  There was a crashing of brush, quick thud of flying feet, and Jim loomed up through the gathering darkness. He carried a rifle in each hand, and he moved so assuredly and looked so formidable in the dusk that I thought of what such a reinforcement would mean at a time of real peril.

  “Jim, I’ve lived to see many strange happenin’s,” saw Hiram, “but this was the first time I ever seen a cougar jump a deer.”

  “Shore you did enough shootin’ to make me think somethin’ had come off,” replied Jim.

  We soon returned to camp the richer by a quantity of fresh venison.

  Hal was sitting close to the fire and looked rather white. I observed that he had his rifle. He did not speak a word till Ken told of our little adventure.

  “Just before all the yells and shots I happened to be watching Prince,” said Hal. “He was uneasy; he wouldn’t lie down; he sniffed the wind and growled. I thought there must be a lion about.”

  “Wal, I shore wish Ken had plugged him,” said Jim.

  I believed Jim’s wish found an echo in all our hearts. At any rate, to hear him and Hiram express regret over the death of the doe justified in some degree my own feelings. The tragedy we had all but interrupted occurred every night, perhaps often in the day, and likely at different points at the same time. Hiram told how he had found fourteen piles of bleached bones and dried hair in the thickets of less than a mile of the hollow on which we were encamped.

  “We’ll rope the danged cats, boys, or by George! we’ll kill them! Wal, it’s blowin’ cold. Hey, Navvy, coco! coco!”

  The Indian, carefully laying aside his cigarette, kicked up the fire and threw on more wood. “Discass” (cold), he said to Ken; “coco weyno” (fire good).

  Ken replied, “Me savvy — yes.”

  “Sleep-ie?” he asked.

  “Moocha,” returned Ken.

  While we carried on a sort of novel conversation, full of Navajo, English, Spanish, and gestures, absolute darkness settled down upon us. I saw the stars disappear. The wind, changing to the north, grew colder, and carried a breath of snow. I liked a north wind best — from under the warm blankets — because of the roar and lull and lull and roar in the pines. Crawling into bed presently I lay there and listened to the rising storm-wind for a long time. Sometimes it swelled and crashed like the sound of a breaker on the beach, but mostly, from a low, incessant moan, it rose and filled to a mighty rush, then suddenly lulled; and this lull was conducive to sleep.

  CHAPTER IX - A VISIT FROM RANGERS

  THE NAVAJO AWOKE us with his singing. Ken peeped lazily from under the blankets and then covered himself again. The air was cold and flakes of white drifted through our wind-break of pine boughs.

  “Snow!” exclaimed Ken.

  “By all that’s lucky,” I replied. “Hiram wants snow more than anything.”

  “Why?” queried Ken.

  “So we can track lions. Also have plenty of snow-water. Roll out now, Ken.”

  “Oh-h-h! but I’m sore,” groaned Ken, as he laboriously got up and began to pull on his boots. “Baseball training isn’t one — two — six to this work.”

  “Stay off bucking horses,” I replied.

  We walked to a roaring camp-fire. The others were all astir, even Hal being up and busy. Hiram’s biscuits, well browned and of generous size, had just been dumped into the middle of our tarpaulin table-cloth; the coffeepot steamed fragrantly and a huge skillet sizzled with a quantity of sliced venison.

  “Youngster, did you hear the Injun?” asked Hiram, as he poked red coals in a heap round the skillet.

  “His singing woke me,” answered Ken.

  “It wasn’t a song. Thet’s the Navajo’s mornin’ prayer, a chant. Wal—”

  Growls and snarls from the lions interrupted him. I looked up to see Hal fooling round our captives. They were wet, dirty, bedraggled. Hiram had cut down a small pine and made shelters for the lions, but they did not ‘seem disposed to keep out of the snow.

  “Let ’em alone, youngster,” said Hiram to Hal. “They won’t be drove. Mebbe they’ll git in out of the wet arter a while...We’re havin’ good luck an’ bad. Snow’s what we want. But now we can’t git the trail of the lion thet killed the doe.”

  “Chineago!” called Jim, who like the rest of us had begun to assimilate a little of the Navajo language.

  Whereupon we fell to eating with appetites unknown to any save hunters. Somehow the Indian gravitated to Hal at meal-times, and now he sat cross-legged beside him, holding out a plate and looking as hungry as Mux. At the first he always asked for what happened to be on Hal’s plate, and when that became empty he gave up imitation and asked for anything he could get. The Navajo had a marvelous appetite. He liked sweet things, sugar best of all. It was a fatal error to let him get his hands on a can of fruit. Although he inspired Hiram with disgust and Jim with worse, he was a source of unfailing pleasure to the boys.

  “What’s on for to-day?” queried Ken.

  “Wal, we may as well hang round camp an’ rest the hounds,” replied Hiram. “I intended to go after the lion thet killed the deer, but this snow has taken away the scent.”

  “Shore it’ll stop snowin’ soon,” said Jim.

  The falling snow had thinned out, and looked like flying powder; the leaden clouds, rolling close to the tree-tops, grew brighter and brighter; bits of azure sky shone through rifts.

  Navvy had tramped off to find the horses, and not long after his departure we heard the jangle of bells. Then he appeared, riding Hal’s mustang, and racing the others toward camp.

  Ken and I set to work building a shack for the hounds. And when we finished it there was no need of it, for that time at least, because all the snow had gone. The sun was shining warmly and the forest was as brown and almost as dry as on the day before.

  “Wal, it’s a good idee to hey a day of rest onct in a while,” said Hiram, in answer to Ken’s impatient desire to be on the hunt. “Youngster, you’ll git all you want. But I tell you it might be useful fer us to prowl round an’ explore some of these hollers. We’ll need to know all about ‘em, places to cross, whar they head, an’ sich as thet. Now you an’ Dick go north, an’ Jim an’ me’ll go south. Hal can keep camp with Navvy.”

  So Ken and I started off on foot. We found the hollows extremely interesting. They began where the forest of pines merged on the sage flats. Some were shallow and some deep V-shaped cuts, too steep for us to go straight down. The thickets of scrub-oak lined the slope and thickets of aspen covered the bottom. Every hollow had its well-defined deer and lion trail, and every thicket its grisly heap of bones and hide. We jumped deer and flushed grouse, and out of one hollow we chased the wild stallion and his band. Ken was delighted at the sight of them. After several hours of leisurely exploring we returned toward camp.

  “Dick, I see strange horses,” said Ken, as we drew near.

  Sure enough, there were horses in camp that did not belong to our party, and presently I saw men who were not Hiram or Jim. We had visitors.

  “Perhaps they’re some Mormon wild-horse hunters,” I replied. “I hope so, for I’d like you to meet some of those fellows, and go on a hunt with them...No, they’re rangers. Now, Ken, I don’t like this for a cent.”

  As we walked into camp neither Hal nor the Indian was in sight. Three rangers lolled about under the pines. One of them I did not know; the others had worked with me and did not like me any better than I liked them, which was not much. Then a fourth fellow appeared from somewhere in the shade, and when I recognized him I was divided between anger and distrust at this invasion of our camp. This fourth individual, Belden by name, had been a ranger, and as he had been worthless, and a hindrance to other rangers, I got his discharge. It had been an object of worry to me that after his discharge he still remained on the preserve. In fact all these men were Mormons, and they resented the advent of Hiram, Jim, and myself. The bone of contention was that the forest department had put us over them. And the hard feelings had been shared even by the forest supervisor, who was strongly in sympathy with native rangers. To me the present situation looked as if these men had been sent to spy on us, or they had undertaken that on their own account.

  “Hello, fellows,” I said, “what are you doing out here? Thought you were building a cabin at Quaking-Asp.”

  “We’re jest pokin’ around,” replied one, a man named Sells, and he was the best of the lot.

  “We want to see how you trap them cougars,” said another.

  Belden laughed loudly. “An’ me, I’m sort of scouting around, too, Leslie; I’ve got a new job.”

  “With the forest service?” I queried.

  “Yep.”

  “What kind of a job?”

  “I’m keepin’ tab on all the rangers. The Supervisor says it’ll go hard with any ranger ketched with fresh venison.”

  Belden looked meaningly at me. I thought the fellow was lying about a new job, still I could not be certain as to that. But there was no doubt about the gleam in his eyes meaning that he had caught me breaking the law.

  “Belden, we’ve got fresh venison in camp — but we didn’t kill it.”

  “Haw! Haw! Haw!” he guffawed.

  It was hard for me to keep my temper. On the moment I was glad to see Hiram and Jim approaching. Hiram stopped near where the lions were chained and I heard him mutter: “Wal, what in the tarnal dickens is the matter with thet lion?” From where I stood I could not see either of our captives. Jim lounged into camp, and as he glanced with keen eyes from our visitors to me his genial smile faded.

  “Shore we’ve got company,” he drawled.

  I would have replied in no cordial acknowledgment of the fact, but just then Hal came out of the tent, and sight of him cut short my speech. Hal wore a broad red mark across his cheek, and any one could have seen that it was a mark made by a blow. Moreover, he trembled either with excitement or anger, and on closer view I saw that under his tan he was pale.

  “Hal!” exclaimed Ken, sharply. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. I’m all right.”

  “That’s not so. I’d know from the look of you, without that red welt on your face. Who hit you? Hal — you couldn’t have gotten in a scrap with Navvy?”

  “Nope — never mind how I got the welt. I got it and that’s enough,” replied Hal.

  Where Hal got that mark did not appear any great mystery to me. I would have staked my horse that Belden had given the blow.

  “Sells,” I demanded, “which one of you struck the lad?”

  Sells removed his pipe and puffed a cloud of smoke. He did not seem in any hurry to reply.

  “Speak up, man. Who hit the lad — Belden, wasn’t it?”

  This time the ranger nodded.

  “What for? What did he do?...Haven’t you a tongue? Talk! I want to know—”

  I felt Ken Ward’s hand on my arm and I hesitated. He took one long step forward.

  “This boy is my brother,” he said. “Do I understand you to mean one of you hit him?”

  Again Sells nodded.