d! 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, and on it the most awful
bellow of thunderous roar. 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, to die away slowly in
the far-distant canyons.

"That's a darned deep hole," commented Jones.

Twilight stole down on 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 the camp we essayed a short cut, which brought us to
a deep hollow with stony walls, which seemed better to go around. The
hollow, however, was quite long and we decided presently to cross it.
We descended a little way when Jones suddenly barred my progress 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 to be approaching under
the trees.

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

"Deer?" I asked my companion in a low voice.

"Yes; see," he replied, pointing ahead, "just right under that broken
wall of rock; right there on this side; they're going down."

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

"Have they scented us?"

"Hardly; the breeze is against us. Maybe they heard us break a twig.
They've stopped, but they are not looking our way. Now I wonder--"

Rattling of stones set into movement by some quick, sharp action, an
indistinct crash, but sudden, as of the impact of soft, heavy bodies,
a strange wild sound preceded in rapid succession violent brushings
and thumpings in the scrub of the hollow.

"Lion jumped a deer," yelled Jones. "Right under our eyes! Come on!
Hi! Hi! Hi!"

He ran down the incline yelling all of the way, and I kept close to
him, adding my yells to his, and gripping my revolver. Toward the
bottom the thicket barred our progress so that we had to smash through
and I came out a little ahead of Jones. And farther up the hollow I
saw a gray swiftly bounding object too long and too low for a deer,
and I hurriedly