rest was like a highway.

So we rode, bending low in the saddle, keen eyes alert for branches,
vaulting the white--blanketed logs, and swerving as we split to pass
the pines. The mist from the melting snow moistened our faces, and the
rushing air cooled them with fresh, soft sensation. There were moments
when we rode abreast and others when we sailed single file, with white
ground receding, vanishing behind us.

My feeling was one of glorious excitation in the swift, smooth flight
and a grim assurance of soon seeing the old lion. But I hoped we would
not rout him too soon from under a windfall, or a thicket where he
had dragged a deer, because the race was too splendid a thing to cut
short. Through my mind whirled with inconceivable rapidity the great
lion chases on which we had ridden the year before. And this was
another chase, only more stirring, more beautiful, because it was the
nature of the thing to grow always with experience.

Don slipped out of sight among the pines. The others strung along the
trail, glinted across the sunlit patches. The black pup was neck and
neck with Ranger. Sounder ran at their heels, leading the other pups.
Moze dashed on doggedly ahead of Jude.

But for us to keep to the open forest, close to the hounds, was not in
the nature of a lion chase. Old Sultan's trail turned due west when he
began to go down the little hollows and their intervening ridges. We
lost ground. The pack left us behind. The slope of the plateau became
decided. We rode out of the pines to find the snow failing in the
open. Water ran in little gullies and glistened on the sagebrush. A
half mile further down the snow had gone. We came upon the hounds
running at fault, except Sounder, and he had given up.

"All over," sang out Jones, turning his horse. "The lion's track and
his scent have gone with the snow. I reckon we'll do as well to wait
until to-morrow. He's down in the middle wing somewhere and it is my
idea we might catch his trail as he comes back."

The sudden dashing aside of our hopes was exasperating. There seemed
no help for it; abrupt ending to exciting chases were but features of
the lion hunt. The warm sun had been hours on the lower end of the
plateau, where the snow never lay long; and even if we found a fresh
morning trail in the sand, the heat would have burned out the scent.

So rapidly did the snow thaw that by the time we reached camp only the
shady patches were left.

It was almost eleve