gone down," he said, pointing to the runway.

We all listened to the meaning bays.

"Shore they've got him up!" asserted Jim. "Like as not they found him
under the rim here, sleeping off his gorge. Now fellows, I'll go down.
It might be a good idea for you to spread along the rim."

[Illustration: TREED LION]

[Illustration: HIDING]

With that we turned our horses eastward and rode as close to the rim
as possible. Clumps of cedars and deep fissures often forced us to
circle them. The hounds, traveling under the walls below, kept pace
with us and then forged ahead, which fact caused Jones to dispatch
Emett on the gallop for the next runway at North Hollow.

Soon Jones bade me dismount and make my way out upon one of the
promontories, while he rode a little farther on. As I tied my mustang
I heard the hounds, faint and far beneath. I waded through the sage
and cedar to the rim.

Cape after cape jutted out over the abyss. Some were very sharp and
bare, others covered with cedar; some tottering crags with a crumbling
bridge leading to their rims; and some ran down like giant steps. From
one of these I watched below. The slope here under the wall was like
the side of a rugged mountain. Somewhere down among the dark patches
of cedar and the great blocks of stone the hounds were hunting the
lion, but I could not see one of them.

The promontory I had chosen had a split, and choked as this was with
brush, rock, and shale, it seemed a place where I might climb down.
Once started, I could not turn back, and sliding, clinging to what
afforded, I worked down the crack. A wall of stone hid the sky from
me part of the way. I came out a hundred feet below upon a second
promontory of huge slabs of yellow stone. Over these I clambered, to
sit with my feet swinging over the last one.

Straight before my gaze yawned the awful expanse of the canyon. In the
soft morning light the red mesas, the yellow walls, the black domes
were less harsh than in the full noonday sun, purer than in the tender
shadow of twilight. Below me were slopes and slides divided by ravines
full of stones as large as houses, with here and there a lonesome
leaning crag, giving irresistible proof of the downward trend, of the
rolling, weathering ruins of the rim. Above the wall bulged out full
of fissures, ragged and rotten shelves, toppling columns of yellow
limestone, beaded with quartz and colored by wild flowers wonderfully
growing in crannies.

Wild an