emed to go out blankly, then followed the bellow of the
revolver and the smell of powder. The lion uttered a sound that was a
mingling of snarls, howls and roars and he rose straight up, towering
high over my head, beating the wall heavily with his paws.

In helpless terror I stood there forgetting weapon, fearing only the
beast would fall over on me.

But in death agony he bounded out from the wall to fall into space.

I sank down on the shelf, legs powerless, body in cold sweat. As I
waited, slowly my mind freed itself from a tight iron band and a
sickening relief filled my soul. Tensely I waited and listened. Don
whined once.

Would the lion never strike? What seemed a long period of time ended
in a low, distant roar of sliding rock, quickly dying into the solemn
stillness of the canyon.

XI

I lay there for some moments slowly recovering, eyes on the far
distant escarpments, now darkly red and repellent to me. When I got up
my legs were still shaky and I had the strange, weak sensation of a
long bed-ridden invalid. Three attempts were necessary before I could
trust myself on the narrow strip of shelf. But once around it with the
peril passed, I braced up and soon reached the turn in the wall.

After that the ascent out of the Bay was only a matter of work, which
I gave with a will. Don did not evince any desire for more hunting
that day. We reached the rim together, and after a short rest, I
mounted my horse, and we turned for camp.

The sun had long slanted toward the western horizon when I saw the
blue smoke of our camp-fire among the pines. The hounds rose up and
barked as Don trotted in to the blaze, and my companions just sitting
to a dinner, gave me a noisy greeting.

"Shore, we'd began to get worried," said Jim. "We all had it comin' to
us to-day, and don't you forget that."

Dinner lasted for a long hour. Besides being half famished we all
took time between bites to talk. I told my story first, expecting my
friends to be overwhelmed, but they were not.

"It's been the greatest day of lion hunting that I ever experienced,"
declared Jones. "We ran bang into a nest of lions and they split. We
all split and the hounds split. That tells the tale. We have nothing
to show for our day's toil. Six lions chased, rounded up, treed,
holed, and one lion killed, and we haven't even his skin to show. I
did not go down but I helped Ranger and two of the pups chase a lion
all over the lower end of the plateau