nder worked exactly as before, only he
followed the lion tracks a little farther up the ravine before he
bayed. He kept going faster and faster, occasionally letting out one
deep, short yelp. The other hounds did not give tongue, but eager,
excited, baffled, kept at his heels. The ravine was long, and the wash
at the bottom, up which the lion had proceeded, turned and twisted
round boulders large as houses, and led through dense growths of some
short, rough shrub. Now and then the lion tracks showed plainly in the
sand. For five miles or more Sounder led us up the ravine, which began
to contract and grow steep. The dry stream bed got to be full of
thickets of branchless saplings, about the poplar--tall, straight, size
of a man's arm, and growing so close we had to press them aside to let
our horses through.

Presently Sounder slowed up and appeared at fault. We found him
puzzling over an open, grassy patch, and after nosing it for a little
while, he began skirting the edge.

"Cute dog!" declared Jones. "That Sounder will make a lion chaser. Our
game has gone up here somewhere."

Sure enough, Sounder directly gave tongue from the side of the ravine.
It was climb for us now. Broken shale, rocks of all dimensions, pinyons
down and pinyons up made ascending no easy problem. We had to dismount
and lead the horses, thus losing ground. Jones forged ahead and reached
the top of the ravine first. When Wallace and I got up, breathing
heavily, Jones and the hounds were out of sight. But Sounder kept
voicing his clear call, giving us our direction. Off we flew, over
ground that was still rough, but enjoyable going compared to the ravine
slopes. The ridge was sparsely covered with cedar and pinyon, through
which, far ahead, we pretty soon spied Jones. Wallace signaled, and our
leader answered twice. We caught up with him on the brink of another
ravine deeper and craggier than the first, full of dead, gnarled pinyon
and splintered rocks.

"This gulch is the largest of the three that head in at Oak Spring,"
said Jones. "Boys, don't forget your direction. Always keep a feeling
where camp is, always sense it every time you turn. The dogs have gone
down. That lion is in here somewhere. Maybe he lives down in the high
cliffs near the spring and came up here last night for a kill he's
buried somewhere. Lions never travel far. Hark! Hark! There's Sounder
and the rest of them! They've got the scent; they've all got it! Down,
boys, down,