violently; and hitting the
ground like a huge cat on springs, he bounded off, tail up, in a most
ludicrous manner. His running, however, did not lack speed, for he
quickly outdistanced the bursting hounds.

A stampede for horses succeeded this move. I had difficulty in closing
my camera, which I had forgotten until the last moment, and got behind
the others. Satan sent the dust flying and the pinyon branches
crashing. Hardly had I time to bewail my ill-luck in being left, when I
dashed out of a thick growth of trees to come upon my companions, all
dismounted on the rim of the Grand Canyon.

"He's gone down! He's gone down!" raged Jones, stamping the ground.
"What luck! What miserable luck! But don't quit; spread along the rim,
boys, and look for him. Cougars can't fly. There's a break in the rim
somewhere."

The rock wall, on which we dizzily stood, dropped straight down for a
thousand feet, to meet a long, pinyon-covered slope, which graded a
mile to cut off into what must have been the second wall. We were far
west of Clarke's trail now, and faced a point above where Kanab Canyon,
a red gorge a mile deep, met the great canyon. As I ran along the rim,
looking for a fissure or break, my gaze seemed impellingly drawn by the
immensity of this thing I could not name, and for which I had as yet no
intelligible emotion.

Two "Waa-hoos" in the rear turned me back in double-quick time, and
hastening by the horses, I found the three men grouped at the head of a
narrow break.

"He went down here. Wallace saw him round the base of that tottering
crag."

The break was wedge-shaped, with the sharp end off toward the rim, and
it descended so rapidly as to appear almost perpendicular. It was a
long, steep slide of small, weathered shale, and a place that no man in
his right senses would ever have considered going down. But Jones,
designating Frank and me, said in his cool, quick voice:

"You fellows go down. Take Jude and Sounder in leash. If you find his
trail below along the wall, yell for us. Meanwhile, Wallace and I will
hang over the rim and watch for him."

Going down, in one sense, was much easier than had appeared, for the
reason that once started we moved on sliding beds of weathered stone.
Each of us now had an avalanche for a steed. Frank forged ahead with a
roar, and then seeing danger below, tried to get out of the mass. But
the stones were like quicksand; every step he took sunk him in deeper.
He grasped the