very of some of my lost companions or
the hounds, and began to climb. Before I started, however, I was wise
enough to study the rim wall above, to familiarize myself with the
break so I would have a landmark. Like horns and spurs of gold the
pinnacles loomed up. Massed closely together, they were not unlike an
astounding pipe-organ. I had a feeling of my littleness, that I was
lost, and should devote every moment and effort to the saving of my
life. It did not seem possible I could be hunting. Though I climbed
diagonally, and rested often, my heart pumped so hard I could hear it.
A yellow crag, with a round head like an old man's cane, appealed to me
as near the place where I last heard from Jim, and toward it I labored.
Every time I glanced up, the distance seemed the same. A climb which I
decided would not take more than fifteen minutes, required an hour.

While resting at the foot of the crag, I heard more baying of hounds,
but for my life I could not tell whether the sound came from up or
down, and I commenced to feel that I did not much care. Having signaled
till I was hoarse, and receiving none but mock answers, I decided that
if my companions had not toppled over a cliff, they were wisely
withholding their breath.

Another stiff pull up the slope brought me under the rim wall, and
there I groaned, because the wall was smooth and shiny, without a
break. I plodded slowly along the base, with my rifle ready. Cougar
tracks were so numerous I got tired of looking at them, but I did not
forget that I might meet a tawny fellow or two among those narrow
passes of shattered rock, and under the thick, dark pinyons. Going on
in this way, I ran point-blank into a pile of bleached bones before a
cave. I had stumbled on the lair of a lion and from the looks of it one
like that of Old Tom. I flinched twice before I threw a stone into the
dark-mouthed cave. What impressed me as soon as I found I was in no
danger of being pawed and clawed round the gloomy spot, was the fact of
the bones being there. How did they come on a slope where a man could
hardly walk? Only one answer seemed feasible. The lion had made his
kill one thousand feet above, had pulled his quarry to the rim and
pushed it over. In view of the theory that he might have had to drag
his victim from the forest, and that very seldom two lions worked
together, the fact of the location of the bones as startling. Skulls of
wild horses and deer, antlers and countless bone