d. I couldn't keep up with him--he shore takes long steps--an' I
lost him. I'm reckonin' he went over the second wall. Then I made
tracks for the top. Boys, the way you can see an' hear things down in
thet canyon, an' the way you can't hear an' see things is pretty funny."

"If Wallace went over the second rim wall, will he get back to-day?" we
all asked.

"Shore, there's no tellin'."

We waited, lounged, and slept for three hours, and were beginning to
worry about our comrade when he hove in sight eastward, along the rim.
He walked like a man whose next step would be his last. When he reached
us, he fell flat, and lay breathing heavily for a while.

"Somebody once mentioned Israel Putnam's ascent of a hill," he said
slowly. "With all respect to history and a patriot, I wish to say
Putnam never saw a hill!"

"Ooze for camp," called out Frank.

Five o'clock found us round a bright fire, all casting ravenous eyes at
a smoking supper. The smell of the Persian meat would have made a wolf
of a vegetarian. I devoured four chops, and could not have been counted
in the running. Jim opened a can of maple syrup which he had been
saving for a grand occasion, and Frank went him one better with two
cans of peaches. How glorious to be hungry--to feel the craving for
food, and to be grateful for it, to realize that the best of life lies
in the daily needs of existence, and to battle for them!

Nothing could be stronger than the simple enumeration and statement of
the facts of Wallace's experience after he left Jim. He chased the
cougar, and kept it in sight, until it went over the second rim wall.
Here he dropped over a precipice twenty feet high, to alight on a
fan-shaped slide which spread toward the bottom. It began to slip and
move by jerks, and then started off steadily, with an increasing roar.
He rode an avalanche for one thousand feet. The jar loosened bowlders
from the walls. When the slide stopped, Wallace extricated his feet and
began to dodge the bowlders. He had only time to jump over the large
ones or dart to one side out of their way. He dared not run. He had to
watch them coming. One huge stone hurtled over his head and smashed a
pinyon tree below.

When these had ceased rolling, and he had passed down to the red shale,
he heard Sounder baying near, and knew a cougar had been treed or
cornered. Hurdling the stones and dead pinyons, Wallace ran a mile down
the slope, only to find he had been deceived in the dir