assed up out of the ravine and gradually
lengthened as the lion gained and Jones lost, till it passed
altogether from my jealous sight.

On the other side of the ridge of cedars the hounds treed their quarry
again, as was easy to tell by their change from sharp intermittent
yelping to an unbroken, full, deep chorus. Then presently all quieted
down, and for long moments at a time the still silence enfolded the
slope. Shouts now and then floated up on the wind and an occasional
bark.

I sat there for an hour by my watch, though it seemed only a few
minutes, and all that time my lion lay crouched on his crag and never
moved.

I looked across the curve of the canyon to the purple breaks of the
Siwash and the shaggy side of Buckskin Mountain and far beyond to
where Kanab Canyon opened its dark mouth, and farther still to the
Pink Cliffs of Utah, weird and dim in the distance.

Something swelled within my breast at the thought that for the time I
was part of that wild scene. The eye of an eagle soaring above would
have placed me as well as my lion among the few living things in the
range of his all-compassing vision. Therefore, all was mine, not
merely the lion--for he was only the means to an end--but the
stupendous, unnameable thing beneath me, this chasm that hid mountains
in the shades of its cliffs, and the granite tombs, some gleaming
pale, passionless, others red and warm, painted by a master hand; and
the wind-caves, dark-portaled under their mist curtains, and all
that was deep and far off, unapproachable, unattainable, of beauty
exceeding, dressed in ever-changing hues, was mine by right of
presence, by right of the eye to see and the mind to keep.

"Waa-hoo!"

The cry lifted itself out of the depths. I saw Jones on the ridge of
cedars.

"All right here--have you kept your line there?" he yelled.

"All's well--come along, come along," I replied.

I watched them coming, and all the while my lion never moved. The
hounds reached the base of the cliff under me, but they could not
find the lion, though they scented him, for they kept up a continual
baying. Jim got up to the shelf under me and said they had tied up the
lion and left him below. Jones toiled slowly up the slope.

"Some one ought to stay down there; he might jump," I called in
warning.

"That crag is forty feet high on this side," he replied.

I clambered back over the uneven mass, let myself down between the
boulders and crawled under a dar