but leaped aside and
went down. Here the long section of slope between the lion's runway
and the second wall had been weathered and worn, racked and convulsed
into deep ravines, with ridges between. We climbed and fell and toiled
on, always with the bay of the hounds in our ears. We leaped fissures,
we loosened avalanches, rolling them to crash and roar below, and send
long, rumbling echoes out into the canyon.

A gorge in the yellow rock opened suddenly before us. We stood at the
constricted neck of one of the great splits in the second wall. The
side opposite was almost perpendicular, and formed of mass on mass of
broken stones. This was a weathered slope on a gigantic scale. Points
of cliffs jutted out; caves and cracks lined the wall.

"This is a rough place," said Jim; "but a lion could get over the
second wall here, an' I believe a man could too. The hounds seemed to
be back further toward where the split narrows."

Through densely massed cedars and thickets of prickly thorns we wormed
our way to come out at the neck of the gorge.

"There ye are!" sang out Jim. The hounds were all on a flat shelf some
few feet below us, and on a sharp point of rock close by, but too far
for the dogs to reach, crouched the lion. He was gasping and frothing
at the mouth.

"Shore if he'd only stay there--" said Jim.

He loosened his lasso, and stationing himself just above the tired
beast he prepared to cast down the loop. The first throw failed of its
purpose, but the rope hit the lion. He got up painfully it seemed,
and faced the dogs. That way barred he turned to the cliff. Almost
opposite him a shelf leaned out. He looked at it, then paced to and
fro like a beast in a cage.

He looked again at the hounds, then up at us, all around, and finally
concentrated his attention on the shelf; his long length sagged in
the middle, he stretched low, his muscles gathered and strung, and he
sprang like a tawny streak.

His aim was true, the whole forepart of his body landed on the shelf
and he hung there. Then he slipped. We distinctly heard his claws
scrape the hard, smooth rock. He fell, turning a somersault, struck
twenty feet below on the rough slant, bounded from that to fall down,
striking suddenly and then to roll, a yellow wheel that lodged behind
a rock and stretched out to move no more.

The hounds were silent; Jim and I were silent; a few little stones
rattled, then were still. The dead silence of the canyon seemed to pa