ull her off!" bawled Jones.

I ran in, took up the chain with both hands, and tugged with all my
might. Emett, too, had all his weight on the lasso round her neck.
Between the two of us we choked her hold loose, but she brought Jones'
leather leggin in her teeth. Then I dropped the chain and jumped.

"**-- **--!" exploded Jones to me. "Do you think more of a picture
than of saving my life?" Having expressed this not unreasonable
protest, he untied the lasso that Emett had made fast to a small
sapling.

Then the three men, forming points of a triangle around an animated
center, began a march through the forest that for variety of action
and splendid vociferation beat any show I ever beheld.

So rare was it that the Navajo came out of his retreat and,
straightway forgetting his reverence and fear, began to execute a
ghost-dance, or war-dance, or at any rate some kind of an Indian
dance, along the side lines.

There were moments when the lioness had Jim and Jones on the ground
and Emett wobbling; others when she ran on her bound legs and chased
the two in front and dragged the one behind; others when she came
within an ace of getting her teeth in somebody.

They had caught a Tartar. They dared not let her go, and though Jones
evidently ordered it, no one made fast his rope to a tree. There was
no opportunity. She was in the air three parts of the time and the
fourth she was invisible for dust. The lassos were each thirty feet
long, but even with that the men could just barely keep out of her
reach.

Then came the climax, as it always comes in a lion hunt, unerringly,
unexpectedly, and with lightning swiftness. The three men were nearing
the bottom of the second hollow, well spread out, lassos taut, facing
one another. Jones stumbled and the lioness leaped his way. The
weight of both brought Jim over, sliding and slipping, with his rope
slackening. The leap of the lioness carried her within reach of Jones;
and as he raised himself, back toward her, she reached a big paw for
him just as Emett threw all his bull strength and bulk on his lasso.

The seat of Jones' trousers came away with the lioness' claws. Then
she fell backward, overcome by Emett's desperate lunge. Jones sprang
up with the velocity of an Arab tumbler, and his scarlet face, working
spasmodically, and his moving lips, showed how utterly unable he was
to give expression to his rage. I had a stitch in my side that nearly
killed me, but laugh I had to t