session of me, and I stepped
forward.

"Come on, Don, old fellow, we've got him corralled."

That was the first instance I ever knew of Don's hesitation in the
chase of a lion. I had to coax him to me. But once started he took the
lead and I closely followed.

The shelf was twenty feet wide and upon it close to the wall, in the
dust, were the deep imprints of the lion. A jutting corner of cliff
wall hid my view. I peeped around it. The shelf narrowed on the other
side to a yard in width, and climbed gradually by broken steps. Don
passed the corner, looked back to see if I was coming and went on. He
did this four times, once even stopping to wait for me.

"I'm with you Don!" I grimly muttered. "We'll see this trail out to a
finish."

I had now no eyes for the wonders of the place, though I could not but
see as I bent a piercing gaze ahead the ponderous overhanging wall
above, and sense the bottomless depth below. I felt rather than saw
the canyon swallows, sweeping by in darting flight, with soft
rustle of wings, and I heard the shrill chirp of some strange cliff
inhabitant.

Don ceased barking. How strange that seemed to me! We were no longer
man and hound, but companions, brothers, each one relying on the
other. A protruding corner shut us from sight of what was beyond. Don
slipped around. I had to go sidewise and shuddered as my fingers bit
into the wall.

To my surprise I soon found myself on the floor of a shallow wind
cave. The lion trail led straight across it and on. Shelves of rock
stuck out above under which I hurriedly walked. I came upon a shrub
cedar growing in a niche and marveled to see it there. Don went slower
and slower.

We suddenly rounded a point, to see the lion lying in a box-like space
in the wall. The shelf ended there. I had once before been confronted
with a like situation, and had expected to find it here, so was not
frightened. The lion looked up from his task of licking a bloody paw,
and uttered a fierce growl. His tail began to lash to and fro; it
knocked the little stones off the shelf. I heard them click on the
wall. Again and again he spat, showing great, white fangs. He was a
Tom, heavy and large.

It had been my purpose, of course, to photograph this lion, and now
that we had cornered him I proposed to do it. What would follow had
only hazily formed in my mind, but the nucleus of it was that he
should go free. I got my camera, opened it, and focused from between
twenty an