When we stopped for breath the echoes bayed at
us from the opposite walls.

"Waa-hoo!" Emett's signal, faint, far away, soaring but unmistakable,
floated down to us. Across the jutting capes separating the mouths of
these canyons, high above them on the rim wall of the opposite side of
the Bay, stood a giant white horse silhouetted against the white
sky. They made a brave picture, one most welcome to us. We yelled in
chorus: "Three lions treed! Three lions treed! come down--hurry!"

A crash of rolling stones made us wheel. Jude's lion had jumped. He
ran straight down, drawing Sounder from his guard. Jude went tearing
after them.

"I'll follow; you stay here. Keep them up there, if you can!" yelled
Jones. Then in long strides he passed down out of sight among the
trees and crags.

It had all happened so quickly that I could scarcely realize it. The
yelping of the hounds, the clattering of stones, grew fainter, telling
me Jude and Sounder, with Jones, were going to the bottom of the Bay.

Both lions snarling at me brought me to a keen appreciation of the
facts in the case. Two full-grown lions to be kept treed without
hounds, without a companion, without a gun.

"This is fine! This is funny!" I cried, and for a moment I wanted to
run. But the same grim, deadly feeling that had taken me with Don
around the narrow shelf now rose in me stronger and fiercer. I
pronounced one savage malediction upon myself for leaving my gun. I
could not go for it; I would have to make the best of my error, and in
the wildness born of the moment I swore if the lions would stay treed
for the hounds they would stay treed for me.

First I photographed them from different positions; then I took up my
stand about on a level with them in an open place on the slope where
they had me in plain sight. I might have been fifty feet from them.
They showed no inclination to come down.

About this moment I heard hounds below, coming down from the left. I
called and called, but they passed on down the canyon bottom in the
direction Jones had taken.

Presently a chorus of bays, emphasized by Jones' yell, told me his
lion had treed again.

"Waa-hoo!" rolled down from above.

I saw Emett farther to the left from the point where he had just
appeared.

"Where--can--I--get--down?"

I surveyed the walls of the Bay. Cliff on cliff, slide on slide,
jumble, crag, and ruin, baffled my gaze. But I finally picked out a
path.

"Farther to the left," I