t behind Last
Bull's mighty shoulder.

The smokeless powder spoke with a small, venomous report, unlike the
black powder's noisy reverberation. Last Bull stumbled. But recovering
himself instantly, he rushed on. He was hurt, and he felt it was those
fleeing foes who had done it. A shade of perplexity darkened Payne's
face. He fired again. This time his aim was true. The heavy expanding
bullet tore straight through bone and muscle and heart, and Last Bull
lurched forward upon his head, ploughing up the turf for yards. As his
mad eyes softened and filmed, he saw once more, perhaps,--or so the
heavy-hearted keeper who had slain him would have us believe,--the
shadowy plains unrolling under the wild sky, and the hosts of his
vanished kindred drifting past into the dark.

THE KING OF THE FLAMING HOOPS

THE KING OF THE FLAMING HOOPS

CHAPTER I

The white, scarred face of the mountain looked straight east, over a
vast basin of tumbled, lesser hills, dim black forests, and steel-blue
loops of a far-winding water. Here and there long, level strata of
pallid mist seemed to support themselves on the tree-tops, their edges
fading off into the startling transparency that comes upon the air
with the first of dawn. But that was in the lower world. Up on the
solitary summit of White Face the daybreak had arrived. The jagged
crest of the peak shot sudden radiances of flame-crimson, then bathed
itself in a flow of rose-pinks and thin, indescribable reds and
pulsating golds. Swiftly, as the far horizon leapt into blaze, the
aerial flood spread down the mountain-face, revealing and
transforming. It reached the mouth of a cave on a narrow ledge. As the
splendor poured into the dark opening, a tawny shape, long and lithe
and sinewy, came padding forth, noiseless as itself, as if to meet
and challenge it.

Half emerging from the entrance upon the high rock-platform which
formed its threshold, the puma halted, head uplifted and forepaws
planted squarely to the front. With wide, palely bright eyes she
stared out across the tremendous and mysterious landscape. As the
colored glory rushed down the mountain, rolling back the blue-gray
transparency of shadow, those inscrutable eyes swept every suddenly
revealed glade, knoll, and waterside where deer or elk might by chance
be pasturing.

She was a magnificent beast, this puma, massive of head and shoulder
almost as a lioness, and in her calm scrutiny of the spaces unrolling