seconds--seventeen--eighteen--
With that a puff of air seemed to rise, and on it the most awful bellow of thunderous roar. It rolled up and widened, deadened to burst out and roll louder, then slowly, like mountains on wheels, rumbled under the rim-walls, passing on and on, to roar back in echo from the cliffs of the mesas. Roar and rumble--roar and rumble! for two long moments the dull and hollow echoes rolled at us, to die away slowly in the far-distant canyons.
"That's a darned deep hole," commented Jones.
Twilight stole down on us idling there, silent, content to watch the red glow pass away from the buttes and peaks, the color deepening downward to meet the ebon shades of night creeping up like a dark tide.
On turning toward the camp we essayed a short cut, which brought us to a deep hollow with stony walls, which seemed better to go around. The hollow, however, was quite long and we decided presently to cross it.
We descended a little way when Jones suddenly barred my progress with his big arm.
"Listen," he whispered.
It was quiet in the woods; only a faint breeze stirred the pine needles; and the weird, gray darkness seemed to be approaching under the trees.
I heard the patter of light, hard hoofs on the scaly sides of the hollow.
"Deer?" I asked my companion in a low voice.
"Yes; see," he replied, pointing ahead, "just right under that broken wall of rock; right there on this side; they're going down."
I descried gray objects the color of the rocks, moving down like shadows.
"Have they scented us?"
"Hardly; the breeze is against us. Maybe they heard us break a twig.
They've stopped, but they are not looking our way. Now I wonder--"
Rattling of stones set into movement by some quick, sharp action, an indistinct crash, but sudden, as of the impact of soft, heavy bodies, a strange wild sound preceded in rapid succession violent brushings and thumpings in the scrub of the hollow.
"Lion jumped a deer," yelled Jones. "Right under our eyes! Come on!
Hi! Hi! Hi!"
He ran down the incline yelling all of the way, and I kept close to him, adding my yells to his, and gripping my revolver. Toward the bottom the thicket barred our progress so that we had to smash through and I came out a little ahead of Jones. And farther up the hollow I saw a gray swiftly bounding object too long and too low for a deer, and I hurriedly shot six times at it.
"By George! Come here," called my companion. "How's this for quick work? It's a yearling doe."
In another moment I leaned over a gray mass huddled at Jones feet. It was a deer gasping and choking. I plainly heard the wheeze of blood in its throat, and the sound, like a death-rattle, affected me powerfully. Bending closer, I saw where one side of the neck, low down, had been terribly lacerated.
"Waa-hoo!" pealed down the slope.
"That's Emett," cried Jones, answering the signal. "If you have another shot put this doe out of agony."
But I had not a shot left, nor did either of us have a clasp knife.
We stood there while the doe gasped and quivered. The peculiar sound, probably made by the intake of air through the laceration of the throat, on the spur of the moment seemed pitifully human.
I felt that the struggle for life and death in any living thing was a horrible spectacle. With great interest I had studied natural selection, the variability of animals under different conditions of struggling existence, the law whereby one animal struck down and devoured another. But I had never seen and heard that law enacted on such a scale; and suddenly I abhorred it.
Emett strode to us through the gathering darkness.
"What's up?" he asked quickly.
He carried my Remington in one hand and his Winchester in the other; and he moved so assuredly and loomed up so big in the dusk that I experienced a sudden little rush of feeling as to what his advent might mean at a time of real peril.
[Illustration: JONES ABOUT TO LASSO A MOUNTAIN LION]
[Illustration: REMAINS OF A DEER KILLED BY
With that a puff of air seemed to rise, and on it the most awful bellow of thunderous roar. It rolled up and widened, deadened to burst out and roll louder, then slowly, like mountains on wheels, rumbled under the rim-walls, passing on and on, to roar back in echo from the cliffs of the mesas. Roar and rumble--roar and rumble! for two long moments the dull and hollow echoes rolled at us, to die away slowly in the far-distant canyons.
"That's a darned deep hole," commented Jones.
Twilight stole down on us idling there, silent, content to watch the red glow pass away from the buttes and peaks, the color deepening downward to meet the ebon shades of night creeping up like a dark tide.
On turning toward the camp we essayed a short cut, which brought us to a deep hollow with stony walls, which seemed better to go around. The hollow, however, was quite long and we decided presently to cross it.
We descended a little way when Jones suddenly barred my progress with his big arm.
"Listen," he whispered.
It was quiet in the woods; only a faint breeze stirred the pine needles; and the weird, gray darkness seemed to be approaching under the trees.
I heard the patter of light, hard hoofs on the scaly sides of the hollow.
"Deer?" I asked my companion in a low voice.
"Yes; see," he replied, pointing ahead, "just right under that broken wall of rock; right there on this side; they're going down."
I descried gray objects the color of the rocks, moving down like shadows.
"Have they scented us?"
"Hardly; the breeze is against us. Maybe they heard us break a twig.
They've stopped, but they are not looking our way. Now I wonder--"
Rattling of stones set into movement by some quick, sharp action, an indistinct crash, but sudden, as of the impact of soft, heavy bodies, a strange wild sound preceded in rapid succession violent brushings and thumpings in the scrub of the hollow.
"Lion jumped a deer," yelled Jones. "Right under our eyes! Come on!
Hi! Hi! Hi!"
He ran down the incline yelling all of the way, and I kept close to him, adding my yells to his, and gripping my revolver. Toward the bottom the thicket barred our progress so that we had to smash through and I came out a little ahead of Jones. And farther up the hollow I saw a gray swiftly bounding object too long and too low for a deer, and I hurriedly shot six times at it.
"By George! Come here," called my companion. "How's this for quick work? It's a yearling doe."
In another moment I leaned over a gray mass huddled at Jones feet. It was a deer gasping and choking. I plainly heard the wheeze of blood in its throat, and the sound, like a death-rattle, affected me powerfully. Bending closer, I saw where one side of the neck, low down, had been terribly lacerated.
"Waa-hoo!" pealed down the slope.
"That's Emett," cried Jones, answering the signal. "If you have another shot put this doe out of agony."
But I had not a shot left, nor did either of us have a clasp knife.
We stood there while the doe gasped and quivered. The peculiar sound, probably made by the intake of air through the laceration of the throat, on the spur of the moment seemed pitifully human.
I felt that the struggle for life and death in any living thing was a horrible spectacle. With great interest I had studied natural selection, the variability of animals under different conditions of struggling existence, the law whereby one animal struck down and devoured another. But I had never seen and heard that law enacted on such a scale; and suddenly I abhorred it.
Emett strode to us through the gathering darkness.
"What's up?" he asked quickly.
He carried my Remington in one hand and his Winchester in the other; and he moved so assuredly and loomed up so big in the dusk that I experienced a sudden little rush of feeling as to what his advent might mean at a time of real peril.
[Illustration: JONES ABOUT TO LASSO A MOUNTAIN LION]
[Illustration: REMAINS OF A DEER KILLED BY
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