A sullen murmur soared out of the abyss.
[Illustration: TWO LIONS IN ONE TREE]
[Illustration: JONES, EMETT, AND THE NAVAJO WITH THE LIONS]
The coloring of my mood changed. Never had the canyon struck me so
terribly with its illimitable space, its dread depth, its unscalable
cliffs, and particularly with the desolate, forbidding quality of its
silence.
I heard Don bark. Turning the corner of the cliff wall I saw him on a
narrow shelf. He was coming toward me and when he reached me he faced
again to the wall and barked fiercely. The hair on his neck bristled.
I knew he did not fancy that narrow strip of rock, nor did I. But a
sudden, grim, cold something had taken possession 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.
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