Now it was to all of them a rare treat to see a lion so close to. Of all the denizens of the wild, none are so shy of human kind, in regions where they are hunted,—none so thoroughly nocturnal. The three men fairly held their breaths to watch.
First the animal leapt to a branch of a wind-beaten tree and crouched along its limb, lying so still that, had they not seen it move, they might have glanced squarely in that direction and never noticed. And there it lay, sharpening its claws, cat fashion.
Suddenly it began narrowing its yellow eyes at what must have been a movement behind the rock whence it had emerged. Gathering its feet for a spring, it laid its ears back, and the great muscles rippling beneath its skin, leapt at a second lion whose head could now be seen peering around the rock. But did they fight? Not a bit of it! With hiss and arching back, and all claws out like the picture of a witch cat, the young cougar challenged his playfellow, then retreated as the other would have given him a swipe of his paw. Back to his tree he raced, the other after him. But no sooner had he reached the vantage point of his horizontal branch than he turned and chased the other back. This play was repeated several times, while the three men watched to the windward, silent and motionless, and hence unseen by the near-sighted animals.
A small rock had been loosened by their scramble, and as it went rolling over the granite slope, the first cat pounced after it playfully, finally catching the rolling stone and leaping about it as a cat does a mouse. Then he retired to his tree.
Norris, reflecting that the near presence of two such animals would stampede the burros, picked up a stone and threw it at the lion, intending, not to hit it, but to chase it away. To the surprise of the onlookers, the huge cat pounced on the stone as playfully as before. Ace now hurled a small rock so that it just escaped the tawny flank, but again she pounced, as playful as a kitten, at each missile, and it was not till the three men rose and shouted that the lion took alarm and raced away.
“I declare!” exclaimed Pedro, when he heard about it, “I’d never have believed it!”
“I was out in Devil’s Gulch one day,” remarked Long Lester, “with a coupla dogs. It’s all granite,—hard for the dogs to get a scent, but there’s lots of lions there, in among the rocks. Finally, though, they got one into a little Digger Pine. I took a shot at her, and out she tumbled.”
“Dead?” asked Norris.
“Yes. The dogs found her den, and dragged out three cubs.”
“How large?”