But Joe merely chunked up the fire.
“That puts me in mind,” said he, “of a hunt I went on once in the Guadalupe Mountains. You see, we was out after big-horn sheep—used to be lots of ’em up there, but they are ’bout all gone now. Few up in the mountains where the tin-horn hunters never go.
“I was follerin’ some of them critters around a ledge, and presently I looked around and seen where I was. The ledge was jest about a foot wide; and I looked down, and there was a bluff right straight down for five hundred feet, and I looked up, and there was a wall five hundred feet straight up. There wasn’t no way to git off that ledge but to go on or to turn back like I come, and in some places the footin’ was mighty ticklish, mighty ticklish.
“Well, I walked along till I come to a slick place, and my foot slipped, and I had to let go my gun to keep from fallin’. I shore hated to lose that thirty-thirty, too, for we had been friends for years, and many a deer and antelope and bear and panther I had fetched down with it. But I jest naturally lost my balance and had to let her go to save my neck.
“Well, not havin’ any gun, I thought I had jest as well go back to the camp; so I started back like I come. I goes around a little bend, and there comes a mountain lion, a-creepin’ along towards me, jest like a cat tryin’ to slip up on a snow-bird.
“Says I, ‘Joe, this ain’t no place for you. I expect you’d better go on the way you first started.’
“So I turns around and goes back around the bend. When I gits about a hundred yards, there I sees a big grizzly bear comin’ to meet me! and when he sees me, he sets up and shows his teeth and growls.
“Says I, ‘Joe, maybe you’d better go back the other way, after all.’ I thought maybe the cougar would be gone. But as soon as I gits turned around—and I had to be mighty careful in turnin’, for the ledge was powerfully narrow—when I turns around, I sees the big cat sneakin’ along toward me. And when I look the other way, there comes the bear. And they are both gittin’ closer and closer, and there I am, and it’s five hundred feet straight down, and it’s five hundred feet straight up.”
“How did you get off?” asked Lanky.
“How did I git off? Why, I couldn’t git off. They got me, but whether it was the bear or the cougar, I never did know.”