Saving our strength, we arrived quietly on the upper ridges and waited for the dawn. Way down below us in the canyon we could smell the faint incense of our camp-fire. The morning breeze was just beginning to breathe in the trees. The birds awoke with little whispered confidences, small twitterings and chirps. A faint lavender tint melted the stars in the eastern sky. Shadows crept beneath the trees, and we knew it was time to start.
Just as the light defined the margins of the trail, we picked up in the grayness the track of a lion. Strange to say, the dogs had not smelled it, but when we pointed to the footprint in the dust, which was apparently none too fresh, they took up the work of tracking. It is astonishing to see how a dog can tell which way a track leads. If in doubt, he runs quickly back and forth on the scent, and thus gauges the way the animal has progressed. A mediocre dog cannot do this, but we had dogs with college educations.
Traveling carefully and at a moderate pace, we came to an open knoll in the forest. Here in the ferns our pack circled about us as if the cat had been doing a circus stunt, and they seemed confused. Later on we found that our feline friend had been experimenting with a porcupine and learned another lesson in natural history.
Suddenly the leader sniffed at a fallen tree where, doubtless, the cat had perched, then with a ringing bay, the hound clamped his tail close to his rump and left in a streak of yellow light. The rest of the pack leaped into full cry.
We were off on a hot track. Oh, for the wings of a bird! Trained as Young and I were to desperate running, this game taxed us to the utmost. First we climbed the knoll, deep in ferns and mountain misery, then we dashed over the crest, tore through manzanita brush, thickets of young cedar and buckthorn, over ledges of lava rock, down deep declivities, among giant oaks, cedars, and pines. As we ran we grasped our ready strung bows in one hand and the flapping quivers in the other.
You would not think that at this time we could take note of the fragrant shrubs and pine needles beneath our feet, but I smelled them as we passed in flight, and they revived me to renewed energy. On we rushed, only to lose the sound of the dogs. Then we listened and caught it down the hill below us. Again we hurdled barriers of brush, took long sliding leaps down the treacherous shale and ran breathless to the shade of a great oak.
There above our heads was the lion. Oh, the beauty of that beast!
Heaving and giddy with exertion, we saw a wonderful sight, a great tawny, buff-colored body crouched on a limb, grace and power in every outline. A huge, soft cylindrical tail swung slowly back and forth.
Luminous eyes gazed at us in utmost calm, a cold calculating calm. He watched and waited our next move, waited with his great muscles tense for action.
We retreated, not only to get out of his reach, but to gain a better shooting position. As we did this, he gave a lithe leap to a higher limb and shielded himself as best he could behind the boughs of the tree.