The big reddish brown coonhound yodeled in answer. He was racing along perhaps halfway between them and the cougar, a red dot on the hot sunlight, bellowing forth bursts of hound music as he ran. Above them soared the high walls of the cañon, at least a mile up to the rim, yellow and blue-shadowed and dotted with dark green conifers. A hideous gulch, as it would look to a city dweller, terminated the cañon walls as they narrowed, and it was cleft high above by a dry arroyo that was all stones and boulders. But to Scotty this was the finest place on earth, and it was a jolly old world anyhow—in spite of mines that failed to pan out! His one anxiety was that the cougar might reach the timber up on the rim plateau and then turn on Ruler before they could get up there. The cat was far up, near the head of the gulch, and going even faster than they were. Like tiny Japanese pines the distant trees on the rim seemed to welcome him, and, while the panting horses and men labored hard up the slope, the cougar bounded over a ledge of broken rock and was gone into the timber.
Niltci grunted. “Wah!” he exclaimed disgustedly. “Lose dog! Cougar kill him! No good! Take pony quick—me climb up straight.”
His little horse clattered close behind and Scotty reached back for the bridle. Niltci vaulted from the saddle and with quick lithe movements he began to climb vertically up the cañon slope. Scotty urged the mare on up the long slant that would bring him out somewhere near the beginning of the cleft that made the arroyo. He got two glimpses of Niltci’s blue leggins swarming up over vertical ledges far above him; one brief sight of Ruler scrambling up over the rim ahead on the cougar’s trail; and then he was all alone, with the empty, silent, gorgeous mountains brooding majestically around him. With his passing and the shower of stones that his pony was sending down, they would return again to the eternal peace that was theirs. Apache, frontiersman, cavalryman, prospector, all in their turn had come and gone, to disturb their meditations for a brief moment, to pass on leaving these lonely cliffs and pines their silent and inscrutable witnesses.
Scotty leaned over and whispered a word in the mare’s ear. The noble creature was giving him her best, with the boundless generosity and disinterestedness of our four-footed hunting companions, but somehow, somewhere, she found it in her to call upon an extra burst of speed, some hidden reserve in response to her master’s whisper. The top of the gulch was near now. With distended nostrils, with heaving flanks, and hoarse soughing breath the mare toiled up the last ledges and then vaulted over the rim.
An open country of great pines was that plateau. Shadows and sunlight flecked the needles under the huge ponderosas. Scotty saw a white flash running like a deer through the tree trunks—Niltci, who could run faster than a horse for a short spurt. He was far ahead, and as for Ruler, only a deep ringing bay told of his whereabouts.
“Wahoo!—Wahoo!” sang out Scotty, his whoops intended more to let them know he was up and coming than anything else. The pony he led behind him snorted and whickered at sight of Niltci and Scotty let him go free at the hint. The flea-bitten little mustang immediately loped on ahead in a fast clatter. This urged the mare to top speed again, for she would let no horse pass her, if wind and legs could prevent it!
Came a wild piercing screech and a savage miauling on ahead somewhere. It sounded hoarse and ropy and vengeful; terrifying; intended to strike a paralysis of fright into the creature attacked. Scotty realized that the cougar had turned to the attack, finding that only a dog was following him. Then Ruler’s voice floated back, yelping and barking in a mixed medley of pain and fury. Scotty knew instantly what had happened. The old Tom was mauling the dog unmercifully. He would kill Ruler if help did not come instantly. Ruler was all of eighty pounds in weight but the cougar was at least two hundred and fifty and could beat him easily in a single combat.
A piercing whoop came from Niltci in answer to Ruler’s cry of distress. Scotty at once whipped out the heavy .405 and its thunderous roar rang out. The mare ducked and shied under its cannonlike reports, but Scotty fired again and again, for he hoped the sound of the bullets ripping through the timber would frighten the cat into treeing if not too savagely engaged with Ruler.
As the mare burst out into an open glade, a wild drama under the pines across from it met Scotty’s eyes. Ruler was dodging and giving back, the cat following up and striking again and again with a tawny and scimitar-clawed forepaw—bright flashes in the sunlight as of curved steel hooks. Niltci was racing across the clearing, his bright knife flashing in the sun, his wild black hair streaming out behind him. He was sprinting his utmost to save the hound but he would be too late if one of those terrible blows ever got home on Ruler!
Scotty threw the mare back on her haunches and raised a wabbling rifle barrel. The scene through the sights was not reassuring. Dog and cougar were so instantly changing places that it was impossible to fire. All this was happening with the quickness of thought, and Scotty felt reluctant to fire even a flash shot, for Ruler was whirling about so fast that he might run into the bullet while it was getting there.