“Gorry!—I can’t hit him, much less hurt him—but I can at least start something!” thought Sid, as he held steady and pulled the trigger. The sharp spiteful report of the little .32-20 rang out. It was followed by as tremendous an exhibition of strength and agility as Sid had ever hoped to witness. The fright of his own cave man within was as nothing compared to the wildly ungovernable scare that his sudden shot had given the Black Panther. In one mighty leap he jumped to the top of a gaunt bare cedar that jutted out behind the pinnacle; in the next he had flashed down the tree, striking right and left with flail-like blows of his paws, jumped a chasm twenty feet across, and sprang up another tree, leaped down again and spun around in circles—simply demented with terror!
Sid laughed grimly. Not a sound did the great cat make. It was all done in less than three seconds, out under the placid beams of the moonlight, and then with a last bound the panther disappeared, and Sid could hear the underbrush up on the plateau cracking and snapping in his wild dash for safety.
Sid turned and looked down at his browse bed, mechanically. A grim sense of mastery, of himself and all things around him pervaded him as he took a few steps fearlessly up the ravine. He owned that whole canyon and everything in it, in his present mood!
“I must have hit him somewhere, to make him carry on like that,” he muttered, breaking the revolver open to slip in a fresh shell. All desire for further sleep had now gone from him. He was wide awake, now, full of a conquering desire to take hold of this situation and master it, so that he would have some plan of action ready by dawn. Spying a dead fir lying in the underbrush, he dragged it out and hauled it to the fire, where the flames soon reached up to envelop it in a cheerful blaze.
He sat down to think things out clearly. His mind was keen and active, now, untroubled by any more nervous and superstitious fears. Realities were plenty enough for him! reflected Sid, joyously. And he had faced one of them,—the worst—and had come off easily victor!
As he set his mind to work marshaling the events of the last two days, a sudden startling thought smote him—suppose his party had started a day early! It was quite possible; it was probable, even! Big John had left him about noon, two days before. He had then gone back to the ranch with the buck and told them how he, Sid, had gone off on a lone hike to the Canyon Cheyo. Suppose then, his father, knowing the immense size of the canyon, had become worried over losing him and had started after him the very next day? Even if they went by the wooded plateau route they would have arrived at the head of the canyon by yesterday afternoon at latest! That, then, was the very time he should have been signaling with all his might, raising a smoke, firing his pistol from the ledge, doing everything to attract them, instead of fooling around trying to get out of the Lost Canyon by himself.
Well,—it was too late, now! Perhaps they were still in Cheyo—of course they were,—and looking for him. The dogs would trace his pony, eventually; they would probably come up his side canyon early next morning. If so, it behooved him to get up on the ledge and be on watch with keenest of eyes and ears.
And, if they didn’t come? Well, he had a half-formed plan for that, too. A big spruce grew up near the head of the canyon, in such a position that by building a fire around its roots he could throw it to fall where he could reach the lowest point of that fissure up the cougar’s ledge. Taking a quantity of stout pegs up with him, he could drive them in and so build himself a way out.
An hour of such plannings and reflections had put Sid in a sleepy mood again, and, as the moon was now setting in the west, he used up the last of his light in gathering firewood and then turned in, to fall into a sound sleep. By dawn he was up and hungry. The last of his bacon and coffee seemed a mighty sparse meal. By now he loathed the taste of pinole. It would be another day before he could become accustomed to it as a steady diet. It was full daylight before he had cleaned up everything and was ready for the climb up the flanks of Lost Canyon to the high fissure in its closing wall. Coming down now seemed to Sid even worse than going up, for to his eyes he appeared literally suspended, by hand and elbow grip alone, over a yawning blue depth, misty with the vapors rising from the main chasm below.
He finally reached the narrow ledge at the foot of Fat Man’s Misery, and peered cautiously over it, straight down below. The top of the green spire of the fir rose up to meet him. Nearly a hundred feet down, it looked mighty inviting, for that way led to freedom and a reunion with his party. But a very brief climb down the ledges served to show the utter futility of any descent that way, for soon he came to a ledge where in going up he had swung out into space as if clambering over a house cornice. Without eyes in his feet, no man could find a safe spot to plant them under that ledge!