“No use following him any further,” said Colonel Colvin as they reined up to look it over. “We’d only leave our own scent around,—though I doubt if he’d care any! We’ll go get the bucks.”
They retraced their way and went up on the hill. The Colonel’s buck lay some fifty feet from where he had been hit, his double-Y antlers and black crown proclaiming him a mule deer. Sid’s lay further up in the bush and was a mere spikehorn.
“He’ll do fine for camp meat, though. Get him up, Sid; we’ll paunch him somewhere away from here. The old yellow grizzly may clear out, if there’s too much human sign around, but still, mighty few people ever hunt this country and he may have that bad temper of the old-timers.”
He halted his horse and looked over the scene, planning where to locate his ambush and the probable course of the charge and battle that would surely ensue if the first shot from the .35 did not prove mortal. Sid and Niltci got up the buck and tied its legs to the saddle thongs. Then they all rode back to camp, silent, subdued, thinking over that twilight vigil of the Colonel’s by the bait, to come.
After rustling a meal, all three went out to the rim rock to await the return of Scotty and Big John. It was nearly sunset before they heard voices below, and then Big John’s sombrero—what was left of it—appeared over the rim. His face was caked with dirt, bloody, and streaked with sweat lines.
“Shore I ain’t got enough clothes left on me to flag a tote-train!” he grinned, spitting the dust out of a grimy mouth as he turned to haul on a bundle below him. “Hyar’s yore cat skin—I needs another skin myself, b’gosh! Anyone which same wants a kitty out’n that canyon kin go an’ get him, an’ keep right on goin’!—Thar!”—he gave the rope a final haul and sat down on the brim with a mighty “Whoosh!” of relief.
Scotty came up, pushing behind the bundle. He hadn’t a word, but an unconquerable grin beamed out of his eyes. He flopped down on the needles, and after him struggled Ruler, to lie down with his long, red tongue hanging out and his sides panting. Pepper crawled over the rim in his wake and curled up in a doggy heap of legs and ears, licking morosely at various red wounds that gashed his sides and thighs. The other two pups were yelping disconsolately at the foot of the slide and Sid and Niltci sprang down to carry them up.
“Whoosh! That was reg’lar Bronx Park huntin’, I’ll say!” exclaimed Big John, yawning, with a mighty stretch of his arms. “Where in thunder was you-all? Scotty, here, got him.”
Sid grinned as he looked over the ragged assembly. Scotty was a sight! He was covered with yellow dirt from head to foot; his breeches were split wide open and a jagged red cut showed on his thigh. Big John’s knees were bloody, with the fringes of his home-spuns encircling them like whiskers. Ruler licked steadily at a great red tear on his thigh where the skin hung open like a small hairy tent flap, and shook his ears continually as they dripped blood from long slits in them.
“Father couldn’t make it, boys,” he explained. “It takes a heart like a hunk of sole leather to attempt the canyon. He was wise to stay out. We turned back at the first rim, when you fellows and the dogs went over the second. We’ve got a buck hanging up in camp.”