We rested then, and listened. There was only a little wind, and often it fooled us. It sounded like the baying of hounds, and now like the hallooing of men, and then like the distant peal of a horn. By and bye Copple said he heard the hounds. I could not be sure. Soon we indeed heard the deep-sounding, wild bay of Old Dan, the course, sharp, ringing bay of Old Tom, and then, less clear, the chorus from the other hounds. Edd had started them on a trail up this magnificent canyon at our feet. After a while we heard Edd's yell, far away, but clear: "Hi! Hi!" We could see a part of the thicket, shaggy and red and gold; and a mile or more of the opposite wall of the canyon. No rougher, wilder place could have been imagined than this steep slope of bluffs, ledges, benches, all matted with brush, and spotted with pines. Holes and caves and cracks showed, and yellow blank walls, and bronze points, and green slopes, and weathered slides.
Soon the baying of the hounds appeared to pass below and beyond us, up the canyon to our right, a circumstance that worried Copple. "Let's go farther up," he kept saying. But I was loath to leave that splendid stand. The baying of the hounds appeared to swing round closer under us; to ring, to swell, to thicken until it was a continuous and melodious, wild, echoing roar. The narrowing walls of the canyon threw the echoes back and forth.
Presently I espied moving dots, one blue, one brown, on the opposite slope. They were Haught and his son Edd slowly and laboriously climbing up the steep bluff. How like snails they climbed! Theirs was indeed a task. A yell pealed out now and then, and though it seemed to come from an entirely different direction it surely must have come from the Haughts. Presently some one high on the rim answered with like yells. The chase was growing hotter.
"They've got a bear up somewhere," cried Copple, excitedly. And I agreed with him.
Then we were startled by the sharp crack of a rifle from the rim.
"The ball's open! Get your pardners, boys," exclaimed Copple, with animation.
"Ben, wasn't that a.30 Gov't?" I asked.
"Sure was," he replied. "Must have been R.C. openin' up. Now look sharp!"
I gazed everywhere, growing more excited and thrilled. Another shot from above, farther off and from a different rifle, augmented our stirring expectation.
Copple left our stand and ran up over the ridge, and then down under and along the base of a rock wall. I had all I could do to keep up with him. We got perhaps a hundred yards when we heard the spang of Haught's.30 Gov't. Following this his big, hoarse voice bawled out: "He's goin' to the left—to the left!" That sent us right about face, to climbing, scrambling, running and plunging back to our first stand at the saddle, where we arrived breathless and eager.