was crushed flat.  The ground dug up, dead snags broken, and blood and hair everywhere.  Lion tracks like leaves, and old Sultan’s was there.  I let Moze loose and he humped the trail of several lions south over the rim.  Major got down first an’ came back with his tail between his legs.  Moze went down and I kept close to him.  It wasn’t far down, but steep and rocky, full of holes.  Moze took the trail to a dark cave.  I saw the tracks of three lions goin’ in.  Then I collared Moze an’ waited for you fellows.  I waited there all day, an’ nobody came to my call.  Then I made for camp.”

“How do you account for the torn-up appearance of the place where you found the carcasses?” I asked.

“Lion fight sure,” replied Jones.  “Maybe old Sultan ran across the three lions feeding, and pitched into them.  Such fights were common among the lions in Yellowstone Park when I was there.”

“What chance have we to find those three lions in a cave where Jim chased them?”

“We stand a good chance,” said Jones.  “Especially if it storms to-night.”

“Shore the snow storm is comin’,” returned Jim.

Darkness clapped down on us suddenly, and the wind roared in the pines like a mighty river tearing its way down a rocky pass.  As we could not control the camp-fire, sparks of which blew fiercely, we extinguished it and went to bed.  I had just settled myself comfortably to be sung to sleep by the concert in the pines, when Jones hailed me.

“Say, what do you think?” he yelled, when I had answered him.  “Emett is mad.  He’s scratching to beat the band.  He’s got ’em.”

I signalled his information with a loud whoop of victory.

“You next, Jones!  They’re coming to you!”

I heard him grumble over my happy anticipation.  Jim laughed and so did the Navajo, which made me suspect that he could understand more English than he wanted us to suppose.

Next morning a merry yell disturbed my slumbers.  “Snowed in—­snowed in!”

“Mucha snow—­discass—­no cougie—­dam no bueno!” exclaimed Navvy.

When I peeped out to see the forest in the throes of a blinding blizzard, the great pines only pale, grotesque shadows, everything white mantled in a foot of snow, I emphasized the Indian words in straight English.

“Much snow—­cold—­no cougar—­bad!”

“Stay in bed,” yelled Jones.

“All right,” I replied.  “Say Jones, have you got ’em yet?”

He vouchsafed me no answer.  I went to sleep then and dozed off and on till noon, when the storm abated.  We had dinner, or rather breakfast, round a blazing bonfire.

“It’s going to clear up,” said Jim.

The forest around us was a somber and gloomy place.  The cloud that had enveloped the plateau lifted and began to move.  It hit the tree tops, sometimes rolling almost to the ground, then rising above the trees.  At first it moved slowly, rolling, forming, expanding, blooming like a column of whirling gray smoke; then it gathered headway and rolled onward through the forest.  A gray, gloomy curtain, moving and rippling, split by the trees, seemed to be passing over us.  It rose higher and higher, to split up in great globes, to roll apart, showing glimpses of blue sky.