The Trail 



only he followed the lion tracks a little farther up 

 the ravine before he bayed. He kept going faster 

 and faster, occasionally letting out one deep, short 

 yelp. The other hounds did not give tongue, but 

 eager, excited, baffled, kept at his heels. The ravine 

 was long, and the wash at the bottom, up which the 

 lion had proceeded, turned and twisted round 

 bowlders large as houses, and led through dense 

 growths of some short, rough shrub. Now and then 

 the lion tracks showed plainly in the sand. For five 

 miles or more Sounder led us up the ravine, which 

 began to contract and grow steep. The dry stream 

 bed got to be full of thickets of poplar tall, straight, 

 branchless saplings, about the size of a man s arm, 

 and growing so close we had to press them aside to 

 let our horses through. 



Presently Sounder slowed up and appeared at 

 fault. We found him puzzling over an open, grassy 

 patch, and after nosing it for a little while, he began 

 skirting the edge. 



&quot;Cute dog!&quot; declared Jones. &quot;That Sounder 

 will make a lion chaser. Our game has gone up here 

 somewhere.&quot; 



Sure enough, Sounder directly gave tongue from 

 the side of the ravine. It was climb for us now. 

 Broken shale, rocks of all dimensions, pinons down 

 and pinons up made ascending no easy problem. We 



