OH, SHOOT! 



is a disappointed and sarcastic wife. We 

 knew our wives, but we didn't know those 

 lions; therefore we proceeded with our prepa- 

 rations. After careful debate it seemed to us 

 that by the exercise of some caution we could 

 probably avoid wounding our prey, no matter 

 how sensitive he should prove ; as for bringing 

 him to bay, as for cornering him where he 

 would have to sell his life dearly, such, we 

 agreed, was no part of our program. Lions are 

 God's creatures; they have a right to live. 

 The news that they are silent was, on the 

 whole, welcome, for we reasoned that, if worse 

 came to the worst, they could be depended 

 upon to say nothing and we could drop the 

 matter at any time. 



We "went over the rim" from Bass's Camp 

 the next morning, and Mr. Bass, himself a 

 young man of some sixty-odd years, accom- 

 panied us for the exercise of climbing down 

 into the Canon and out again. 



Mr. Bass was sent West by the doctors 

 thirty-five years ago to die of tuberculosis, 

 but the Arizona climate has foiled his every 

 effort to carry out instructions and he remains 

 a disappointment to those few physicians who 

 survive him. He is, accidentally, a geologist ; 



152 



