THE ROCKS FOR THE CONIES 181 



all my days would this chance come again? And 

 how soon would they put a posse on my trail to 

 fetch me back to camp ? 



Out in the middle of the slide was a pointed 

 pile of rocks with a certain ordered look about 

 them, as if they had been heaped up there by 

 other hands than those that hurled them down 

 from the peak. Going out, I examined them 

 closely and found the bloody print of a little 

 bare paw on the face of one of them. On another 

 rock was the bluish spit of a lead shot. The right 

 place surely. Here they had killed the specimen 

 brought into camp. I went back to my seat con- 

 tent now to watch until they sent for me. The 

 camp must wait on this cony. 



I had been watching for perhaps half an hour, 

 when from somewhere, in the rock-slide I hoped, 

 though I could not tell, there sounded a shrill, 

 bleating whistle, not unlike that of the moun- 

 tain ground squirrel's, or the marmot's, yet more 

 tremulous and not so piercing, a trembling, ven- 

 triloquial, uncentered sound that I had never 

 heard before. 



I held my breath, the better to catch the cry. 

 Again it sounded — up or down, this side or that 



