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So between the two, Emett and I had trouble in keeping our Navajo from illustrating the plainsman idea of a really good Indian a dead one. While we were pitching camp among magnificent pine trees, and above a hollow where a heavy bank of snow still lay, a sodden pounding in the turf attracted our attention. "Hold the horses!" yelled Emett.
A jangle of cow-bells from the forest told me we would not have to wait for the horses that morning. "The Injun's all right," Jones remarked to Emett. "All rustle for breakfast," called Jim. We ate in the semi-darkness with the gray shadow ever brightening. Dawn broke as we saddled our horses.
Emett forged ahead; we heard him smashing the deadwood; and soon a yell proclaimed the truth of Jones' assertion. First I saw the men looking upward; then Moze climbing the cedar, and the other hounds with noses skyward; and last, in the dead top of the tree, a dark blot against the blue, a big tawny lion. "Whoop!" The yell leaped past my lips.
"Snow is what we want, but now we can't find the scent of our lion of last night." Low growls and snarls attracted me. Both our captives presented sorry spectacles; they were wet, dirty, bedraggled. Emett had chopped down a small pine, the branches of which he was using to make shelter for the lions.
If it had not been for the collar and swivel he would have choked himself a hundred times. Quick as a cat, supple, powerful, tireless, he kept on the go, whirling, bounding, leaping, rolling, till it seemed we would never catch him. "If anything breaks, he'll get one of us," cried Emett. "I felt his breath that time." "Lord!
"Waa-hoo!" pealed down the slope. "That's Emett," cried Jones, answering the signal. "If you have another shot put this doe out of agony." But I had not a shot left, nor did either of us have a clasp knife. We stood there while the doe gasped and quivered. The peculiar sound, probably made by the intake of air through the laceration of the throat, on the spur of the moment seemed pitifully human.
The packsaddle being strapped on and the panniers hooked to the horns, Jones and Jim lifted Tom and shoved him down into the left pannier while Emett held the horse. A madder lion than Tom never lived. It was cruel enough to be lassoed and disgrace enough to be "hog-tied," as Jim called it, but to be thrust down into a bag and packed on a horse was adding insult to injury.
I drove him into this corner between the rocks and the tree, where he has been comparatively quiet. Now, what's up? Where is Jones? Did you get the third lion?" I related what had occurred, and then said we were to tie this lion and pack him with the other one up the canyon, to meet Jones and the horses. "All right," replied Emett, with a grim laugh. "We'd better get at it.
When Navvy did not rise we began to fear he had been seriously hurt, perhaps killed, and we ran to where he lay. Face downward, hands outstretched, with no movement of body or muscle, he certainly appeared dead. "Badly hurt," said Emett, "probably back broken. I have seen it before from just such accidents." "Oh no!" cried Jones, and I felt so deeply I could not speak.
The falling snow had thinned out and looked like flying powder; the leaden clouds, rolling close to the tree-tops, grew brighter and brighter; bits of azure sky shone through rifts. Navvy had tramped off to find the horses, and not long after his departure he sent out a prolonged yell that echoed through the forest. "Something's up," said Emett instantly.
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