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Then I sat on a pine log in a state of unadorned nature, oblivious to all around, intent only on the massacre of the things that had violated me. How much time flew I could not guess. Great loud "Haw-haws!" roused me to consternation. There behind me stood Jones and Emett shaking as if with the ague. "It's not funny!" I shouted in a rage.
The Navajo grew much excited and wanted me to shoot, and when Emett told him we had not come out to kill, he looked dumbfounded. Even the Indian felt it a strange departure from the usual mode of hunting to travel and climb hundreds of miles over hot desert and rock-ribbed canyons, to camp at last in a spot so wild that deer were tame as cattle, and then not kill.
The crash of breaking brush and thunder of hoofs from where the hounds had come out of the forest, attracted and even frightened me. I saw the green of a low cedar tree shake, and split, to let out a huge, gaunt horse with a big man doubled over his saddle. The onslaught of Emett and his desert charger stirred a fear in me that checked admiration.
"Emett, does he mean he saw a cougar or a track?" questioned Jones. "Me savvy," replied the Indian. "Butteen, butteen!" "He says, trail trail," put in Emett. "I guess I'd better go and see." "I'll go with you," said Jones. "Jim, keep the hounds tight and hurry with the horses' oats."
The tragedy we had all but interrupted occurred every night, perhaps often in the day and likely at different points at the same time. Emett told how he had found fourteen piles of bleached bones and dried hair in the thickets of less than a mile of the hollow on which we were encamped. "We'll rope the danged cats, boys, or we'll kill them." "It's blowing cold.
With but a single bark to warn us, Don got out of our sight and hearing; and while we split to look and call for him the remainder of the pack found the lion trail that he had gone on, and they left us trying to find a way out as well as to find each other. I kept the hounds in hearing for some time and meanwhile I signalled to Emett who was on my right flank.
Calmness was impossible under such circumstances. No man could have gazed into that marvel of color and distance, with wild life about him, with wild sounds ringing in his ears, without yielding to the throb and race of his wild blood. Emett did not come. Jim had not answered a yell for minutes. No doubt he needed his breath.
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.
I had the unreasonable suspicion that they had followed me to see my humiliation. Jones, who cracked a smile about as often as the equinoxes came, and Emett the sober Mormon, laughed until they cried. "I was just wondering what your folks would think if they saw you now," gurgled Jones. That brought to me the humor of the thing, and I joined in their mirth.
I remembered that Emett had said there was only one way to get rid of "'em," and that was to disrobe and make a microscopical search of garments and person. With serious mind and murderous intent I undressed. In the middle of the back of my jersey I discovered several long, uncanny, gray things. "I guess I got 'em," I said gravely.
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