By sunup they had reached the little dent in the side chasm that marked the great natural wall which blocked Lost Canyon. High above them, hanging down from the ledge at the foot of the cleft, still dangled the lariat. Picketing the ponies, they strapped on their rifles and climbed the fir tree where, arriving near its top branches, Sid took off his rifle and handed it to Scotty. “I’ll go up first, and then you tie on the rifles and I’ll haul them up the ledge. After that you swarm up, and we’ll make Fat Man’s Misery together.” Scotty sat in the swaying top of the fir tree, trying to get used to the height as Sid climbed up swiftly above him. To him it seemed a hideous business, even with a rope, and he wondered how Sid had ever had the courage to go up there without it the first time. Scotty’s was the kind of courage that needs lashing from a higher source, from the inner soul that rules over the whole man. He argued that his was the highest kind of courage, the kind that forces the cringing body to go ahead, although it is crying out with fear; but, nevertheless, he wished he had some of Sid’s kind, whatever it was,--that had no fear at all, that regarded this climb with the same matter-of-fact directness that he would have had it been near the ground and the element of danger eliminated. “Aw,--what’s the use of being afraid!” his mind belabored his craven body as he booted it into action when the time came for him to go up. But he _was_ afraid! Horribly so,--as afraid as the tyro aloft in a man-o’-war’s rigging for the first time, and his climb up the narrow cleft did not improve it either. By the time they had reached the trail up to the pueblo, Scotty was thoroughly exhausted by his wrestles with his courage and far below the key of his usual manliness. A fearsome idea had obsessed him after that climb and he now gave it words as they reached the roof of the cliff dwellings. “Sid,--suppose this is a real Asiatic black leopard?” he asked. “Did that ever occur to you, as a possible solution of his coloration?” “Aw!” grinned Sid, “where’d you get that notion, Les? It’s a color phase of our own ordinary cougar, that’s all.” “But it’s possible, though,” persisted Scotty. “Seems I remember reading once about a big circus that got strewn all over seven counties by a cyclone down here in Arizona. Now, if they had a black leopard in their menagerie----” “Even then--y’aren’t scared, are you?” interrupted Sid, scornfully, turning to gaze at Scotty with wondering eyes--Scotty who had met the Ring-Necked Grizzly alone up in Montana! “No, but I’m facing the facts,” retorted Scotty, stoutly. “If he _is_ a black leopard, then he’ll _stalk us_--that’s the leopard’s game, every time. He’s not afraid of men.” “Well, what of it?” exclaimed Sid, intolerantly. “C’mon, we’ll try his den first.”