“Back up out of thar, Ruler--you ole fool critter!” shouted Big John, shying a stone over with deft aim. The dogs yelped and started back, but a challenging snarl, ringing out from the cave, brought them all back again, barking madly. Ruler ran to the edge of the vertical ledges and put his paws on the nearest, bellowing his disgust at being unable to follow further. “So there’s where he is, eh?” cried Scotty, reaching down to his scabbard for his .405. “If I could only get a shot from here!” He peered across at the cliff dwellings, but the Black Panther’s lair was, of course, invisible from Scotty’s position. “Don’t shoot, kid!” warned Big John. “We ain’t ready yet. Whar’s yore rifle, Sid?” he called down. Sid waved the little .32-20. “This is all I’ve got. Can’t you see?--I’m locked up in here,” he yelled. “I climbed up by yonder wall, and now I can’t get out of this box canyon or I’d have met you fellows long ago.” “Yaas?--it works like the nigger’s eel trap, eh? Ketches ’em comin’ and goin’!” hee-hawed Big John. “Cat in one end; kid in t’other!--waal, how are we goin’ to git you out? I ain’t fixin’ to bombard no varmint, with you down thar, right plumb intimate with him, nohow!” he declared vigorously. “Say!--chuck me down a lariat and I’ll get out, all right--both your lariats!” called up Sid, suddenly, as a scheme for escape came to him. “All right, son, anything that’s ourn is yourn,” grinned Big John as he lifted his lariat coil from its saddle hook. After a few moments of untying, the ropes soared out from the cliff walls, to drop down into the underbrush. “Scotty, you watch the trick panther’s hang-out while I climbs down an’ ties up them pisen-mean houn’ dawgs,” said Big John, as Sid started retrieving the lariats and coiling them up. The cowman dismounted and tied his mustang back in the timber. After a time his long form began sliding down the steep shale slopes above the granite slab, where, at the top of it, he drove in his heels and regained his feet. “You’ll obleege me, Sid, by rockin’ them dawgs from whar you are,” he called to Sid, who was waiting to see the outcome before putting off on his own perilous climb. Sid “obleeged,” sending the pups yelping up the slope. Ruler was harder to manage. By no persuasion could he be coaxed to leave his position, sniffing and whining with the implacable persistence of a hound over the last foot of cougar trail that he could possibly follow. Big John had at length to climb down the crevice and haul him up by main strength. Sid breathed freely when man and dog once more reached the comparative safety of the upper slopes. “Well,--so long, fellows!” he called out. “I can let myself down to a fir tree beyond that wall,” he explained, pointing out the blocked end of the canyon. “It lands me in a side chasm of Cheyo Canyon, where I’ve cached my saddle and rifle. I’ll whoopee, when I’m through the cleft. Then burn out the cat, if you can, and ride down to join me.”