Scotty came up, pushing behind the bundle. He hadn’t a word, but an unconquerable grin beamed out of his eyes. He flopped down on the needles, and after him struggled Ruler, to lie down with his long, red tongue hanging out and his sides panting. Pepper crawled over the rim in his wake and curled up in a doggy heap of legs and ears, licking morosely at various red wounds that gashed his sides and thighs. The other two pups were yelping disconsolately at the foot of the slide and Sid and Niltci sprang down to carry them up. “Whoosh! That was reg’lar Bronx Park huntin’, I’ll say!” exclaimed Big John, yawning, with a mighty stretch of his arms. “Where in thunder was you-all? Scotty, here, got him.” Sid grinned as he looked over the ragged assembly. Scotty was a sight! He was covered with yellow dirt from head to foot; his breeches were split wide open and a jagged red cut showed on his thigh. Big John’s knees were bloody, with the fringes of his home-spuns encircling them like whiskers. Ruler licked steadily at a great red tear on his thigh where the skin hung open like a small hairy tent flap, and shook his ears continually as they dripped blood from long slits in them. “Father couldn’t make it, boys,” he explained. “It takes a heart like a hunk of sole leather to attempt the canyon. He was wise to stay out. We turned back at the first rim, when you fellows and the dogs went over the second. We’ve got a buck hanging up in camp.” “Roast her whole, boys,--I could eat a rhinoc’ros raw!” gaped Big John. “We’ve been climbin’ since ten o’clock ’smornin’. Lucky I thought to take my rope down with me. We had to haul them dawgs up the chutes, one at a time.” Sid and Niltci picked up the cougar skin and the whole party started for camp. An hour later a monumental mulligan, compounded of cougar chunks, spuds, onions, peas, tomatoes and macaroni, boiled in an eight-quart pail, was served. Big John and Scotty were still prodding into the bottom of it with their spoons when Sid and Niltci sat back utterly stuffed. The Colonel had long since departed for his lonely vigil near the buck carcass, awaiting the coming of the Yellow Grizzly. They stretched out the cougar skin and measured it--nine feet two inches, with three feet six of tail--but could get nothing but uninterested grunts from those two, who still scooped in the mulligan pail for more. Then Scotty and Big John rolled over without a further word and fell sound asleep where they lay.