The creature, balked in its spring, came down in the midst of the hot ashes of the smoldering fire. Instantly a piercing howl of anguish split the night. The Mexican leaped up and appeared to be fully awake the instant he opened his eyes. At any rate the great, tawny body was still writhing about in the embers when two shots crackled from his revolver. The big animal gave a spring and another howl of pain and then fell over in a heap, rolling to one side of the fire. “What—whatever was it?” cried Jack, rather timorously, for the suddenness of the attack had rather unnerved him. “A mountain lion, and a monster, too,” came the reply. “Come up and take a look at him.” “Are you quite sure he is dead?” “Positive. Wait a minute and I’ll make sure, however.” So saying the Mexican stooped and picked a glowing coal out of the fire. He threw it so that it fell on the motionless beast’s hide. But the animal did not stir. Unquestionably it was quite dead. Jack approached it, having poked up the fire the better to see the brute. He marveled at its size. It was indeed a giant of its kind and must have weighed six hundred pounds or more, and was lithe and sinewy as a cat. “What splendid condition it is in! I’d like to skin it and take the hide out of this valley as a souvenir.” “So you are still certain that we can get out?” “I am not _certain_, but I don’t want to give over trying till we have tested every avenue of hope.” “_Caramba!_ But you Americans are wonderful people! A Mexican boy would be sitting around crying if he were in the same fix. In the morning we will take the pelt off this brute, and if we ever do get out, the skin will always serve as a memento of a dreadful time.” The mountain lion scare being over, they composed themselves to sleep again. Jack recollected having read or heard that when a mountain lion is killed, its mate will find it out and avenge it. But even though the thought gave him cause for disquietude he was not able to stay awake; and although distant howlings told him that another puma was in the vicinity, nature asserted herself and sealed his eyes in slumber. The sun had hardly peeped above the rim of the bowl–like valley when Jack and Alvarez were astir. Breakfast was cooked and eaten hurriedly, and then the great lion was skinned. This done, Jack started out to put his plans in execution. The Mexican did not accompany him. He deemed Jack’s mission a useless one. In fact, it did seem very like an attempt at suicide to try to scale the valley’s lofty, almost perpendicular walls. CHAPTER IX. A CLIMB FOR LIFE. Jack strolled along at the foot of the cliffs, anxiously scanning every inch of them in the hope of spying some place that afforded an opportunity to climb upward. The cliffs varied in height from two hundred to three, and even four hundred feet. Great beetling crags of gray stone, too steep to afford roothold to more than a few scanty shrubs, filled him with oppression and gloom.