Before the Indian reservation was formally opened to the whites for settlement, the flockmasters were permitted to graze their sheep over the country, and it gradually became known among the sheepmen that over in Lost Well Canyon there were a pair of eagles who made a speciality of devouring young lambs. Try as they might, however, the shepherds were unable to get a shot at either of these great birds, and for several years they were the terrors of the district. It was discovered that the old birds made their nest in a cleft in the face of a five hundred-foot perpendicular wall, which formed one side of the canyon. Here they safely raised brood after brood of young ones, which were turned loose in due course to prey on the community. Hunters, with their Winchester rifles, often lay in wait for the big birds, hoping to get a shot at them, but, with the proverbial keen eyesight of such creatures, the eagles detected the Nimrods and never came within gun-shot when the nest was being watched. During the spring of 1908 the two old eagles were more successful than ever in raiding the flocks of the sheepmen, and accordingly a special effort was made to exterminate them. To that effort Arthur Williams owes the appalling adventure which befell him. Williams and two friends made a trip out to Lost Well Canyon to investigate the chances of trapping the eagles in their nest. A ride of eight miles, over rough mountain trails, brought them to the canyon, half-way up the perpendicular side of which they saw the horizontal cleft in which the wise old birds had built their nest. At the foot of the cliff, directly under the cleft, was a pile of bones--the remains of lambs, thrown out of the nest by the eagles after they had been picked clean. “We ain’t any nearer that nest down here than when we were at home,” remarked Williams to his comrades. “Nothing but a balloon or an airship can help us from down here. Let us go up to the top of the cliff and see what we can do from there.” For two hours the three young men struggled to reach the top of the mountains. A wide _détour_ was necessary, but at last this was accomplished and they stood on the brink of the cliff, half-way down which the eagles’ nest had been built. “There’s nothing to be done from here, either,” said one of the men, despondently. “We might just as well go back home; we shall never reach that nest.” While the men stood and talked, from far down below them there arose the shrill piping call of young birds. “Young ones!” said Williams. “I wish we could get them alive; they would be worth money to us.” “No use to bother; you’ll have to take it out in wishing,” said the third member of the party. “Come on; let’s go home.” [Illustration: MR. A. E. WILLIAMS, WHO FOUGHT THE EAGLE IN MID-AIR. _From a Photograph._] “All right. I’ll go home now, but I’m coming back to-morrow after those birds,” said Williams.