“Gee, he’s an old Tom, Niltci!” called back Scotty over his shoulder, “_Hi-Hi!_--Go it, Ruler!” The big reddish brown coonhound yodeled in answer. He was racing along perhaps halfway between them and the cougar, a red dot on the hot sunlight, bellowing forth bursts of hound music as he ran. Above them soared the high walls of the cañon, at least a mile up to the rim, yellow and blue-shadowed and dotted with dark green conifers. A hideous gulch, as it would look to a city dweller, terminated the cañon walls as they narrowed, and it was cleft high above by a dry arroyo that was all stones and boulders. But to Scotty this was the finest place on earth, and it was a jolly old world anyhow--in spite of mines that failed to pan out! His one anxiety was that the cougar might reach the timber up on the rim plateau and then turn on Ruler before they could get up there. The cat was far up, near the head of the gulch, and going even faster than they were. Like tiny Japanese pines the distant trees on the rim seemed to welcome him, and, while the panting horses and men labored hard up the slope, the cougar bounded over a ledge of broken rock and was gone into the timber. Niltci grunted. “_Wah!_” he exclaimed disgustedly. “Lose dog! Cougar kill him! No good! Take pony quick--me climb up straight.” His little horse clattered close behind and Scotty reached back for the bridle. Niltci vaulted from the saddle and with quick lithe movements he began to climb vertically up the cañon slope. Scotty urged the mare on up the long slant that would bring him out somewhere near the beginning of the cleft that made the arroyo. He got two glimpses of Niltci’s blue leggins swarming up over vertical ledges far above him; one brief sight of Ruler scrambling up over the rim ahead on the cougar’s trail; and then he was all alone, with the empty, silent, gorgeous mountains brooding majestically around him. With his passing and the shower of stones that his pony was sending down, they would return again to the eternal peace that was theirs. Apache, frontiersman, cavalryman, prospector, all in their turn had come and gone, to disturb their meditations for a brief moment, to pass on leaving these lonely cliffs and pines their silent and inscrutable witnesses. Scotty leaned over and whispered a word in the mare’s ear. The noble creature was giving him her best, with the boundless generosity and disinterestedness of our four-footed hunting companions, but somehow, somewhere, she found it in her to call upon an extra burst of speed, some hidden reserve in response to her master’s whisper. The top of the gulch was near now. With distended nostrils, with heaving flanks, and hoarse soughing breath the mare toiled up the last ledges and then vaulted over the rim.