“Shoot, you little wart--if you miss I’ll pisen yore grub!” barked Big John at Scotty, holding his own rifle at the ready. Scotty braced himself and poised the heavy .405. He had always prided himself on his shooting, but never in any such condition as this. His whole body shook with fatigue; he was covered with a scalding perspiration. Hold as he might, the bead refused to steady. Its square white patch nearly covered the cougar at that range, yet it could not have been over two hundred yards. Scotty finally attempted trigger release on the swing. The rifle went off, driving his shoulder back a foot with its recoil and, as they watched, a huge spall of bark flew out of the tree trunk above the cougar’s back. Instantly he sprang down among the yelping dogs. A whirlwind of unbelievably swift action ensued. Yellow and brown were inextricably mixed as the cougar struck this way and that, the dogs darting in from every angle, the cat turning to strike as each grabbed a new hold. Big John raced forward, his rifle at shoulder, ready to put in a shot at the first possible instant. Then the cougar made a sidewise swipe of his paw, so swift that the eye could not follow it. The steel hooks of his claws caught in Ruler’s ear and the cat pulled him towards a snarling open mouth, towards the glistening white fangs that awaited him. But with a furious tug the dog tore himself loose, his ear slitting to ribbons. Big John fired at that tense instant when dog and cougar were braced in the fixed rigidity of their tug of war. The cat leaped in the air, high above the whole mob of dogs, landed running, and darted like a squirrel over the brink of the ledge. The dogs tore after him. Big John and Scotty raced down the slope in giant strides, that for Scotty kept getting longer and longer as his momentum gained. He finally threw himself sideways to the ground as he felt himself falling downhill rather than running. “Thar he is!--Mark left!” rasped Big John hoarsely, pointing below. The ledge was a mere escarpment, and along its base the cougar was flying, his tail erect and bushy like a scared household tabby. Pepper clung like a viper to his hock, while Ruler was trying to forge ahead and get a throat hold. Then the cat disappeared into a rock crevice taking the dogs with him. Putting in their last burst of speed, Scotty and Big John threw themselves over to it. The huge rocky knife-edge that made the cleft, stuck up like a fan,--one of those little insignificant spalls on the cliff faces, as seen from El Tovar. Here it was enormous, and led down to no one knew where. A hoarse, snarling murmur and the worrying and fighting of dogs came up from inside it. “Run down to the lower edge, Scotty!” yelled Big John. “I’ll drop a rock in here an’ he’ll come out to you like a bat out of hades.”