shivering wail. The pony danced at the end of his rope and blew a whistling snort of
comprehending fear. Givens puffed at his cigarette, but he reached leisurely for his pistol-
belt, which lay on the grass, and twirled the cylinder of his weapon tentatively. A great gar
plunged with a loud splash into the water hole. A little brown rabbit skipped around a
bunch of catclaw and sat twitching his whiskers and looking humorously at Givens. The
pony went on eating grass.
It is well to be reasonably watchful when a Mexican lion sings soprano along the arroyos at
sundown. The burden of his song may be that young calves and fat lambs are scarce, and
that he has a carnivorous desire for your acquaintance.
In the grass lay an empty fruit can, cast there by some former sojourner. Givens caught sight
of it with a grunt of satisfaction. In his coat pocket tied behind his saddle was a handful or
two of ground coffee. Black coffee and cigarettes! What ranchero could desire more?
In two minutes he had a little fire going clearly. He started, with his can, for the water hole.
When within fifteen yards of its edge he saw, between the bushes, a side-saddled pony with
down-dropped reins cropping grass a little distance to his left. Just rising from her hands
and knees on the brink of the water hole was Josefa O'Donnell. She had been drinking
water, and she brushed the sand from the palms of her hands. Ten yards away, to her right,
half concealed by a clump of sacuista, Givens saw the crouching form of the Mexican lion.
His amber eyeballs glared hungrily; six feet from them was the tip of the tail stretched
straight, like a pointer's. His hind-quarters rocked with the motion of the cat tribe
preliminary to leaping.
Givens did what he could. His six-shooter was thirty-five yards away lying on the grass. He
gave a loud yell, and dashed between the lion and the princess.
The "rucus," as Givens called it afterward, was brief and somewhat confused. When he
arrived on the line of attack he saw a dim streak in the air, and heard a couple of faint
cracks. Then a hundred pounds of Mexican lion plumped down upon his head and flattened
him, with a heavy jar, to the ground. He remembered calling out: "Let up, now--no fair
gouging!" and then he crawled from under the lion like a worm, with his mouth full of grass
and dirt, and a big lump on the back of his head where it had struck the root of a water-elm.
The lion lay motionless. Givens, feeling aggrieved, and suspicious of fouls, shook his fist at
the lion, and shouted: "I'll rastle you again for twenty--" and then he got back to himself.
Josefa was standing in her tracks, quietly reloading her silver- mounted .38. It had not been
a difficult shot. The lion's head made an easier mark than a tomato-can swinging at the end
of a string. There was a provoking, teasing, maddening smile upon her mouth and in her
dark eyes. The would-be-rescuing knight felt the fire of his fiasco burn down to his soul.
Here had been his chance, the chance that he had dreamed of; and Momus, and not Cupid,
had presided over it. The satyrs in the wood were, no doubt, holding their sides in hilarious,
silent laughter. There had been something like vaudeville--say Signor Givens and his funny
knockabout act with the stuffed lion.
"Is that you, Mr. Givens?" said Josefa, in her deliberate, saccharine contralto. "You nearly
spoilt my shot when you yelled. Did you hurt your head when you fell?"