Part 67

Means went first. Slowly he maneuvered toward her for a chance to throw his rope, and the lioness, alert, opened her jaws and snarled at the horseman circling near.

Closer and closer Means approached. Then all at once she charged. Means wheeled and spurred his horse to escape. For the first thirty yards of the race the lioness gained rapidly. Then the bay began to gather headway and slowly forged ahead.

With a quick change of front the lioness turned and charged the Colonel, who was sitting on his horse nearby. Again the lioness gained at first and again the horse drew away from her, and so, giving up the charge, she returned to another thorn bush, where she crouched down low and snarled and growled as before. And all the while Kearton, on foot with his tripod, was busy taking pictures of the show.

This second position of hers gave the horsemen a better chance. There was now more room in which to get near her by a quick dash past the bush. While Means edged around on the northern side, the Colonel moved to the south, and by tossing his rope about and shouting he managed to attract and hold her attention. In fact, he nearly succeeded too well, for once she rose to the first spring of the charge and the Colonel half wheeled his horse for flight, but the beast sank back again and glared at him.

Then from behind her Means darted forward on the run, swinging his rope free round and round his head. Kearton began shouting.

"Wait--the camera's jammed! Wait a bit--she's jammed here!"

But there was no stopping then, and before the lioness knew what he was up to, Means dashed by within a few feet of her and roped her round the neck. But a lioness's neck is short and thick, and with a quick, catlike twist she slipped the noose over her ears.

"Why can't they wait?" complained Kearton. "Somebody tell them to wait till I fix this. It's jammed. It must have got knocked on a rock somewhere. It never acted this way before." And all the while he talked his fingers were busy ripping out the jammed piece of film and loading up afresh.

When he declared himself ready, Loveless, this time, had already taken up his position to the north. Again the Colonel waved his rope and shouted, and when the right moment came Loveless dashed past her and likewise roped her round the neck. Again the beast slipped the noose.

Here a rather strange thing happened. We had been told on many occasions that in shooting lions the beast will give its attention to the man who has the rifle, as if the instinct of the animal told it which man to fear. Up to this moment the lioness had held off the horsemen easily, but no sooner had she freed herself from Loveless's rope than she fled into the donga and hid herself in a thicket of scrub and grass. For a time then it seemed that nothing would move her from out this scrub. The dogs were finished. Men and horses were becoming played out. Firecrackers and burning grass were used without result. Eventually the Colonel fastened a forked stick to his rope and dragged it across her hiding place to uncover her. This maneuver partly succeeded--succeeded enough, at least, for Loveless to throw his rope at her. And at the sight of the rope coming toward her through the air she hurled herself at him like a flash, so that it was only the side jump of his horse that saved him; then she turned and broke away along the donga.

At once Means was after her, galloping hard, for without the dogs there was danger of our losing sight of her.

But the lioness did not run far. Her next and last position was in the bed of a small gully about three feet deep in the bottom of the donga and thickly grown with grasses. Here the ropers held a brief consultation and planned a final attempt.

Loveless made a throw and the noose landed fairly above the beast's head, but the thick grasses held it up. Loveless passed the other end of his rope over the branch of a near-by tree and down to the horn of his saddle.

The rest of us, with the cameras trained on the scene, had no knowledge of the plan. We had not the slightest idea what the Colonel intended to do. Still wondering, we watched him procure a long pole and ride quietly along the edge of the ditch toward the place where the lioness crouched.

For a moment there was intense silence. The Colonel stopped his horse. Then, leaning over from his saddle, he poked the noose down through the grass.

With a roar the beast sprang at him--sprang through the loop--and at the other end of the rope Loveless yanked quickly and caught her by the last hind leg going through. Putting spurs to his horse, Loveless galloped away, hauling the lioness back across the gully and up into the tree, where she swung to and fro, dangling by the one hind foot and snapping upward at the rope she could not reach.

"Got her!" yelled the Colonel. "Now the rains can come when they like."

The beast was furious. She was still swinging, head down like a pendulum, from the limb of the tree, and was tossing her body about in frantic endeavor to get loose. Means approached close and deftly slipped a noose over one of the wildly gyrating fore-legs. Leading his rope over the branch of another tree, he stretched her out in a helpless position parallel with the ground.

"Now lower away on both lines," said the Colonel.

He dismounted and stood beneath her, directing affairs as methodically as the foreman of a construction gang.

"Steady, Means--a little more, Loveless--now together--easy."

She came within his reach and with a quick grab he caught and held her two hind legs with both hands while Kearton bound them together with a piece of light line.

The rest was easy. In less than five minutes she was bound securely and lowered all the way to the ground to rest in the shade.

It was nearly noon, and time to call a halt to let the heat of the day pass over before attempting to bring her back to camp. Porters were sent to fetch food and more water, horses were off-saddled and turned loose to graze, and one by one the dogs came straggling in.

The men stretched themselves out on the ground where a bush or a tree afforded some protection from the sun. But the Colonel kept wandering over to the prize, to examine a knot, to arrange a better shade, or to pour the last drops of water from his canteen into her open mouth. Once he stood over her for a while, watching her vain attempts to cut the ropes with her teeth.

"Yes, you're a beauty," he finally said. "You're certainly a beauty. I guess we'll just have to take you home with us as a souvenir of the trip."

***************************************************************** Vol. XXIII December 1910 No. 6

THE WOMEN OF TO-MORROW {page 767-777 part 4.}