Page "lore" Paragraph 965

Intuition told him, however, that she was tired and winded from the run up the Reef and would not charge, yet.

He moved forward to within thirty-five feet of her, being careful, because he knew the female is less predictable than the male.

( In the graveyard at Nairobi he had been shown the graves of thirty-four big game hunters killed hunting the animals he was attempting to lasso.

Of the thirty-four, seventeen had been killed by lions, and eleven out of the seventeen by lionesses.

) She snarled terribly but intuition told him, again, that she was bluffing, and he could see that half her attention was distracted by the dogs.

He threw the lasso.

It was falling over her head when a branch of a bush caught it and it fell in front of her on the rock.

Even then, if she took one step forward he could catch her.

But John nipped her rear end -- one lion's rear end was as good as another to John, Africa, Arizona no matter -- and she changed ends and took a swipe at John, but he ducked back.