26 Ranching in the Bad Lands. 



had been killed by a cougar; and on another occasion, 

 while out hunting over light snow, I came across a place 

 where two bucks, while fighting, had been stalked up 

 to by a cougar which pulled down one and tore him in 

 pieces. The cougar's gait is silent and stealthy to an 

 extraordinary degree ; the look of the animal when creep- 

 ing up to his prey has been wonderfully caught by the 

 sculptor, Kemeys, in his bronzes : " The Still Hunt " and 

 "The Silent Footfall." 



I have never myself killed a cougar, though my 

 brother shot one in Texas, while still-hunting some deer, 

 which the cougar itself was after. It never attacks 

 man, and even when hard pressed and wounded turns 

 to bay with extreme reluctance, and at the first chance 

 again seeks safety in flight. This was certainly not the 

 case in old times, but the nature of the animal has been so 

 changed by constant contact with rifle-bearing hunters, 

 that timidity toward them has become a hereditary trait 

 deeply engrained in its nature. When the continent was 

 first settled, and for long afterward, the cougar was quite 

 as dangerous an antagonist as the African or Indian 

 leopard, and would even attack men unprovoked. An 

 instance of this occurred in the annals of my mother's 

 family. Early in the present century one of my ancestral 

 relatives, a Georgian, moved down to the wild and almost 

 unknown country bordering on Florida. His plantation 

 was surrounded by jungles in which all kinds of wild 

 beasts swarmed. One of his negroes had a sweetheart on 

 another plantation, and in visiting her, instead of going by 

 the road he took a short cut through the swamps, heed- 



