278 THE MINDS AND MANNERS 



savagely and licking their lips wherever a claw had drawn 

 blood. 



Of all the wild animals that are preyed upon by lions, 

 tigers, leopards, jaguars, and pumas, only half a dozen species 

 do anything more than struggle to escape. The gaur and the 

 wild buffalo of India are sufficiently vindictive in dealing with 

 a human hunter whose aim is not straight, but both fly before 

 the tiger, and count themselves lucky when they can escape 

 with nothing worse to show than a collection of long slits 

 on then* sides and hind quarters made by his knife-like claws. 

 They do not care to return to do battle for the sake of revenge, 

 and seek to put the widest possible stretch of jungle between 

 themselves and^their dreaded enemy. 



The same is true of the African buffalo and the lion. As 

 to the antelopes of Africa and the deer of India, what can they 

 do but make a desperate effort to escape, and fly like the wind 

 whenever they succeed? Of course many of these defenseless 

 animals make a gallant struggle for their lives, and not a few 

 succeed in throwing off their assailants and escaping. Even 

 domestic cattle sometimes return to the hill country villages 

 of southern India bearing claw marks on their sides usually 

 the work of young tigers, or of rheumatic old ones. 



Here is a deer and puma story. In the picturesque 

 bad-lands of Hell Creek, Montana, I saw my comrade, Laton 

 A. Huffman, kill a large mule deer buck that three months 

 previously had been attacked by a puma. From above it, the 

 great cat had leaped upon the back of the deer, and laid hold 

 with teeth and claws. In its struggle for lif e the buck either 

 leaped or fell off the edge of a perpendicular "cut bank," and 

 landed upon its back, with the puma underneath. Evidently 

 the puma was so seriously injured that it could not continue 

 the struggle; but it surely left its ear-marks. 



One ear of the buck was fearfully torn. There was a big 

 wound on the top of the neck, where the puma jaws had 

 lacerated the skin and flesh; and both hind legs had been badly 



