The Journal of a Sporting Nomad 
quarters with strychnine. I wanted to kill a 
number of coyotes. For although there were 
a great many of these animals about, the diffi- 
culty of trapping them, owing to their extreme 
shyness and wariness, prevented my making any 
successful efforts to get them in that way. I 
went out one morning to a place where I had 
left one of these haunches, and found on arrival 
three dead coyotes. Having skinned them, I 
proceeded to the place where I had left the other 
remaining poison, and was horrified to find that 
it had disappeared altogether! I knew that 
some Indians had been in this particular locality 
during the last day or so, and thought that 
possibly one of them had picked up the meat to 
take back to his home. Snow had fallen heavily 
the night before I put down the bait, which I 
had cached on the side of a slope. The morning 
and previous afternoon had been warm, with > 
the result that the snow had melted completely 
away in the neighbourhood of the place where I 
had left the meat. 
I went eventually into a valley in which the 
snow still remained, striking the trail of a moun- 
tain lion, or puma, that had dragged the meat 
as far as this. My mind was immensely relieved 
when my fears concerning the Indians were 
dispersed. 
The wooded slopes of the mountains joined 
the plain within half a mile of where I stood. 
188 
