WITH THE COUGAR HOUNDS 7 



fight Jim, but in deep-toned voice appealed to heaven 

 against the unrighteousness with which he was treated; 

 and time and again such appeal caused me to sally out 

 and rescue his dinner from Jim's highway robbery. 

 Once, when Boxer was given a biscuit, which he tried 

 to bolt whole, Jim simply took his entire head in his 

 jaws, and convinced him that he had his choice of sur- 

 rendering the biscuit, or sharing its passage down Jim's 

 capacious throat. Boxer promptly gave up the biscuit, 

 then lay on his back and wailed a protest to fate his 

 voice being deep rather than loud, so that on the trail, 

 when heard at a distance, it sounded a little as if he 

 was croaking. After killing a cougar we usually cut up 

 the carcass and fed it to the dogs, if we did not expect 

 another chase that day. They devoured it eagerly, Boxer, 

 after his meal, always looking as if he had swallowed 

 a mattress. 



Next in size to Jim was Tree'em. Tree'em was a 

 good dog, but I never considered him remarkable until 

 his feat on the last day of our hunt, to be afterward 

 related. He was not a very noisy dog, and when " bark- 

 ing treed " he had a meditative way of giving single 

 barks separated by intervals of several seconds, all the 

 time gazing stolidly up at the big, sinister cat which he 

 was baying. Early in the hunt, in the course of a fight 

 with one of the cougars, he received some injury to his 

 tail, which made it hang down like a piece of old rope. 

 Apparently it hurt him a good deal and we let him rest 

 for a fortnight. This put him in great spirits and made 

 him fat and strong, but only enabled him to recover 



