OUTDOOR PASTIMES OF 

 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



CHAPTER I 



ni^ 



WITH THE COUGAR HOUNDS 



IN January, 1901, I started on a five weeks' cougar 

 hunt from Meeker in Northwest Colorado. My com- 

 panions were Mr. Philip B. Stewart and Dr. Gerald 

 Webb, of Colorado Springs; Stewart was the captain of 

 the victorious Yale nine of '86. We reached Meeker on 

 January nth, after a forty mile drive from the railroad, 

 through the bitter winter weather ; it was eighteen degrees 

 below zero when we started. At Meeker we met John 

 B. Goff, the hunter, and left town the next morning on 

 horseback for his ranch, our hunting beginning that same 

 afternoon, when after a brisk run our dogs treed a bobcat. 

 After a fortnight Stewart and Webb returned, Goff and 

 I staying out three weeks longer. We did not have to 

 camp out, thanks to the warm-hearted hospitality of the 

 proprietor and manager of the Keystone Ranch, and of 

 the Mathes Brothers and Judge Foreman, both of whose 

 ranches I also visited. The five weeks were spent hunt- 

 ing north of the White River, most of the time in the 

 neighborhood of Coyote Basin and Colorow Mountain. 

 In midwinter, hunting on horseback in the Rockies is 



