A COLORADO BEAR HUNT 95 



and crossed the creek. Soon afterward we saw the cat 

 ahead of them. For the moment it threw them off the 

 track by making a circle and galloping around close to 

 the rearmost hounds. It then made for the creek bottom, 

 where it climbed to the top of a tall aspen. The hounds 

 soon picked up the trail again, and followed it full cry; 

 but unfortunately just before they reached where it had 

 treed they ran on to a porcupine. When we reached the 

 foot of the aspen, in the top of which the bobcat crouched, 

 with most of the pack baying beneath, we found the por- 

 cupine dead and half a dozen dogs with their muzzles 

 and throats filled full of quills. Before doing anything 

 with the cat it was necessary to take these quills out. One 

 of the terriers, which always found porcupines an irre- 

 sistible attraction, was a really extraordinary sight, so 

 thickly were the quills studded over his face and chest. 

 But a big hound was in even worse condition; the quills 

 were stuck in abundance into his nose, lips, cheeks, and 

 tongue, and in the roof of his mouth they were almost 

 as thick as bristles in a brush. Only by use of pincers was 

 it possible to rid these two dogs of the quills, and it was 

 a long and bloody job. The others had suffered less. 



The dogs seemed to have no sympathy with one an- 

 other, and apparently all that the rest of the pack felt was 

 that they were kept a long time waiting for the cat. They 

 never stopped baying for a minute, and Shorty, as was his 

 habit, deliberately bit great patches of bark from the 

 aspens, to show his impatience; for the tree in which the 

 cat stood was not one which he could climb. After at- 

 tending to the porcupine dogs one of the men climbed 



