Outstalking a Cougar 



wind there was seemed to be drawing straight down the 

 canyon, and I felt sure he had not gotten my scent. 

 The cougar in the meantime scrambled down over the 

 edge of the cliff and disappeared in a crevice in the rocks. 



To digress again for a moment: As I look back on my 

 thoughts and behaviour of the next hour, I do not 

 wonder that the Governments of the world have found 

 from experience that boys in their teens and early 

 twenties make the best aviators. My actions after 

 seeing that cougar were not governed by reasoning 

 nor common sense. I just naturally followed some 

 primal instinct, and went after that cat. Leaving my 

 coat, lunch, and venison beside the embers of the fire, 

 guarded only by a couple of empty shells, following the 

 tradition that the smell of burnt powder will keep away 

 coyotes, I started up the side of those cliffs with the 

 cougar's lair as my objective. Coming to the mouth 

 of the crevice, which, a mere seam in the rocks ten feet 

 above my head, opened at the base to nearly twice the 

 width of a man's body, I stopped and fired a shot from 

 my forty-five into the gloom. I jumped back and 

 waited, but nothing happened. I tried it again with 

 the same result. 



Being impatient to start something, I laid my rifle 

 on the ground, loaded the empty chamber of my six- 

 gun, and with it in one hand and my hunting-knife in 

 the other, crawled into that black, spooky-looking hole 

 after that cat. I wouldn't do it to-day for a million 

 dollars ! 



I crawled along some ten or twelve feet, the hole 

 getting narrower and my head-room less as I dragged 

 myself forward. When the bulk of my body had shut 

 off the light behind me, I stopped and listened. Some- 

 where ahead in the darkness I heard the cat growling. 

 I hunched forward a few more feet, and then got sight 



5 



