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. 



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