28 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 



owner has lost his life an avalanche or other 

 calamity forced him to leave the locality. 



One sunny morning I set off early on snow- 

 shoes to climb high and to search for the scattered 

 cony haystacks among the rocks on the side of 

 Long's Peak. A haystack sheltered against 

 a cliff was found at timberline. By it was the 

 fresh track of a bighorn ram. He had eaten a 

 few bites of the hay. No other part of the 

 stack had been touched. Around were no cony 

 tracks in the snow. The stack had the appear- 

 ance of being incomplete. Had a lynx or other 

 prowler captured the haymaker in the un- 

 sheltered hayfield? Evidently the owner or 

 builder had not been about for weeks. A 

 slowly forming icicle almost filled the unused en- 

 trance to the cony den. 



Against the bottom of one large slide of 

 rock was a grassy meadow of a few acres which 

 during summer was covered with a luxuriant 

 growth of grass and wild flowers. Three big 

 stacks of hay stood at the bottom of this slide in 

 a stockade of big rock chunks. The hay was 

 completely sheltered from the wind; from the 

 rich near-by hayfield the stack had been built 

 large. Close to the stacks three holes de- 

 scended into cony dens. 



Had these three near neighbour conies worked 

 together in cutting, carrying, and piling these 



