143 AT THE PAINTED WOODS. 
stockade remained damned up and as aconsequence, I 
made open camp on a dry knoll among the oak and box- 
elder. The water between the camp and stockade on 
account of an extreme cold snap became a solid sheet 
of ice. 
While in this camp preparing breakfast early one 
morning, I heard wrangling-like sounds in the thick 
brush above camp and not over one hundred yards away. 
The noise bore on my ears at the time as though two 
badgers or catamounts were fighting,—these animals 
being quite plentiful about there. Breakfast over, I had 
curiosity enough to go, gunin hand, to the scene of 
disturbance. On the ice lay a lay a large buck deer 
partly eaten, and apparently just killed. Around about 
him were evidence of a desperate struggle with two 
mountain lions, as the imprint in the snow by their mas- 
sive feet testified. Panther like they sprang on the 
big deer as he was crossing a narrow neck of slippery 
ice, and downed him after a hard fight. The lions sat- 
ised with their breakfast of blood and venison, had 
evidently. moved off andslunk into the thick willows 
at my approach—without a growl or show of fight. 
On a May day 1882, the writer started out from the 
Painted Woods for a few days outing, taking along a 
few traps and gun,moré for diversion than a continuance 
of a trappers life, which had lost its charm as a vocation 
many years previous, yet an impulse would occasionally 
seize me to renew fora short time a reminder of the 
earlier days upon the trap line. After spending a few 
days around Painted Woods Lake and Turtle Creek, I 
followed the river closely in its course to the northwest. 
