IN THE PAR WEST. 95 



ward. Its companions followed, and \vc followed all, and went 

 scurrying and tumbling through the underbrush in our efforts 

 to keep up with them. They suddenly halted, and when we 

 approached they commenced barking- up a tree. We lighted 

 our torches, and swinging them in the wind, to fan the flame, 

 we espied amid the foliage of a sturdy oak the gleaming green 

 eyes of the cougar, and a tail that swung ominously to and fro 

 in measured movement. As my companion, who was armed 

 with a muzzle-loading rifle, desired to kill the animal himself, 

 lie fired first, but missed his aim, owing to the smoky glare of 

 the light, and his too great anxiety. While he was re-loading, 

 I fired at it with the shot-gun, which contained twelve buck- 

 shots in each barrel, and hitting it in the head, I brought 

 it to the ground. The fall alone from that height would 

 have killed it, but, to be quite sure, I let it have the 

 second barrel right in the eyes as soon as it reached the earth, 

 and that extracted whatever life remained in the body. My 

 companion was highly delighted at our success, as he 

 calculated that the death of the cougar would be worth at 

 least a hundred dollars a year to him, that being the value 

 of the animals which he supposed he lost annually by its 

 depredations. 



Slinging the prize across his neck, after tying its legs, 

 he led the march for home, but as the fire was still burning 

 fiercely on our left he began to get nervous about it, and 

 concluded to see what the Indians were doing, as they have 

 a habit of setting the woods on fire and destroying not only 

 valuable timber, but also endangering farm-houses. Retracing 

 our steps, we marched towards the glade, and on emerging 

 upon it were so thunderstruck at the scene before us that we 

 halted as promptly as if we had been shot, and gazed for 

 several seconds in blank amazement, first at the bonfire, and 

 then at each other. The scene was certainly enough to make 

 any pale-face halt, for directly in the middle of the glade was 

 a huge pile of blazing wood, and around this some fifty 

 or more Indians of both sexes circled and danced and 

 yelled and moaned. The shouts and bounds of the naked, 

 dark-hued men and women, the crackling of the flames, 



