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 
