242 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
March 30, 1895. 
A VIS-A-VIS WITH A PANTHER. 
Our camp fire was blazing brightly, its hot breath 
wierdly tossing the hemlock branches above it while we 
sat around it enjoying its genial glow and the rest that 
comes so gratefully to the tired men after the fatigue and 
excitement of the chase. One and another recounted his 
experiences of the day, embellished with all the trivial in- 
cidents that only the sportsman cares to tell or listen to. 
Ned Wilmarth, the youngest of the party, had just told 
of some curious tracks that he had s^en on the sandy bank 
of the stream where he was watching a runway for deer. 
"They look like cat-tracks in shape," he said, "but are 
as large as my hand." 
Some one suggested they might have been made by a 
panther, when the conversation drifted to facts and spec- 
ulations concerning that animal, whether its oft-repeated 
scream was a myth and whether it had ever been known, 
when un wounded, to attack mail. 
"Well," said Captain Burton, the most experienced 
hunter of the party except the guide, "I cannot say posi- 
tively that a panther will attack a man unprovoked, 
though I thought one day I was about to have it proved 
to me that he would." 
There was a unanimous call for the story of this expe- 
rience, and a general stir of interest as the captain 
knocked the ashes from his pipe and settled himself com- 
fortably to tell it. 
"You may not think it worth hearing, since I am here 
to tell it, but the way of it was this: 
It was a hot, droughty day in September when I was 
hunting partridges. I was having such poor luck that 
when I had got two birds I was so thirsty and tired, I was 
glad enough to come to a brook whose current, shrunken 
as it was by the drought, yet ran cool in the thick shade 
of the evergreens that clothed its banks. 
"I took a good draught from a rocky basin and sat 
down on a mossy log to rest and smoke. But I was 
cheated of perfect rest in spite of the refreshing coolness 
and the softness of my seat, for I had scarcely taken the 
first whiff at my pipe when I began to feel an unaccount- 
able uneasiness, a dread of some impending evil, an oppres- 
sive sense of some unseen, baleful presence. 
"I suppose you have all experienced the same feelings 
and generally found them quite unfounded in anything 
tangible. No calamity befel you, no evil presence mani- 
fested itself before you. 1 recollected such impressions of 
my own, and argued with myself that these were as base - 
less. 
"I scanned the thickets all about me, and listened in- 
tently. Not an animate object was visible, not a sound 
was to be heard but the monotonous trickle of the atten- 
uated brook and the occasional stir of the almost stagnant 
air among the tree-tops. In spite of these proofs of its 
causelessness, I couldn't banish uneasiness and was 
strongly impelled to leave a place that seemed pervaded 
with an evil atmosphere. 
"Ashamed to yield to so cowardly an impulse, and to 
confess myself uuable to cope with mere nervousness, I 
resolved to overcome it and enjoy my promised rest and 
smoke. So I stretched myself at length on the mossy 
cushion of the log and tried to lull myself to drowsiness. 
"The soothing sound of the trickling t water and the 
cighing breeze, the lazy upward drift of the smoke that I 
watched through half-closed lids, dissolving among the 
knotted branches, were making some impression on my 
strained senses, when suddenly the monotone of the 
brook was broken by the sharp clatter of a pebble and 
the sound of quick lapping of water, coming from a little 
distance above me. 
"Springing to a sitting posture and looking in the direc- 
tion, I saw an enormous panther, not more than fifty feet 
from me. 
"My movement had evidently first disclosed me to him, 
and for a moment he regarded me with a surprise as great 
as my own, while the dribble of his interrupted draught 
dripped from his thick under lip. Then his mouth opened 
and closed as if shaping an unvoiced cry. just as you have 
seen domestic cats d.o, and then he advanced a few steps 
and crouched down, still intently regarding me and nerv- 
ously gathering his • hinder feet under him as if for a 
spring. 
"I caught up my gun without taking my eyes fiom 
him, and cocked both barrels. They were loaded with 
No. 6 shot, insignificant and ineffectual missiles against 
so formidable a beast, but they might blind him, I 
thought, if I could shoot straight and quick enough as 
he sprang. 
"And there we sat staring at each other, I doing my best 
to exert the alleged power of the human eye to quell the 
wild beast ; he evidently determined not to let a motion of 
mine escape him. 
"So we remained for what it seemed to rre an intermin- 
able time; fori was terribly afraid, though I believe I was 
cool and felt a kind of curiosity as to how the affair 
would end. 
"If I took my pipe from my mouth or brushed a fly 
from my face, his eyes followed every movement, while 
he kept quite motionless, except a continual slow lashing 
of his tail, while I kept my eyes as steadily on his as their 
shifting glanci s would let me. 
"I noted the shadows slowly lengtnening on the pebble 
bed of the shrunken brook and wondered if the panther 
had a purpose of holding me at bay till nightfall put me 
at his mercy. 
"Then a partridge came hurtling past me from beyond 
the position of my unpleasant vis-a-vis, evidently in 
affrighted flight. I could see out of the corner of my 
left eye that the bird offered a beautiful cross shot as he 
went past me. Then came another and another in similar 
startled flight. Tnen a hare scurried by, and a panting 
woodchuck came snuffing down the bed of the brook 
without heeding me, though he passed within reach of 
my gun-barrels. 
"I was confusedly speculating on the cause of this 
generally alarm of the wood folk when the riddle was 
solved by a strong smell of smoke drifting into my face 
with the freshening breeze. The woods were on fire, 
and the flames were sweeping down upon me! 
' 'I was conscious of some satisfaction in the thought 
that they must first reach my unwelcome visitor. Almost 
at the same moment he seemed to become aware of the 
common danger. He cast a quick glance behind him, an- 
other on me and arose to his feet with the lithe, instanta- 
neous movement of the cat kind. He looked behind him 
again, and then with constant sidelong regard of me, be- 
gan to move slowly away, well to one side of me, just as 
you have seen a tom-cat retire from the bloodless en- 
counter of brag and bluster. So he slid deviously out of 
sight, but had hardly disappeared when I heard him re- 
treating with long, rapid leaps. 
"I lost no time in following his example to the best of 
my ability. I heard the flames roaring and crackling be- 
hind me and felt their hot breath on my neck as I ran 
down the brook at the best speed I could make. Half 
an hour later I was safe in the midst of cleared fields." 
"ril bet a cooky he wouldn't never ha' teched ye of 
there hedn't ben no fire," said our guide, poking a long 
splinter into the fire to get a light for his pipe. 
"Considering the stake you wager," the Captain said 
when he had lighted his pipe with the same torch, "I 
don't care to take the bet and have it decided by my own 
experience." Rowland E. Robinson. 
Ferrisbtjrgh, Vermont. 
rang out clearly and noisily as she pawed away the snow, 
searching out the^wild pea-vine, of which all horses in the 
West are so fond. 
As old Joe drained the last drop from his second cup of 
coffee (a miner's pint tin cup) he wiped off his bushy 
beard, and with a deep grunt of satisfaction said, "Wall, 
my boy, I'm jist as satisfied as if I had eat a square meal, 
and now I'll smoke." 
GLIMPSES OF CAMP LIFE. 
IN THREE PARTS— PART HI. 
Camping in the^snow is not always pleasant, but some 
times one "strikes it rich," to use a miner's phrase. 
One day, nearly the first of December, the writer and a 
friend started from a ranc he on the South Boise for a trip 
back into the mountains for the express purpose of get- 
ting a big buck. The weather was threatening, and a big 
snow storm was looked for at any time. 
It was a good day's trail to our proposed camp, and 
long before w'e made it, the snow fell fast. It was not 
cold, so beyond making it wet and disagreeable we got 
along very well, but the higher we climbed the more 
snow we encountered, and as evening came it was "get- 
ting right smart deep, ' ' as Joe said. We were not sorry 
About forty miles north of the short-line branch of the 
U. P. R. R. lie two sections of rolling country, divided by 
the South Boise River, known as East and West "High 
Prairie." The * 'Little Camas" prairie lies south of this, and 
the "Big Camas" to the east. This is a fine country to 
hunt deer in late in the fall, after they have been driven 
out of the high mountains by the snow, and it is quite 
the custom of the ranchers and miners above to wait un- 
til the deer land up and get onto the high prairies and in 
the country adjacent, to go and kill their winter's supply 
of meat. 
The country is quite accessible, and one can get in with 
team and wagon ; and it is also an easy country to hunt 
over, compared with the higher mountains, there being 
little timber and not at so great an altitude. 
Late one November, a party of five of us left a ranche 
on the South Boise for Fall Creek, which flows into the 
river from west High Prairie. As usual, when a party is 
made up indiscriminately at a ranche, everyone wants to 
go and some go whom you prefer to leave, and you al- 
ways get a late start. It ' was, therefore, about dusk 
when we had covered the twenty-five miles we had to 
travel, and the snow was falling fast in great flakes, 
which melted nearly as fast as they fell, making every- 
thing damp and uncomfortable. It was not a pleasant 
prospect for a camp, but we had about concluded to stop, 
as the lava rocks made it very bad going for the team, 
when one of the party happened to think that he had 
heard there was an old cabin somewhere below Fall 
Creek, and he thought that if we could get to it it would 
beat a camp in the snow. So two of us, who were on 
horseback, started on, and. after a brisk ride of a mile, 
found the cabin. It leaked some and there was ho win- 
GLIMPSES OF CAMP LIFE. 
On Deer Creek in the Snow. Photo by F. F. Friabie. 
to mount the last divide, between the waters of Grouse 
and Deer Creeks, and though we sighted a band of four 
deer, we traveled on to make camp before dark. Deer 
tracks were all about us as plentiful as sheep tracks in a 
pasture lot, and we hugged ourselves in joy to think we 
had got up there before the snow had driven the deer 
lower. 
We were just going down the last hill to the little val- 
ley where we would camp, when up jumped three deer, 
two full grown fawns and a doe. Some pretty shooting 
and chasing of pack horses kept us out until the winter 
evening was upon us, but we got all three of the deei, so 
we felt happy in spite of the cold, fast falling snow and 
general gloom. 
Imagine, kind reader, you who have looked upon such 
scenes, a dark winter evening, a snow-covered mountain 
country, with the pines and firs looking like great monu- 
ments "of white, a little desolate valley and a something 
that from the river looked like a snow drift, and from 
the front, like a dark hole, and two tired and wet men, 
with four ditto forlorn looking "cayuses" just rounding 
to, in front of such a den. Nothing very cheerful 
about that, methinks I hear you say. But wait; gaze on 
this same scene an hour afterward. A bright, blazing, 
huge camp fire, throwing its light away back into the 
jack pines, making the interior of the den as light as day, 
and reflecting back heat enough to enable the hunters to 
discard their coats, though the temperature was below 
freezing in the open, for it had grown very cold. 
"Spread out on a canvas pack cover was a simple— but 
to the hungry men, a very satisfying supper, 'smoking 
hot. Fresh biscuit, fawn steaks, smothered in onions, 
fried "spuds," (potatoes) Java coffee (best brand from 
home) and to wind up, some California honey, with 
ranche butter, for the hot biscuit. And best of all, a 
good healthy mountain appetite, than which no better 
sauce can be found in the wide world. 
We took our ease as we feasted on the good fare, and 
watched the snowflakes fall and melt, sputtering away in 
the blazing log fire. We could ever and anon catch a 
glimpse of the white form of old Dick, (Joe's saddle 
orse) through the jack pines, and the bell on the mare 
dow, but it had a big stone fire-place where we could build 
a rousing fire and was a fair refuge from the storm. 
While one man went back to pilot the outfit, the other 
hunted up some dry stuff and started a fire Soon all had 
come in, and each man busied himself getting camp in 
shape. Horses were unhitched and hobbled, bells put on 
and then they were turned loose. Firewood was brought 
by two of the boys, who found a dead pine near by and 
felled it, dragging huge loads into camp with a rope 
round a saddle horn on one of the cayuses. Supper was 
cooked on the fire in the great chimney and soon dis- 
patched, and then the fun began. 
One of the outfit was a chap who had tramped up into 
the mountains in the spring and had 'worked on the 
ranche all summer. According to his own story, he had 
tramped all over the country, and the tales he told were 
at least entertaining, if not instructive. The rest of the 
boys were of a different stamp, but they liked to get 
"Big Charley" talking and they did it. He could talk 
and eat, but was no hunter. "Could not hit a flock of 
barns," as one of the boys said, and he confessed that he 
shut his eyes when he pulled the trigger. The next day 
Charley proved that this must be so, for he shot five 
shots at a lynx which lay dead, ( having been killed by one 
of the party) within twenty feet of him, and never 
touched it. The boys all warned him that if he went 
out with them and pointed his rifle in their direction they 
would shoot him. 
Our hunt at Fall Creek was a short one, but we had 
some fun. Five deer and a lynx in less than two days' 
actual hunting was not bad. 
I once spent a few days with a single companion in a 
charming spot near Bonaparte mines, Idaho, where deer 
were fairly plenty, and the weather was perfection. It 
was in September, that most charming month of the year 
in the mountains, when berries are ripe and game is ready 
for the hunter. The cold snows and storms of the later 
autumn have not come, the aim shines brightly every 
day, the air is crisp, cool and exhilarating, especially in 
the morning and evening, and one feels a joy in being 
alive. 
