102 
FOREST AND STREAM 
July 27, 1912 
A WILDWOOD TRAGEDY. 
lar trapping expedition I conceived the fancy 
for testing the possibilities of the .22 rifle, with 
results that surprised myself. For trapped game 
it was as effective as anything could be after 
repeated tests upon the lives of wolf, lynx and 
coyote. The season's largest mountain lion, 
measuring over eight feet from tip to tip, was 
shot dead with the .22, and I even succeeded in 
shooting a deer with it, though I had some 
doubts of the result as I fired. The prize, a fine 
fat buck, ran only a little way after the ball 
reached him and proved the deadly merits of 
the .22 so conclusively that I became fired with 
the determination to kill a bear with it before 
breaking camp. I’ll always be positive I could 
have done so, too, if every bear hadn’t wisely 
taken warning and stayed out of sight and range. 
Of all the fur game in the Santa Ritas, none 
was more interesting than the wolves and 
coyotes. As a rule, they are very cunning and 
hard to trap, and many a ruse was necessary 
to entice them into reach of the jaws of those 
No. 4 s. One young fellow, however, was cap¬ 
tured the first night one trap was baited, but 
his easy defeat was probably due to the over¬ 
selfconfidence of youth and his ignorance of 
traps and trapping ways, not to any remarkable 
huntsman’s skill and craft of the trapper. One 
trap, baited for coyotes, caught a lynx which 
was easily dispatched with the .22. 
One day late in the season as I was gather¬ 
ing up and bringing in the traps, preparatory to 
breaking camp, I found a large gray wolf in one 
of them. He was very savage, poor beast, as 
any of us no doubt would be, with a foot crushed 
in a steel vise. He tried his best to get his 
fangs at the throats of the two dogs following 
at my heels, lying very quiet with eyes half 
closed and head averted until the dogs, think¬ 
ing him helpless and harmless, approached to 
investigate when, presto! he leaped like a flash 
into the face of his foes, who promptly fled with 
startled yelps. The performance constituted a 
series of short, rapidly changing scenes in a 
simple, wildwood tragedy often seen on the trap¬ 
per’s stage, with the curtain dropping at last 
on a silent furry shape beside a boulder against 
which a rifle leaned. Those particular dogs 
would fight a coyote, but a wolf was too much 
for them. 
The dogs, while sources of companionship in 
those long winter days in the mountains, were like¬ 
wise often sources of aggravation. They were only 
common curs and little more than pups, with the 
usual puppyish propensities for destruction which 
they found it possible to exercise even in a bare 
tent surrounded by trees and rocks, and which, 
upon at least one occasion came near costing them 
their lives. Our only visitors were now and then a 
passing cowboy or wandering Mexican, while 
reading matter and mail were rarities, so when 
by happy chance a large illustrated newspaper 
of fairly late’date was left in camp, it is easily 
believed that I regarded it as a treasure and 
anticipated great joy in its perusal. But before 
the chance came for reading, I left camp one 
day, carelessly leaving that precious paper lying 
unprotected and in plain sight. While I was 
gone, those curs went inside the tent, spied the 
paper, and promptly tore it up, the scattered 
fragments littering the premises, being the first 
thing to meet my eyes when I returned, while 
the pups wore a very beaming and satisfied ex¬ 
pression much like that worn by youngsters just 
returned from a Sunday school picnic. If I had 
been certain which pup was leader in-the fray, I 
think I should have shot him then and there, 
but there was no way of telling where the guilt 
belonged, and I rather hated to kill both dogs 
to make sure of getting the right one, so I let 
them off. They did it just for fun, anyway, and 
by the way paper was scattered they certainly 
must have had a high old time. After that 
when I left the tent I put any papers I wanted 
into the middle of my bed under the blankets, 
where the pups could not get at them. 
The Santa Ritas, in the vicinity of camp, 
was an excellent deer country, and there was 
one spot where a high rocky promontory jutted 
out into a sea of juniper and dwarf oak above 
an old ditch, which was their special haunt. The 
ditch once played its part in hydraulic mining, 
but the claim was long since abandoned. A 
plentiful supply of water, however, filled the 
ditch in the rainy season, while above its head 
a water hole fed by a spring and furnishing a 
goodly drinking place, may have helped account 
for the presence of the deer in such numbers. 
One day I shot a small buck here, as it ran 
along the mountain side about 150 yards away 
hanging it up above a clump of bear grass in 
an oak sapling near where it fell, while I went 
for a horse to pack it into camp. Then I de¬ 
cided I’d like a snapshot before moving my 
game, so left it hanging for suitable light. Long 
waiting for such a purpose would seem not to 
have been necessary in that land of almost per¬ 
petual sunshine and clear air, but on this occas¬ 
ion one of the Santa Ritas’ rare spells of dark 
cloudy weather immediately set in, and that deer 
was forced to hang in the oak sapling till nearly 
spoiled, winter though it was, before I succeeded 
in getting the picture I wanted. 
Not thinking it would rain very soon I went 
to look at my traps, one of those wet dark morn¬ 
ings. with the result that I was caught in a 
regular downpour. It wasn’t very comfortable 
without a slicker, for up in the mountains where 
I was the rain was about half snow, and the 
wind blew a gale down the canons. I was sup¬ 
posed to be wearing a waterproof coat, but it 
turned water about like a barley sack, and I 
was soaked to the skin and about half frozen 
when I got back to camp about 1 o’clock in the 
afternoon. But cheering myself with the thought 
that I’d be warm and comfortable again as soon 
as I got into dry clothes and was sheltered from 
the wind, I closed up the tent and began to make 
the change of raiment. 
Well, I had successfully reached the low tide 
stage in the disrobing process, and had on about 
as near nothing in the shape of clothes as I 
could go, when zizz! flop! down came one end 
of the tent. Rain had softened the ground and 
a peg had pulled up, letting a corner of the 
A FEW PELTS. 
