Part 30

Next day we took our departure from Blocksburg and bade the Murphys an affectionate farewell. The bear we carried with us wrapped in canvas to distribute in luscious steaks to our friends in the city. The beautiful silky pelt now rests on the parlor floor of Young's home with a ferocious wide open mouth waiting to scare little children, or trip up the unwary visitor.

Since this, our maiden bear, we have had various other encounters with bruin. Once while hunting mountain lions, we came upon the body of an angora goat recently killed by a bear. The ground was covered with his ungainly footprints. We set the dogs on the scent and off they went, booming in hot pursuit. Running like wild Indians, Young and I followed by ear, bows ready strung and quivers held tightly to our sides. In less than ten minutes, we burst into a little open glade in the forest and saw up in a large madrone tree, a good-sized cinnamon bear fretfully eyeing the dogs below.

We had lost our apprehension concerning the outcome of an encounter with bears, so we coolly prepared to settle his fate. In fact, we even discussed the problem whether or not we should kill him. We were not after bears, but lions. This fellow, however, was a rogue, a killer of sheep and goats. He had repeatedly thrown our dogs off the track with his pungent scent and we were strictly within our hunting rights if we wanted him. We therefore drew our broadheads to the barb and drove two wicked shafts deep into his front. As if knocked backwards, the bear reared and threw himself down the slanting tree trunk. As he reached the ground, one of our dogs seized him by the hind leg and the two went flying past us within a couple of yards, the dog hanging on like grim death. Furiously, the other dogs followed and we leaped to the chase.

This time the course of the bear was marked by a swath of broken brush. It dashed headlong through the forest regardless of obstruction. Small trees in his way meant nothing to him; he ran over them, or if old and brittle, smashed them down. Into the densest portion of the woods he made his way. Not more than three hundred yards from the spot he started, he treed again. In an almost impenetrable thicket of small cedars, the dogs sent up their chorus of barks. I dashed in, fighting my way free from restraining limbs, the bow and quiver holding me again and again. Young got stuck and fell behind, so that I came alone upon our bear at bay. He had mounted but a short distance up a mighty oak and hung by his claws to the bark. I had run beneath him before seeing his position. Instantly I recognized the danger of the situation and backed off, away from the tree, at the same time nocking an arrow on the string. I glanced about for Young, but he was detained, so I drew the head and discharged my arrow right into the heart region of our beast, where it buried its point. Loosening his hold, the bear fell backward from the tree and landed on the nape of his neck. He was weak with mortal wounds, and even had he wanted to charge me, the combat could not have progressed far. But instantly the dogs were on him. Seizing him by the front and back legs, they dragged him around a small tree, holding him firmly in spite of his struggles, while he bawled like a lost calf. The din was terrific; snarling, snapping dogs, the crashing underbrush, and the bellowing of bear made the world hideous. It seemed that the pain of our arrows was nothing to him compared to his fear of the dogs, and when he felt himself helpless in their power, his morale was completely shattered.

It was soon over; hardly a minute elapsed before his resistless form lay still, and even the dogs knew he was dead. Poor Young arrived at this moment, having just extricated himself from the brush.

We skinned the pelt to make quivers, took his claws for decorations, and cut some sweet bear steaks from his hams; the rest we gave to the pack.

It seems a very proper thing that the service of the dogs should always be recognized promptly, that they be given their share of the spoils and that they be praised for their courage and fidelity. This makes them better hunters. Stupid men who drive off their dogs from the quarry, defer their rewards, and grudge them praise, kill the spirit of the chase within them and spoil them for work.

Hounds have the finest hunting spirit of any animal. The team work of the wolf and their intelligent use of strategy is one of the most striking evidences of community interests in animal life.

The fellowship between us and our dogs is a most satisfactory relation. Since prehistoric times, the hunter has taken advantage of the comradeship and on it rests the mutual dependence and trust of the two.

Altogether, bringing bears to bay is among the most thrilling experiences of life. It is a primitive sport and as such it stirs up in the human breast the primordial emotions of men. The sense of danger, the bodily exhaustion, the ancestral blood lust, the harkening bay of the hounds, the awe of deep-shadowed forests, and the return to an almost hand-to-claw contest with the beast, call upon a latent manhood that is fast disappearing in the process of civilization.

I hope there always will be bears to hunt and youthful adventurers to chase them.

XIII

MOUNTAIN LIONS

The cougar, panther, or mountain lion is our largest representative of the cat family. Early settlers in the Eastern States record the existence of this treacherous beast in their conquest of the forests. The cry of the "painter," as he was called, rang through the dark woods and caused many hearts to quaver and little children to run to mother's side. Once in a while stories came of human beings having met their doom at the swift stealthy leap of this dreaded beast. He was bolder then than now. Today he is not less courageous, but more cautious. He has learned the increased power of man's weapons.

Our Indians knew that he would strike, as they struck, without warning and at an advantage. It is a matter of tradition among frontiersmen that he has upon rare occasions attacked and killed bears. Even today he will attack man if provoked by hunger, and can do so with some assurance of success, the statements of certain naturalists to the contrary notwithstanding.

John Capen Adams, in his adventures, [Footnote 1: The Adventures of James Capen Adams of California, by Theodore H. Hittell.] describes such an episode. The lion in this instance sprang upon a companion, seized him by the back of the neck, and bore him to the ground. He was only saved from death by a thick buckskin collar to his coat and the ready assistance of Adams who heard the cry for help.

I know of an instance where a California lion leaped upon some bathing children and attempted to kill them, but was driven off by the heroic efforts of a young woman school teacher, who in turn died of her wounds.

Those of us who have roamed the wilds of the western country have had varying experiences with this animal, while others have lived their lives in districts undoubtedly infested with cougars and have never seen one, although nearly every mountain rancher has heard that hair-raising, almost human scream echo down the canyon. It is like the wail of a woman in pain. Penetrating and quavering, it rings out on the night gloom, and brings to the human what it must, in a similar way, bring to the lesser animals a sense of impending attack, a death warning. It is part of the system of the predatory beast that he uses fear to weaken the powers of his prey before he assaults it. Animal psychology is essentially utilitarian. Cowering, trembling, muscularly relaxed, on the verge of emotional shock, we are easier to overcome.

The cougar lives principally on deer. His kill averages more than one a week, and often we may find evidence that this murderer has wantonly slain two or three deer in a single night's expedition.

It is not his habit to lie in wait on the limb of a tree, though he often sleeps there; but he makes a stealthy approach on the unsuspecting victim, then, with a series of stupendous bounds, he throws himself upon the deer, and by his momentum bears it to the ground. Here, while he holds on with teeth and forelegs, he rips open the flank with his hind claws and immediately plunges his head into the open abdomen, where he tears the great blood vessels with his teeth and drinks its life blood.

These are facts learned from lion hunters whose observations are accurate and reliable. A lion can jump a distance greater than twenty-four feet, and has been seen to ascend at a single leap a cliff of rock eighteen feet high.

Their weight runs from one hundred to two hundred pounds, and the length from six to nine feet. The skin will stretch farther than this, but we count only the carcass from the tip of the nose to the tip of the extended tail. The speed of a lion for a short distance is greater than that of a greyhound, less than five seconds to the hundred yards.

Some observers contend that the lion never gives that blood-curdling cry assigned to him. They say he is silent, and that this classic scream is made by a lynx in the mating period. However, popular experience to the contrary seems to be too strong and counterbalances this iconoclastic opinion.

For many years, off and on, we have hunted lions, but sad to say, we have done more hunting than finding. They are a very wary creature. Practically, one never sees them unless hunting with dogs; they may be in the brush within thirty yards, but the human eye will fail to discern them.

Our camps have been robbed by lions, our horses killed by them, cattle and sheep ruthlessly murdered; lion tracks have been all about, and yet unless trapped or treed by dogs, we have never met.

Camping at the base of Pico Blanco, in Monterey County, several years ago, a lion was seen to bound across the road and follow a small band of deer. At this very spot a few seasons before one leaped upon an old mare with foal and broke her neck as she crashed through the fence and rolled down the hill. Three years later I rode the young horse. As we passed the tree from which it is thought the lion sprang, where the broken fence was still unmended, my colt jumped and reared, the memory of his fright was still vivid in his mind. Up the trail a half mile beyond we saw other fresh lion tracks. At night we camped on the ridge with our dogs in hope that our feline friend would come again.

It was too late to hunt that evening, so we turned in. Nothing happened save that in the middle of the night I was roused by the whine of our dogs, and looking up in the face of the pale moon, I saw two deer go bounding past, silhouetted like graceful phantoms across the silvered sky. They swept across the lunar disc and melted into blackness over the dark horizon.

No sound followed them, and having appeased the fretful hounds, we returned to sleep. In the morning, up the trail, there were his tracks; too wise to cross the human scent, and knowing that there are more deer in the brush, he had turned upon his course and let his quarry slip.