Raising my eyes for an instant from the antics of a woodchuck, they caught a movement of the tall grass caused by a crawling animal. This presently showed itself to be a mountain lion. He was slipping up on a mare and colt on the opposite edge of the meadow. The easy air that was blowing across my face—from horse to lion—had not carried a warning of my presence to either of them.

I was in Big Elk Park, seated on a rock pile, and was nearly concealed by drooping tree limbs. Behind me rose the forested Twin Peaks, and before me a ragged-edged mountain meadow lay in the forest; and across this meadow the lion crawled.

The colt kicked up its heels as it ran merry circles round its mother. This beautiful bay mare, like her colt, was born in unfenced scenes and had never felt the hand of man. She had marked capability and the keenness exacted by wilderness environment.

I watched the bending grass as the lion crept closer and closer. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of the low-held body and the alert raised head. The back-pointing, sensitive three-foot tail, as restless as an elephant’s trunk, kept swinging, twitching, and feeling. Planning before the lion was within leaping distance to warn the mare with a yell, I sat still and watched.

The well-developed and ever-alert senses of the mare—I know not whether it was scent or sight—brought a message of danger. Suddenly she struck an attitude of concentration and defiance, and the frightened colt crowded to her side. How capable and courageous she stood, with arched neck, blazing eyes, vigilant ears, and haughty tail! She pawed impatiently as the lion, now near, watchful and waiting, froze.

Suddenly he leaped forward, evidently hoping to stampede both animals and probably to seize the separated colt. Instantly the mother wheeled, and her outkicking heels narrowly missed the lion’s head. Next the lion made a quick side-leap to avoid being stamped beneath the mare’s swift front feet.

For half a minute the mare and lion were dodging and fighting with all their skill. A splendid picture the mare made with erect tail and arched neck as she struck and wheeled and kicked!

Again and again the lion tried to leap upon the colt; but each time the mother was between them. Then, watching his chance, he boldly leaped at the mare, endeavouring to throw a forepaw round her neck and, at the same instant, to seize and tear the throat with his savage teeth. He nearly succeeded.

With the lion clinging and tearing at her head, the audacious mare reared almost straight on her hind legs and threw herself backward. This either threw the lion off or he let go. She had her nose badly clawed and got a bite in the neck; but she was first to recover, and a kick landed upon the lion’s hip. Crippled, he struggled and hurried tumbling away into the woods, while the bleeding mare paused to breathe beside the untouched colt.

The mountain lion is called a puma, catamount, panther, painter, or cougar, and was originally found all over North America. Of course he shows variations due to local climate and food.

The lion is stealthy, exceedingly cunning, and curious in the extreme; but I am not ready, as many are, to call him cowardly. He does not have that spectacular rash bravery which dashes into the face of almost certain death; but he is courageous enough when necessity requires him to procure food or to defend himself and his kind. He simply adapts himself to conditions; and these exact extreme caution.

The mountain lion may be called sagacious rather than audacious. Settlers in his territory are aware of his presence through his hogging the wild game and his occasional or frequent killing of colts, horses, cattle, sheep, and chickens. But so seldom is he seen, or even heard, that, were it not for his tracks and the deadly evidence of his presence, his existence could not be believed.

Though I have camped in his territory for weeks at a time, and ofttimes made special efforts to see him, the number of lions I have seen—except, of course, those treed by dogs—is small.

When a mountain lion is frightened, or when pursued by dogs, he is pretty certain to take refuge in a tree. This may be a small tree or a large one. He may be out on a large limb or up in the top of the tree.

The lion is a fair runner and a good swimmer. Often he has been known to swim across lakes, or even arms of the sea, more than a mile wide. And he is an excellent tree climber, and often uses a living tree or a dead leaning one as a thoroughfare—as a part of his trail system on a steep mountain side. Twice I have seen him on a near-by limb at night watching me or my fire. Once I woke in the night and saw a lion upon two out-reaching tree limbs not more than eight feet above me. His hind feet were upon one limb, his forefeet upon a lower limb, and he was looking down, watching me curiously. He remained in this position for several minutes, then turned quietly, descended the tree on the opposite side, and walked away into the woods.

It is probable that lions mate for life. Sometimes they live year after year in the same den and prowl over the same local territory. This territory, I think, is rarely more than a few miles across; though where food is scarce or a good den not desirably located, they may cover a larger territory.

Lions commonly live in a den of their own making. This is sometimes dug in loose sand or soil where its entrance is concealed among bushes. Sometimes it is beneath a fallen log or a tree root, and in other places a semi-den, beneath rocks, is enlarged. In this den the young are born, and the old ones may use it a part of each year, and for year after year.

Though occasionally a mother lion may raise as many as five kittens, rarely does she succeed in raising more than two; and I think only two are commonly brought forth at a birth. These kittens probably remain with the mother for nearly a year, and in exceptional cases even longer. As I have seen either kittens or their tracks at every season of the year, I assume the young may be born at any time.

The mountain lion is a big-whiskered cat and has many of the traits possessed by the average cat. He weighs about one hundred and fifty pounds and is from seven to eight feet long, including a three-foot tail. He is thin and flat-sided and tawny in colour. He varies from brownish red to grayish brown. He has sharp, strong claws.

Mr. Roosevelt once offered one thousand dollars for a mountain lion skin that would measure ten feet from tip to tip. The money was never claimed. Apparently, however, in the state of Washington a hunter did succeed in capturing an old lion that weighed nearly two hundred pounds and measured ten and a half feet from tip to tip. But most lions approximate only one hundred pounds and measure possibly eight feet from tip to tip.

The lion eats almost anything. I have seen him catching mice and grasshoppers. On one occasion I was lying behind a clump of willows upon a beaver dam. Across the pond was an open grassy space. Out into this presently walked a mountain lion. For at least half an hour he amused or satisfied himself by chasing, capturing, and eating grasshoppers. He then laid down for a few minutes in the sunshine; but presently he scented something alarming and vanished into the thick pine woods.

One evening I sat watching a number of deer feeding on a terrace of a steep mountain side. Suddenly a lion leaped out, landing on the neck of one. Evidently the deer was off balance and on a steep slope. The impact of the lion knocked him over, but like a flash he was upon his feet again. Top-heavy with the lion, he slid several yards down a steep place and fell over a precipice. The lion was carried with him. I found both dead on the rocks below.

The lion is a master of woodcraft. He understands the varying sounds and silences of the forest. He either hides and lies in wait or slips unsuspected upon his victim. He slips upon game even more stealthily than man; and in choosing the spot to wait for a victim he usually chooses wisely and, alert waits, if necessary, for a prolonged time. He leaps upon the shoulders and neck of horse, deer, or sheep, and then grabs the victim’s throat in his teeth. Generally the victim quickly succumbs. If a lion or lioness misses in leaping, it commonly turns away to seek another victim. Rarely does it pursue or put up a fight.

A friend wished a small blue mule on me. It had been the man’s vacation pack animal. The mule loitered round, feeding on the abundant grass near my cabin. The first snow came. Twenty-four hours later the mule was passing a boulder near my cabin when a lion leaped upon him and throttled him. Tracks and scattered hair showed that the struggle had been intense though brief.

Not a track led to the boulder upon which the lion had lain in wait, and, as the snow had fallen twenty-four or more hours before the tragedy, he must have been there at least twenty-four hours, and he may have waited twice as long.

Another time I frightened a lion from a cliff where he was waiting for a near-by flock of bighorn sheep to come within leaping distance. Though it was nearly forty-eight hours since snow had ceased falling, not a track led to the lion’s watching place or blind.

The lion probably is the game hog of the wilds. Often I have read his red records in the snow. On one occasion he killed nine mountain sheep in one attack. He ate a few pounds of one of them and never returned to the kill. On another occasion he killed eleven domestic sheep in one night. Inside of twenty-four hours a lion killed a doe, a fawn, a porcupine, a grouse, and was making a try for a mountain sheep when I appeared on snowshoes. He seems to prefer colts or horses for food.

Mr. J. A. McGuire, editor of Outdoor Life, who has made special investigations concerning the killings of mountain lions, estimates that a lion will kill a deer every week if he has the opportunity to do so. From personal experience I have known him to kill four deer in a single week.

On one occasion, when I was hidden and watching the carcass of a deer which a lion had killed to see what carnivorous animal might come to the feast, a mountain lion walked quietly and unalertly to it and commenced to eat. After a few minutes the lion suddenly bristled up and spat in the direction from which a grizzly bear presently appeared. With terrible snarling and threatening, the lion held on to the prize until the grizzly was within a few feet. He then leaped toward the grizzly with a snarl, struck at it, and dashed into the woods. The grizzly, without even looking round to see where the lion had gone, began eating.

From many experiences I believe that much of the killing of domestic and wild animals attributed to bears is done by lions. The lion prefers warm blood and fresh meat for each meal, and will kill daily if there is opportunity. I have known bears to follow mountain lions evidently for the purpose of obtaining food. One day I came upon the recently killed carcass of a cow. Only mountain lion tracks led to it and from it. The following night I spent at a near-by ranch house, and the rancher informed me that on the previous day he had discovered a bear eating the carcass of this cow which he accused the bear of killing. The lion is a most capable raider of ranches, and colts, horses, sheep, pigs, and poultry are his prizes.

In northern New Mexico one day I saw a lion bounding across an opening carrying a tame sheep in its mouth. On another occasion I saw a lion carrying off a deer that apparently weighed much more than the lion itself. The lion appeared to have the deer by the shoulder, and it was resting on the lion’s shoulders in such a way that I do not believe it touched the ground.

I suppose when the lion makes a kill in an out-of-the-way place, where he may eat with comparative safety, he does not take the trouble to carry or to drag the victim off. Often, of course, the kill is made for the benefit of the young, and hence must be transported to the den.

It is quite true that he will sometimes wander back to his kill day after day and feast upon it. It is also true, when food is scarce, that lions will eat almost anything, even though they have nothing to do with the killing. They have been trapped at the bait that was out for bears: and so, though a lion prefers blood and warm meat, he will return to his kill to feast, or, if food is scarce, gladly eat whatever he can obtain.

From many observations I judge that after eating he prefers to lie down for a few hours in some sunny or secluded spot, or on a many-branched limb generally well up toward the top of the tree but sometimes not more than ten feet above the earth.

The lion has extreme curiosity. He will follow travellers for hours if there is opportunity to keep out of sight while doing so. Often during long snowshoe trips I have returned over the route first travelled. Lion tracks in the snow showed that I was repeatedly followed for miles. In a number of places, where I had taken a long rest, the lion had crept up close, so that he could easily watch me; and on a few occasions he must have been within a few feet of me.

While walking through a forest in the Medicine Bow Mountains I was startled and knocked down by a glancing blow of a tree limb. This limb had evidently broken off under the weight of a lion. The lion also came tumbling down but caught a claw on a limb and saved himself from striking the earth. Evidently in his curiosity to see me he had leaned out too far on a weak limb. He fled in confusion, perhaps even more frightened than myself.

The mountain lion is not ferocious. Mr. Roosevelt, in summing up its characteristics, concluded that it would be no more dangerous to sleep in woods populated with mountain lions than if they were so many ordinary cats.

In addition to years of camping in the wilds in all sorts of places and under all conditions of weather I have talked with careful frontiersmen, skillful hunters and trappers, and these people uniformly agreed with what I have found to be true—that the instances of mountain lions attacking human beings are exceedingly rare. In each of these cases the peculiar action of the lion and the comparative ineffectiveness of his attacks indicated that he was below normal mentally or nearly exhausted physically.

Two other points of agreement are: Rarely does any one under ordinary conditions see a lion; and just as rarely does one hear its call. Of the dozen or more times I have heard the screech of the lion, on three occasions there was a definite cause for the cry—on one a mother frantically sought her young, which had been carried off by a trapper; and twice the cry was a wail, in each instance given by the lion calling for its mate, recently slain by a hunter.

During the past thirty years I have investigated dozens of stories told of lions leaping upon travellers from cliffs or tree limbs, or of other stealthy attacks. When run down each of these proved to be an invention; in most cases not a lion or even lion track had been seen.

Two instances of lion attacks are worth mentioning. One night in California a lion leaped from a cliff, struck a man, knocked him down, and then ran away. Out of this incident have come numerous stories of lion ferocity. The lion was tracked, however, and the following day the pursuing hunter saw it crossing an opening. It suddenly clawed and hit at a boulder. Then, going on, it apparently ran into a tree, and fought that. As it started on the hunter shot it. This beast was badly emaciated, had a swollen face from an ulcerated tooth, and was nearly, if not entirely, blind.

Another instance apparently was of a weak-minded lion. As though to attack, it came toward a little ten-year-old girl in Idaho. She struck it over the head with a bridle she was carrying. Her brother hurried to the rescue with a willow fishing pole. Together they beat the lion off and escaped with a few bad scratches. Yet had this been a lion of average strength and braveness he must have killed or severely injured both.

The mountain lion rivals the shark, the devilfish, and the grizzly in being the cause of ferocious tales. The fact that he takes refuge on limbs as a place of lookout to watch for people or other objects, and that he frequently follows people for hours through the woods without their ever seeing him—and, I suppose, too, the very fact that he is so rarely seen—make him a sort of storm centre, as it were, for blood-curdling stories.

Through years I investigated plausible accounts of the ferocity of mountain lions. These investigations brought little information, but they did disclose the fact that there are a few types of lion tales which are told over and over again, with slight local variations. These tales commonly are without the slightest basis of fact. They are usually revamped by a clever writer, a frightened hunter, or an interesting story teller, as occasions offer. One of the commonest of the oft-told tales that have come to me through the years is as follows:

“Late Saturday evening, while Mr. and Mrs. Simpson were returning from the village through the woods, they were attacked by a half-starved mountain lion. The lion leaped out upon them from brush by the roadside and attempted to seize Mr. Simpson. Though an old man, he put up a fight, and at last beat off the lion with the butt of the buggy whip.”

Sometimes this is a family and the time of day is early morning. Sometimes the lion is ferocious instead of half-starved. Sometimes it is of enormous size. Once in a while he leaps from a cliff or an overhanging tree limb. Generally he chews and claws someone up pretty badly, and occasionally attempts to carry off one of the children.

Many times my letter addressed to one of the party attacked is returned unclaimed. Sometimes my letter to the postmaster or the sheriff of the locality is returned with the information: “No such party known.” Now and then I ask the sheriff, the postmaster, or the storekeeper some questions concerning this attack, and commonly their replies are: “It never happened”; “It’s a pipe dream”; “A pure fake”; or “Evidently whoever told you that story had one or two drinks too many.”

One day I came out of the woods in the rear of a saw-mill. I was making my way to the living room of the place, between logs and lumber piles. Right round the corner of a slab heap I caught sight of a mountain lion just as it leaped at me. It missed me intentionally, and at once wheeled and rose up to play with me. In the two or three seconds that elapsed between the time I had my first glimpse of it and when I realized it was a pet I had almost concluded that, after all, a lion may be a ferocious animal.

On one occasion, when I was on a cliff at the edge of a grassy opening, I was astonished to see a coyote trot leisurely across and just before he disappeared in the woods a lion appear on the opposite side of the opening, following contentedly along the trail of the coyote. The next day I again saw this friendly pair, but on this occasion the lion was leading and the coyote following. Afterward I saw their tracks a number of times.

Just why they were associated in this friendly manner we can only conjecture. It will be readily seen that the coyote, which has all the wisdom of a fox, might follow a game-hog lion about and thus, with little effort, get a substantial and satisfactory food supply. But why the lion should willingly associate with a coyote is not quite clear. Perhaps this association proved to be of some advantage to the lion in his killing, or it may have been just one of those peculiar, unaccounted-for attachments occasionally seen between animals.

In any discussion concerning the mountain lion, or, for that matter, any living animal, hardly can the last word be said concerning the character of the individual of the species. Individuals vary, and now and then a mountain lion, as well as a human being, shows marked and peculiar traits. These may be the result of unusual alertness and sheer curiosity, or they may be subnormal, and cruel or murderous.