Of most yearlings themselves-went in bands. They seemed tame, and we often passed close to them before they took alarm. course at that season it was against the law to kill them; and even had this not been so none of our party would have dreamed of molesting them. It was very interesting to see the way the deer got under-never over or through-the wire fences; they did not slide, but crouched, so that it was almost like crawling ; yet they hardly checked their speed. The midwinter mountain landscape was very beautiful, whether under the brilliant cluster in the cold ravines. Cottonwoods the does, yearlings, and fawns-now algrow along the stream courses, and there are occasional patches of scrub-oak and quaking asp. The entire country is taken up with cattle ranges wherever it is possible to get a sufficient water-supply, natural or artificial. Some thirty miles to the east and north the mountains rise higher, the evergreen forest becomes continuous, the snow lies deep all through the winter, and such Northern animals as the wolverene, lucivee, and snow-shoe rabbit are found This high country is the summer home of the Colorado elk, which are now rapidly becoming extinct, and of the Colorado blacktail deer, which are still very plentiful, but which, unless better protected, will follow the elk in the next decade or so. In winter both elk and deer come down to the lower country, through a part of which I made my hunting trip. We did not come across any elk, but I have never, even in the old days, seen blacktail more abundant than they were in this region. There was hardly a day that we did not see scores, and there were some days that we saw hundreds. The bucks had not lost their antlers, and were generally, but not always, found in small troops by themselves; Boxer. trees, almost hidden beneath the light, feathery masses, gave a new and strange look to the mountains, as if they were giant masses of frosted silver. Even the storms had a beauty of their own. The keen, cold air, the wonderful scenery, and the interest and excitement of the sport, made our veins thrill and beat with buoyant life. In cougar hunting the success of the hunter depends absolutely upon his hounds. As hounds that are not perfectly trained are worse than useless, this means that success depends absolutely upon the man who trains and hunts the hounds. Goff was one of the best hunters with whom I have ever been out, and he had trained his pack to a point of perfection for its special work which I have never known another such pack to reach. With the from them. By the end of the hunt both the new hound and the puppy were entirely trustworthy; of course, Goff can only keep up his pack by continually including new or young dogs with the veterans. As cougar are only plentiful where deer are infinitely more plentiful, the first requisite for good cougar hound is that it shall leave its natural prey, the deer, entirely alone. Goff's pack ran only bear, cougar, and bobcat. Under no circumstances were they ever permitted to follow elk, deer, antelope or, of course, rabbit. Nor were they allowed to follow a wolf unless it was wounded; for in such a rough country they would at once run out of sight and hearing, and moreover if they did overtake the wolf they would be so scattered as to come up singly and probably be overcome one after another. Being The biggest, and, on the whole, the most bold dogs they were always especially useful, was Jim, a very fast, powerful, and eager after wolf and coyote, and when they true dog with a great voice. When the came across the trail of either, though they animal was treed or bayed, Jim was eswould not follow it, they would usually pecially useful because he never stopped challenge loudly. If the circumstances barking; and we could only find the were such that they could overtake the hounds, when at bay, by listening for the wolf in a body, it could make no effective sound of their voices. Among the cliffs fight against them, no matter how large and powerful. On the one or two occasions when this had occurred, the pack had throttled "Isegrim" without getting a scratch. As the dogs did all the work, we naturally became extremely interested in them, and rapidly grew to know the voice, peculiarities, and special abilities of each. There were eight hounds and four fighting-dogs. The hounds were of the ordinary Eastern type, used from the Adirondacks to the Mississippi in the chase of deer and fox. Six of them were black and tan and two were mottled. They differed widely in size and voice. and precipices the pack usually ran out until one of the professional fighting-dogs spend several hours in working out a had seized. He was a great bully with track which was at least two days old. the other dogs, robbing them of their Both Boxer and Jim had enormous apfood, and yielding only to Turk. He petites. Boxer was a small dog and Jim possessed great endurance, and very stout a very large one, and as the relations of feet. the pack among themselves were those of brutal wild-beast selfishness, Boxer had to eat very quickly if he expected to get anything when Jim was around. He never ventured to fight Jim, but in deeptoned voice appealed to heaven against the unrighteousness with which he was treated; and time and again such appeal caused me to sally out and rescue his dinner from Jim's highway robbery. Once, when Boxer was given a biscuit, which he tried to bolt whole, Jim simply took his entire head in his jaws, and convinced him that he had his choice of surrendering the biscuit, or sharing its passage down Jim's capacious throat. Boxer promptly gave up the biscuit, then lay on his back and wailed a protest to fate-his voice being deep rather than On the whole the most useful dog next to Jim was old Boxer. Age had made Boxer slow, and in addition to this, the first cougar we tackled bit him through one hind leg, so that for the remainder of the trip he went on three legs, or, as Goff put it, "packed one leg"; but this seemed not to interfere with his appetite, his endurance, or his desire for the chase. Of all the dogs he was the best to puzzle out a cold trail on a bare hillside, or in any difficult place. He hardly paid any heed to the others, always insisting upon working out the trail for himself, and he never gave up. Of course, the dogs were much more apt to come upon the cold than upon the fresh trail of a cougar, and it was often necessary for them to |