As we plunged and scrambled down towards the noise, one of my
companions, Phil Stewart, stopped us while he took a kodak of a rabbit
which sat unconcernedly right beside our path. Soon we saw the lion in a
treetop, with two of the dogs so high up among the branches that he was
striking at them. He was more afraid of us than of the dogs, and as soon
as he saw us he took a great flying leap and was off, the pack close
behind. In a few hundred yards they had him up another tree. Here I
could have shot him (Tony climbed almost up to him, and then fell twenty
feet out of the tree), but waited for Stewart to get a photo; and he
jumped again. This time, after a couple of hundred yards, the dogs
caught him, and a great fight followed. They could have killed him by
themselves, but he bit or clawed four of them, and for fear he might
kill one I ran in and stabbed him behind the shoulder, thrusting the
knife you loaned me right into his heart. I have always wished to kill a
cougar as I did this one, with dogs and the knife.

DOGS THAT CLIMB TREES

Keystone Ranch, Jan. 18, 1901.

DARLING LITTLE ETHEL:

I have had great fun. Most of the trip neither you nor Mother nor Sister
would enjoy; but you would all of you be immensely amused with the dogs.
There are eleven all told, but really only eight do very much hunting.
These eight are all scarred with the wounds they have received this
very week in battling with the cougars and lynxes, and they are always
threatening to fight one another; but they are as affectionate toward
men (and especially toward me, as I pet them) as our own home dogs. At
this moment a large hound and a small half-breed bull-dog, both of whom
were quite badly wounded this morning by a cougar, are shoving their
noses into my lap to be petted, and humming defiance to one another.
They are on excellent terms with the ranch cat and kittens. The
three chief fighting dogs, who do not follow the trail, are the most
affectionate of all, and, moreover, they climb trees! Yesterday we got
a big lynx in the top of a pinon tree--a low, spreading kind of
pine--about thirty feet tall. Turk, the bloodhound, followed him up, and
after much sprawling actually got to the very top, within a couple of
feet of him. Then, when the lynx was shot out of the tree, Turk, after a
short scramble, took a header down through the branches, landing with
a bounce on his back. Tony, one of the half-breed bull-dogs, takes such
headers on an