. Now whatever do you-all reckon this old
tabby does? Basely deserts her offsprings without even barin' a tooth,
an' the cow-punchers takes 'em gently by their tails an' beats out
their joovenile brains. That's straight; that mother lion goes
swarmin' up the canyon like she ain't got a minute to live. An' you
can gamble the limit that where a anamile sees its children perish
without frontin' up for war, it don't possess the commonest roodiments
of sand. Sech, son, is mountain lions.

"It's one evenin' in the Red Light when Colonel Sterett, who's got
through his day's toil on that Coyote paper he's editor of, onfolds
concernin' a panther round-up which he pulls off in his yooth.

"'This panther hunt,' says Colonel Sterett, as he fills his third
tumbler, 'occurs when mighty likely I'm goin' on seventeen winters.
I'm a leader among my young companions at the time; in fact, I allers
is. An' I'm proud to say that my soopremacy that a-way is doo to the
dom'nant character of my intellects. I'm ever bright an' sparklin' as
a child, an' I recalls how my aptitoode for learnin' promotes me to be
regyarded as the smartest lad in my set. If thar's visitors, to the
school, or if the selectmen invades that academy to sort o' size us up,
the teacher allers plays me on 'em. I'd go to the front for the
outfit. Which I'm wont on sech harrowin' o'casions to recite a
ode--the teacher's done wrote it himse'f--an' which is entitled
Napoleon's Mad Career. Thar's twenty-four stanzas to it; an' while
these interlopin' selectmen sets thar lookin' owley an' sagacious, I'd
wallop loose with the twenty-four verses, stampin' up and down, an'
accompanyin' said recitations with sech a multitood of reckless
gestures, it comes plenty clost to backin' everybody plumb outen the
room. Yere's the first verse:

I'd drink an' sw'ar an' r'ar an' t'ar
An' fall down in the mud,
While the y'earth for forty miles about
Is kivered with my blood.

"'You-all can see from that speciment that our schoolmaster ain't
simply flirtin' with the muses when he originates that epic; no sir, he
means business; an' whenever I throws it into the selectmen, I does it
jestice. The trustees used to silently line out for home when I
finishes, an' never a yeep. It stuns 'em; it shore fills 'em to the
brim!

"'As I gazes r'arward,' goes on the Colonel, as by one rapt impulse he
uplifts both his eyes an' his nosepaint, 'as I gazes r'arward, I says,
on t