older relative, it
places more trust in its claws and less in its teeth.

Though the cougar prefers woodland, it is not necessarily a beast of the
dense forests only; for it is found in all the plains country, living in
the scanty timber belts which fringe the streams, or among the patches
of brush in the Bad Lands. The persecution of hunters however always
tends to drive it into the most thickly wooded and broken fastnesses of
the mountains. The she has from one to three kittens, brought forth in a
cave or a secluded lair, under a dead log or in very thick brush. It
is said that the old he's kill the small male kittens when they get
a chance. They certainly at times during the breeding season fight
desperately among themselves. Cougars are very solitary beasts; it is
rare to see more than one at a time, and then only a mother and young,
or a mated male and female. While she has kittens, the mother is doubly
destructive to game. The young begin to kill for themselves very early.
The first fall, after they are born, they attack large game, and from
ignorance are bolder in making their attacks than their parents; but
they are clumsy and often let the prey escape. Like all cats, cougars
are comparatively easy to trap, much more so than beasts of the dog
kind, such as the fox and wolf.

They are silent animals; but old hunters say that at mating time the
males call loudly, while the females have a very distinct answer. They
are also sometimes noisy at other seasons. I am not sure that I have
ever heard one; but one night, while camped in a heavily timbered coulie
near Kildeer Mountains, where, as their footprints showed, the beasts
were plentiful, I twice heard a loud, wailing scream ringing through the
impenetrable gloom which shrouded the hills around us. My companion, an
old plainsman, said that this was the cry of the cougar prowling for its
prey. Certainly no man could well listen to a stranger and wilder sound.

Ordinarily the rifleman is in no danger from a hunted cougar; the
beast's one idea seems to be flight, and even if its assailant is very
close, it rarely charges if there is any chance for escape. Yet there
are occasions when it will show fight. In the spring of 1890, a man with
whom I had more than once worked on the round-up--though I never knew
his name--was badly mauled by a cougar near my ranch. He was hunting
with a companion and they unexpectedly came on the cougar on a shelf of
sandstone above their