COUGAR GOES COASTING
On the rock-slide there had been not so much as a spear of grass to eat,
and the cubs trod hungrily back to timber line.
That day they spent chasing “snowshoe rabbits,” and the chase took them
back to the alpine meadow where they had watched the wapiti. There the
cubs took a nap beneath an upturned tree root, for now they loved to
sleep by day so that they could be out all night when there was so much
more going on in the woods about them.
A weird screech sounded from the dark depths of the spruces. It was
Cougar! The cry came again.
The great cat must have been trying hard to startle small game out of
its safe hiding, for, as the cubs drew nearer, they could hear the death
scream of a hare. All night Cougar hunted, while the cubs caught mice
and nibbled spruce nuts just to leeward of him. At times the lion crept
back to watch the wapiti, who again slept in a circle in the very centre
of the open space; but with the old bull on guard with his sharp antlers
Cougar kept his distance.
That night brought the first snow of the season whirling over the high
country. The cubs noticed that the wapiti grazed restlessly that morning
through the melting whiteness. By and by they began to gather into line,
with the old bull at their head, and started off along a highway marked
by the hoofs and paws of countless travellers. The trail led over the
Pass into a lower valley. The cubs followed curiously, and as the wapiti
got their scent the whole herd began to run.
Now Cougar, after having satisfied his appetite, had taken a cross-cut
to one of his haunts so as to keep his fur dry. It was a favorite haunt
because it directly overlooked all who came by on the trail from the
Pass. Just below, to the north, sloped a long snowbank left from the
winter. Stretched out in the noonday warmth of his overhanging rock
ledge, where the September sun had quickly melted off the snow, with
nothing but a twisted juniper to cut off his view, he snoozed with one
eye half open; and his pale brown coat matched the rock so perfectly
that it would have taken a sharp eye to see him.
Suddenly his ears pricked to a sound from the Pass, and his yellow eyes
narrowed as through the snow-covered notch appeared the broad antlers
and massive head and shoulders of the approaching bull wapiti. At the
same time the wind brought him unmistakable evidence that the whole herd
was following, and he could hear the approaching clap of hoof-beats on
the run.
Cougar’s muscles tensed as he drew his legs beneath him ready for a
spring. It was the chance he had been longing for. He would wait till
the old bull was safely past, and most of the cows were strung along the
narrow trail between the bull and himself. Then he would bring down his
meat.
The cubs, lumbering along well to the rear of the herd, which had
occasionally kicked a stone from the zigzag trail, arrived at the Pass
just in time to see what happened.
Cougar, flattened till his flat head seemed a part of the flat rock
itself, and even the alert old bull wouldn’t have noticed him, had he
looked at the overhanging ledge, waited till all the herd but one had
trailed on down the mountainside. As the last young wapiti came along,
Cougar leapt upon her back. The force of his spring knocked her down,
which was what he had intended. But one thing he had not planned for:
the new soft snow, covering the hard last winter’s yield, made his own
feet slip out from under him; and still gripping the wapiti, he slid
down, down, down the long snowbank, which as it grew steeper and steeper
finally sent him head over heels. The great cat hissed and yowled. He,
for one, was not fond of coasting. Fully thirty feet below he came to a
stop when he bumped into a tree trunk.
The last the cubs saw of Cougar was the great cat disgustedly biting the
snowballs from between his toes.