and Bag a Mountain Lion
That storm lasted two days, and it brought the snow to the valley, laid
at least sixteen inches of it on the level in the woods, and swept it
across Lake McDermott against the hotel, till the drift reached the top
of the first story. As soon as it stopped, the scouts and Mills were out
on their snow-shoes, tracking through the woods.
"I want to find out where the deer yards are going to be this winter,"
the Ranger said. "We'll want to know, so we can keep an eye on them, for
lions or wolves, and protect the herds if we can."
"What's a deer yard?" the boys asked.
"Big game, especially in winter, don't travel very much," the Ranger
answered. "They pick out some place where the feeding is good, and learn
to know it well, not only where to get food, but where to turn quick and
hide from enemies. When winter and deep snow come, they begin packing
down the snow with their hoofs in a sort of yard--moose, deer, and
sometimes even sheep do this--and as the snow grows deeper, their
packing raises them higher and higher up, so they can feed on taller and
taller bushes, and even finally get up to the limbs of trees."
Mills decided that the protected southwestern slopes of the mountain
along which the trail winds to Iceberg Lake was a likely field, so the
party split up, and each one went his own way through the woods and
across the open parks, looking for tracks, and following any that he
discovered. They were to meet at one o'clock on the shore of the lake.
Joe was soon out of sight and sound of the others, and as he was lowest
down, close to the brook at the bottom of the canyon, he was also in the
thickest woods, where the fir-trees, covered with snow like Christmas
cards, shook their "frosty pepper" into his nose as he pushed through.
The brook was partially frozen, and he often found it easiest to walk on
the snowy edge. Presently he came on deer tracks leading into the open
water, and not emerging. The deer had walked up-stream, in the water,
evidently--several of them, and recently. He hurried on, beside the
brook, and suddenly, rounding a little cover of pines, came full on a
herd of five, walking in the water. He had not heard them, because of
the gurgle of the brook, nor they him. He stopped dead in his tracks and
watched them a second, before they got his scent, or in some other way
detected him, and turned to look. He did not quite know what to do, but
the deer quickly decided. They stepped out of the brook and into the
woods, as if to let him pass. He went on, and looked back. The deer had
walked into the brook again, and were slowly coming on, browsing on
overhanging shrubs as they came.
So Joe moved some distance from the bank, and then followed them. After
half a mile, they left the stream and entered a thick, small wood where,
just outside, was long, dried grass under the snow. He saw that they had
been here before, pawing away the snow to eat this hay. He followed into
the wood, stampeding them out on the farther side, and found already the
signs that they had begun to stamp down paths through their "yard."
Walking around the grove, he looked for tracks of coyotes or lions, but
there was nothing but the track of a snow-shoe rabbit. The deer, so far,
were safe. Indeed, they even now stood about three hundred yards away,
watching him with alert curiosity, their heads raised, a pretty picture
over the white snow.
He carefully took note of the spot, and hurried on to report. Tom and
the Ranger reached the lake about the time he did. The Ranger had found
a yard, also, and Tom had found a mink track, and seen a snow-shoe
rabbit, in his white winter dress.
They built a fire on the snow, beside the white snow-field which was the
lake (the water was now frozen solid), and as they made their tea, they
watched a herd of goats low down on the cliff that Tom had climbed,
evidently quite content up there, on the ledges too steep for snow to
cling, and finding something to eat.
"It must be dry picking," Tom declared. "Why, there was little enough in
summer."
"And no tin cans," Joe laughed. "You might have left 'em a few tin cans,
Tom, when you climbed the wall."
"Never thought of it," Tom answered, "and now it's too slippery."
From then on it became the scouts' almost daily task--or, rather,
pleasure--to visit the deer yards to see how the herds were getting on.
There were five deer in one yard, and eleven in the other, and before
long they got so used to the boys that if they happened to be "at home,"
as Joe put it, they would hardly go a hundred yards away while the
scouts inspected their methods of feeding, looked for enemy tracks, and
sometimes left bundles of hay on the tramped snow--hay which Joe had
discovered he could dig out in a sheltered spot near the chalets. It
wasn't much, but it served to make the deer tamer.
Often, now, the scouts came on their skis, for two more storms had put
three feet of snow on the ground, and it elevated them above the
underbrush. The run home was thrilling, with long, fast slides down open
parks and hard, Telemark stems at the bottom to keep from crashing into
trees or rocks. But they couldn't get the Ranger on skis.
"No, sir!" he said. "You boys know how, and can keep from breaking your
necks. But I'm too old to learn."
It was the day after Thanksgiving, when Joe, true to his word, had
killed a hen and cooked the nearest thing he could to a real New England
Thanksgiving dinner, that he and Tom, visiting the first of their yards
early in the morning, came upon a tragedy.
There were no deer in sight as they approached, and on entering the
packed path under the trees they heard no sounds. Pushing on, they came
suddenly upon all five beautiful creatures, lying dead on the snow!
There was blood on the snow, too, and one or two bodies had been
somewhat eaten. But three of them had merely been killed wantonly, and
not eaten at all.
The boys were furious. They cocked their rifles, and began a rapid,
angry search for tracks. Yes--there they were--big, catlike paw tracks!
The lion had crouched in the evergreens, sneaked up in the night when
the herd were huddled close for mutual warmth, and laid them all low!
They circled the grove till they found the tracks leading away, and
followed them as fast as they could. But, being on skis, they were soon
baffled, as the lion had made at once for the steep, rocky cliffs. So
they rushed to the other yard. Here the herd had not been disturbed.
They were all browsing on a new path they had packed among some willows.
"Come," Joe cried. "Back to see Mills and find out what to do! The old
lion may get the other herd to-night."
That night there was a moon, and the Ranger and the boys, clad in all
their thickest clothes, with four pairs of woollen socks in their big,
easy moccasins, with sweaters, fur coats, fleece-lined mittens and
bearskin helmets, advanced on snow-shoes up the valley.
"The lion may come back to the carcases, or wolves may scent 'em and
come," Mills said, "or he may attack the other herd. Then, again, he may
do nothing, and we'll have to watch every night for a week. You two take
the dead herd, and I'll watch the other. Approach it up wind--don't get
on the windward side at all, and if you can find a good rest in a tree,
get up in that, with a clear view of the opening. Let the lion get in
close before you fire, and let him have it in the heart and head. There
ought to be light enough to-night. Better have your guns in rest,
pointed at the carcases, so you won't have to make any noise lifting
'em."
The Ranger and the scouts now separated, and Joe and Tom, making a wide
circle to get sharp to leeward of the yard, moved silently over the deep
snow, in the cold, clear, almost Arctic moonlight, with the great peaks
of the Divide rising up like silvery ghosts far overhead. There was no
noise in all the world, and no living thing except themselves, except
once when a startled snow-shoe rabbit leaped across an opening, white as
the snow he was half wallowing in.
"Say, this is spooky!" Joe whispered.
"You bet," Tom whispered back. "The little old electric lights in
Southmead Main Street are some way off!"
They drew near the wood where the yard was, and crept stealthily into
the dark shadows of the pines. The dead deer lay in a tiny opening, five
black objects on the moonlit snow. The boys, still keeping down wind,
each picked out a tree, and with their rifles carefully locked, climbed
up through the scratching, snowy branches till they could work into some
kind of a seat, and get their guns pointed out, with an opening along
the barrel to sight.
"Say, I hope the old lion don't take too long," Tom whispered. "My
seat's about two inches wide, and sharp on top."
"Gosh, I'd sit on a needle all night to save those other deer," Joe
answered. "But don't talk. He may be coming any minute."
In cold and silence, they waited. There wasn't a sound, except now and
then a muffled groan or creak of a tree limb, as one or the other of the
boys had to shift his position. It grew later and later. Joe's eyes
ached with watching the five black objects on the snow, and the patch of
white moonlight around them. They ached, and would close. He was
bitterly cold, too. He did not know whether he would be able to pull the
trigger if the lion came, or pry his lids wide enough apart to see the
sights. Every time he tried to sight the gun now, it was just a blur of
shining blackness. And he knew Tom must be feeling the same way. Mills
certainly had not fired at anything--they could have heard a rifle shot
for ten miles in that deadly still Arctic hush.
Then, so suddenly it almost made him fall off his branch, something dark
and long and lean came sneaking into the patch of moonlight. It was the
lion, its paws sinking down, its body crouched over them, till it seemed
to creep like a snake. In this ghostly light, it looked about ten feet
long, and Joe suddenly felt hot blood go through his half-frozen veins.
The lion gave a low, angry snarl, and stopped dead about three feet from
the body of a deer, raising its head a little. Evidently it had heard
Joe or Tom moving his rifle barrel to sight. But he had no time to
retreat. Almost as one shot, the two guns blazed, with two flashes of
red out of the evergreens, and a report that seemed to shatter the cold
night silence.
The dark form of the lion gave a leap into the air, and landed kicking
in the snow.
At the same instant two figures literally fell out of the trees, and
rushed toward it, going in up to their waists, for neither waited to put
on his snow-shoes again.
Tom was the first near it.
"Look out!" Joe yelled. "He's not dead! He may come at you!"
But Tom had his gun up, and at pointblank range, with his sights in full
moonlight, he deliberately took aim, and fired again, at the lion's
heart.
The body gave a last kick, and fell on its side, stone dead, its blood
slowly running out on the snow.
"_He'll_ never kill any more deer!" Tom cried.
They turned the lion over, and examined it. One bullet had hit him in
the front leg, one in the jaw, shattering it, and entering its throat.
But which shot was whose, nobody could say.
"I guess it was yours that got his head," Tom declared, "'cause I was so
sleepy I couldn't see to sight."
"My hands were so cold, I almost couldn't pull the trigger, so it must
have been yours," Joe answered.
"After you, my dear Alphonse," Tom laughed. "Anyhow, we both hit him,
and that's some shooting at a hundred feet, in the middle of the night,
even if it is moonlight. We better get our snow-shoes on, and drag him
home. Wonder if Mr. Mills will come, or stick it out at the other yard?"
"I bet he comes," said Joe. "He must have heard us fire."
They made an improvised sledge of a big, broken pine bough, to keep the
body up on top of the snow, and were tying it on to this with their
handkerchiefs knotted around the feet, when they heard a far call.
"He's coming!" said Joe, and making his hands into a trumpet, he
answered the call.
They had the body out of the yard, and were crossing an open park with
it, tugging hard, when the Ranger's halloo sounded much nearer, and
shortly after he appeared in the moonlight, coming fast.
"You got him, eh?" he said. "That's good work. I heard your two shots,
and then one more. That was to finish him at close range, I bet."
"You win," said the boys. "Gee, but he's heavy to drag."
"That's a bum sled," the Ranger laughed. "Either of you got your axe
on?"
"No, we haven't," the boys said.
"I'll find a fallen pole, then. Drag him along to the next stand."
The Ranger went ahead, and found a small fallen tree from which he broke
the dead branches and made a pole. Slipping this between the lion's paws
(which were knotted together with handkerchiefs) he picked up one end
and Tom the other, the lion hanging down between them. Joe took the
rifles, and they started home.
The moon was setting behind the Divide and the world growing dark under
the frosty stars as they neared the cabin. Once inside, the boys got a
rule, and ran back to measure their prey. He was exactly eight feet
long, with three feet more of tail, and by lantern light they could see
his yellowish-brown color, his gray face and dirty white belly. He
looked like some gigantic, elongated house cat.
"Is that what used to be all over the country, and was called a
panther?" Joe asked.
"I suppose it is," the Ranger said. "Probably this type that lives in
the Rocky Mountains looks a bit different, but it's the same breed o'
cat. You don't have panthers out East any more, do you?"
"No, they say one hasn't been seen in Massachusetts for fifty years or
more," Tom answered. "Don't know that I'm sorry. I like the deer too
well."
"Speaking of deer, to-morrow we'll go up and rescue the good carcases he
didn't eat, and have some fresh meat," said Mills. "Now to bed. Do you
know it's two o'clock?"
"'Most time to get up!" the boys laughed, as they cleaned their rifle
barrels and made ready for bunk.