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 average at least once for every animal we put up a tree.
We have nice little horses which climb the most extraordinary places you
can imagine. Get Mother to show you some of Gustave Dore's trees; the
trees on these mountains look just like them.