By the time I got back to camp it was nearly dark and Doc and Bob were waiting supper for me. We find our fireless cooker and kerosene stove to be real luxuries in this sort of a country. We really live high (comparatively speaking); our appetites are always good and Bob rarely gets up anything that doesn’t taste fine. Just now our larder contains honey, beans, bread, eggs, oatmeal, tea, bacon, prunes, seeded raisins, and crackers.
We turned in early as usual and were up before it was really light. Doc missed getting a shot at a gray wolf right near camp. He said he took it for a boulder at first and so paid no attention to it; when too late, he saw it take shape and steal away.
A GLIMPSE OF CASTLE VALLEY
We left camp at six-thirty. The trail was on the west side of the valley and right under the mountains, which gave us a good opportunity to study them. The scenery was really weird. The mountains took the shape of castles, not imaginary castles, but real ones. A painter could not paint anything more natural, and they were all different. Each castle stood guard over its particular part of the valley, and all day and for several days we had a never-ending source of entertainment in this sort of scenery. It was on such an immense scale and combined with the magic colors of the desert country, that we were continually gazing at it and not at the desert underfoot, and so missed a good many chances to shoot coyotes, wolves, and mountain lions that were invariably dropping out of sight into a gulley or behind the brush, about the time our attention was called to them.
One particularly exciting incident happened before we were really started this morning. In crossing a wash the wagon had to make a detour, but Bob on Dixie rode straight across, and after topping a rise of ground he got off and sat down on a rock to wait for us to catch up. As we came over the rise I saw Dixie, but could not see Bob on account of the brush. She was browsing on the bushes. Just beyond her I saw a mountain lion, right out in the open, quietly stealing down toward her, evidently not seeing Bob and thinking there might be a colt there it could kill.
The speed with which I threw on the brake and called to Doc to get his Winchester sort of flustrated Doc and also flustrated the lion. It started off on a trot at right angles down the mesa as Doc pulled out his 30-30 and got ready for action. His first shot just grazed its back at about three hundred yards, and then the fun began. Bob jumped into view to see what had happened; the lion started for Colorado. Not in any reasonable manner, however. It seemed to be shot out of a gun, and Doc swung his Winchester and pumped three more shots after it. All of them seemed to be in the general direction the lion was going, but they only served to make him swerve and run faster, if that were possible.
When at last he had disappeared from sight in the dim distance,--he actually ran out of sight on bare ground,--and the smoke had blown away, Bob called out, “What was it?”
Doc said, “Didn’t you see it?”
“Well,” said Bob, “I am not sure whether I did or not.”