The elk was but one of the many which ranged the Jackson Hole country and whose deep trails could be seen on every hand. Their bleaching antlers, which they had shed, were also upon many a hill, and frequently we would pass a rancher’s cabin, where a fence would have been constructed of the white twisted horns of the old bulls. I knew that we would soon see a quantity of elk, and we did.
Not many evenings later, as we were again boiling our coffee for dinner, the most unearthly scream that I have ever heard echoed from the canyon just to our right. It was answered by another, and—if I can make you believe it—the sound was as if a woman were being strangled.
“Mountain lion screeching,” said Jack, with a grim smile. “Awful noise, ain’t it?”
I confessed that it was.
“Makes me always feel skeery. Kind uv makes th’ gooseflesh creep up my back. Heard ’em a thousand times but always frightens me.”
The cowboy drew closer to the fire and I noticed that he was shivering.
The mountain lion is a great coward and is afraid to attack a human being. Unless cornered and extremely hungry, he will not fight. He has—in spite of this—the most unearthly scream, which would make one believe that he was one of the fiercest and most bloodthirsty of beasts. Welling up upon the clear night air—in the very heart of the wilderness—it is enough to freeze one’s blood to hear their wailings. It takes strong nerves to listen to their gruesome noise without shaking.
I heard the lions again about a week later, when I and a cowboy called Jim, were making our way up the side of a beautiful little tributary to the Grosventre. We were following a deep-rutted elk trail which led up the edge of a mountain to and from their summer feeding grounds, upon one of the higher plateaus. There was a log cabin nestling at the foot of the opposite hill—used by one of the game wardens—and, in the rear of this, a deep bank of hemlocks clothed the side of the cliff. Here the lions were concealed, and, seeing us riding in the open, shrieked out their defiance at the trespassers upon their demesne.
Although a startling and nerve-racking sound, we kept upon our way, and I confess that I looked to the shells in my rifle—fearing that one of the screechers might consider us excellent bait for their dinner. Soon we had advanced far up the canyon and then the lions ceased their caterwauling.
We were now in the heart of gameland. The tracks of bear were extraordinarily thick, and every now and again we would come to fresh sign, not an hour old. Once I reached a stream through which a big grizzly must have just passed, for the water was still muddy, and the print of his feet could easily be seen in the soft bank. In spite of their apparent numbers we could not even catch a glimpse of one of them, and, although I was constantly hoping to meet with a specimen of these monsters of the glen, I was never to catch even a fleeting glimpse of one.