Toward Lake Washington another flock of sheep had been visited by a cougar, and Mr. Wetmore borrowed D. T. Denny’s little dog “Watch,” who treed the animal, remaining by it all night, but it escaped until a trap was set, when, being more hungry than cautious, it was secured.
CHAPTER VII.
PIONEER CHILD LIFE.
The very thought of it makes the blood tingle and the heart leap. No element was wanting for romance or adventure. Indians, bears, panthers, far journeys, in canoes or on horseback, fording rivers, camping and tramping, and all in a virgin wilderness so full of grandeur and loveliness that even very little children were impressed by the appearance thereof. The strangeness and newness of it all was hardly understood by the native white children as they had no means of comparing this region and mode of life with other countries and customs.
Traditions did not trouble us; the Indians were generally friendly, the bears were only black ones and ran away from us as fast as their furry legs would carry them; the panthers did not care to eat us up, we felt assured, while there was plenty of venison to be had by stalking, and on a journey we rode safely, either on the pommel of father’s saddle or behind mother’s, clinging like small kittens or cockleburs.
Familiarity with the coquettish canoe made us perfectly at home with it, and in later years when the tenderfoot arrived, we were convulsed with inextinguishable laughter at what seemed to us an unreasoning terror of a harmless craft.
WHERE WE WANDERED LONG AGO