"It all happened a long time ago," he began, and in telling his story we shall not try to reproduce his odd, broken idioms, nor his inimitable style, "a long time ago when the boys here must have been little fellows. It was back in Californy where the creatures were as thick as blackberries and gave lots of trouble to the settlers and the miners. I was working a small mine and trying to run a small mountain ranch at the same time. My living I eked out by hunting and trapping when I got a chance.
"One day while I was out hunting, a big mountain lion and his mate came down on the ranch and killed the only horse I had. I hunted the male for a week and then I found him and shot him down. But the account was not yet even. I determined to kill his mate, too.
"I tracked her for days but could never get close enough to her for a shot. The creature appeared to have an uncanny sense of my purpose of revenge. She always evaded me with what appeared to be almost supernatural skill. Time after time I thought that I had her at my mercy, only to have her escape my rifle-fire unharmed.
"After some time devoted to this fruitless quest of vengeance, I began to see the killing of this puma as a fixed purpose. Nothing else seemed to matter much so long as I could kill the beast that had so often evaded me.
"I used to start out early every day and return home only late at night from the hunt, and always I was baffled. The she-puma still lived in spite of my efforts. If she had been human I would have said that she laughed at me, for sometimes at night I could hear her screaming in the forest like a big wild-cat, as if in defiance of me.
"At such times I would grit my teeth as I lay in my bunk and say to myself. 'All right, my lady. It's a long lane that has no turning, and I'll never give up till I have killed you.'
"But the next day she would avoid me again, sometimes by not more than a hair's breadth; but it was enough. She carried her hide whole and I was still unrevenged for the death of my horse.
"One day I followed her trail to a part of the mountains where fallen trees, underbrush and jagged stones made the traveling hard. All at once, after some half hour of scrambling forward, I found myself facing a cave, a black, narrow opening in a cliff of grayish stone that towered high above the forest.
"I knew as if by instinct that I had found the mountain lion's lair. But was she inside? That was the question. If she was, I determined to lie there till she came forth, even if it took days, and then despatch her without mercy.
"With this object in view I cast myself on my stomach in the midst of a tangle of underbrush, and with my rifle all ready for instant use I began my vigil.