"I shouted at her. My desire for revenge had got the upper hand completely of me now. When the puma shrieked and howled, I shrieked and howled, too.
"'I shall kill you yet,' I promised her, 'your hour is close at hand. Olaf will have his revenge for his horse. You will see.'
"Toward morning the cries came closer.
"'Now is my time,' I thought.
"I took my rifle and sallied out of the hut. It was bright moonlight. Once more the cries came from a clump of woods up to my left. I swung round. My heart gave a bound of delight. Out of the deep shadow of the woods I saw two burning points of light gleaming. I knew what they were. The puma's eyes!
"All I had to do was to fire between them. For me, that ought to have been an easy task. But quick as I was in raising my rifle, the puma was quicker of movement than I. In a flash the points of light had vanished, and when next I heard her cries they came from some distance off.
"Utterly disgusted, baffled and angry, I went back to my bunk. I lay long awake revolving all sorts of schemes to catch the puma napping, and I was still planning when I fell asleep. That night my dreams were all of the working out of my revenge. I guess I wasn't far from going crazy. Dwelling all the time on one thought and living alone, had worked powerfully on my mind. I felt that if I didn't kill that mountain lion she'd kill me, and how near she came to doing it, I'm going to tell you in a minute.
"For one mortal week I tried every way I could think of to get a shot at that lion. But it was all of no use. If the animal could have read my mind, she couldn't have kept out of the way more cleverly than she did.
"But all the time she was near at hand. The cubs, whom I fed regularly with venison and small game, used to answer her night and day. I lost sleep and flesh, but still I was no closer to attaining my object.
"I tried dozens of ways of getting my chance to shoot the animal down. Failing in all of them, I set poisoned bait around the house. But it was never touched. With the same uncanny instinct that had taught her how to keep out of my reach, the puma avoided the poisoned meat. Steel traps were a joke to her, I guess, for conceal them cleverly as I might, she never went near them.