swarmin' up the canyon like she ain't got a minute to live. An' you
can gamble the limit that where a anamile sees its children perish
without frontin' up for war, it don't possess the commonest roodiments
of sand. Sech, son, is mountain lions.

"It's one evenin' in the Red Light when Colonel Sterett, who's got
through his day's toil on that Coyote paper he's editor of, onfolds
concernin' a panther round-up which he pulls off in his yooth.

"'This panther hunt,' says Colonel Sterett, as he fills his third
tumbler, 'occurs when mighty likely I'm goin' on seventeen winters.
I'm a leader among my young companions at the time; in fact, I allers
is. An' I'm proud to say that my soopremacy that a-way is doo to the
dom'nant character of my intellects. I'm ever bright an' sparklin' as
a child, an' I recalls how my aptitoode for learnin' promotes me to be
regyarded as the smartest lad in my set. If thar's visitors, to the
school, or if the selectmen invades that academy to sort o' size us up,
the teacher allers plays me on 'em. I'd go to the front for the
outfit. Which I'm wont on sech harrowin' o'casions to recite a
ode--the teacher's done wrote it himse'f--an' which is entitled
Napoleon's Mad Career. Thar's twenty-four stanzas to it; an' while
these interlopin' selectmen sets thar lookin' owley an' sagacious, I'd
wallop loose with the twenty-four verses, stampin' up and down, an'
accompanyin' said recitations with sech a multitood of reckless
gestures, it comes plenty clost to backin' everybody plumb outen the
room. Yere's the first verse:

I'd drink an' sw'ar an' r'ar an' t'ar
An' fall down in the mud,
While the y'earth for forty miles about