according to the uncanny habit sometimes displayed by his kind, coolly
turned likewise, and deliberately dogged my footsteps to within a mile
of the ranch house; his round footprints being as clear as writing in
the snow.

This was the best chance of the kind that I ever had; but again and
again I have found fresh signs of cougar, such as a lair which they had
just left, game they had killed, or one of our venison caches which
they had robbed, and have hunted for them all day without success.
My failures were doubtless due in part to various shortcomings in
hunter's-craft on my own part; but equally without doubt they were
mainly due to the quarry's wariness and its sneaking ways.

I have seen a wild cougar alive but twice, and both times by chance.
On one occasion one of my men, Merrifield, and I surprised one eating a
skunk in a bull-berry patch; and by our own bungling frightened it away
from its unsavory repast without getting a shot.

On the other occasion luck befriended me. I was with a pack train in
the Rockies, and one day, feeling lazy, and as we had no meat in camp, I
determined to try for deer by lying in wait beside a recently travelled
game trail. The spot I chose was a steep, pine-clad slope leading down
to a little mountain lake. I hid behind a breastwork of rotten logs,
with a few young evergreens in front--an excellent ambush. A broad game
trail slanted down the hill directly past me. I lay perfectly quiet
for about an hour, listening to the murmur of the pine forests, and the
occasional call of a jay or woodpecker, and gazing eagerly along the
trail in the waning light of the late afternoon. Suddenly, without
noise or warning of any kind, a cougar stood in the trail before me. The
unlooked-for and unheralded approach of the beast was fairly ghost-like.