They
are also sometimes noisy at other seasons. I am not sure that I have
ever heard one; but one night, while camped in a heavily timbered coulie
near Kildeer Mountains, where, as their footprints showed, the beasts
were plentiful, I twice heard a loud, wailing scream ringing through the
impenetrable gloom which shrouded the hills around us. My companion, an
old plainsman, said that this was the cry of the cougar prowling for its
prey. Certainly no man could well listen to a stranger and wilder sound.
Ordinarily the rifleman is in no danger from a hunted cougar; the
beast's one idea seems to be flight, and even if its assailant is very
close, it rarely charges if there is any chance for escape. Yet there
are occasions when it will show fight. In the spring of 1890, a man with
whom I had more than once worked on the round-up--though I never knew
his name--was badly mauled by a cougar near my ranch. He was hunting
with a companion and they unexpectedly came on the cougar on a shelf of
sandstone above their herds, only some ten feet off.
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