Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

101 страница из 136

Sam also said that we would call on Mrs. Bert Elwood, who has lived in the canyon adjoining his pasture for a great many years—and get the facts about the Daltons. But she was not at home when we stopped, on our way out. I really wanted to obtain from her a firsthand report on the early-day cattle business, and information about the cougar menace in the low mountains years ago. I have been told that the cougars were alarmingly destructive then.

The cougars are now mostly in the high mountains, though the Fresno Bee reported two killed in the Valley last winter. Professional hunters have kept them down in recent years. It is said a professional cougar hunter named Bruce—his surname—has a pack of dogs that will track them down without fail, if the scent is not more than 72 hours old. A grown cougar will take a toll of 50 deer in one season.

Getting back to the wise deer in the parks. While “doing” the Sequoia National Park five years ago with Major Clement A. Tavares—he was in the service then, and that “Major” handle was pretty firmly fixed, but “Doctor” takes precedent now—who is the husband of my niece, Alice Bristow, I saw a deer browsing about the ranger camp. The Major took a “movie” of it while it was walking in front of a giant Sequoia tree. A Ranger told me it was a “wild” deer that had never been in captivity. And I saw deer at several places by the roadside so close that I could have almost touched them. Also we saw two young bucks “sparring” almost under the General Grant big tree. The Major turned his camera on them.