Selecting a spot about 100 yards away, where we could see over the salal, we awaited developments. Developments ar- rived. Of course we had no fire, and with night came a dark- ness so dark that we could not see each other. We could hear the deer walking down the trails and splashing in the pools, but to aim was impossible. Just what time in the night it was, none of the frightened boys could ever say, but suddenly the cry of a hunting cougar sounded so clear and loud that it seemed right in the party. No one who hears that cry in the woods ever forgets it. Even old hunters do not like the devil- ish wildcat scream that has in it a note as of a woman or child in extremity. The cougar hunting down to the Spring had suddenly blundered upon our party, and unmindful of the deer, which, we could hear scattering in every direction, was intent upon looking the humans up, and, half eager and half afraid, was almost on us. One of the boys insists to this day that he saved my life by hauling me out from under the paws of the big cat, but all I know is that in an instant a frightened lot of boys were clustered together in the dark- ness, so scared that every one of them wanted to go home to his ma, and wanted to go home quick. All night the brute kept up a stealthy walk around us, oc- casionally coming close in, when we would frighten him away by firing at him. Just before dawn he decamped, and with the daylight came courage. Whatever astronomers and other wise men may say, that night in Oregon was 50 hours long. The next day, after abandoning the wagon and packing the horses, the party went over a rough trail into the moun- tains to Table and Panther Rock. Here, by a beaver dam in a small prairie, we made our camp and organized a big hunt, to be conducted strictly by daylight. It was a roue;h country, covered with heavy fir timber and a great deal of under- brush, but with occasional little onen prairies of a few acres each. They posted Charlie J. and myself at a point in the woods a mile or two from camp, where a sharp ravine opened the only path down a precipitous rock wall, and gave us
