Leading our horses, we slid and scrambled after the hounds; but when we reached the valley they had passed out of sight and sound, and we did not hear them again until we had toiled up the mountain opposite. They were then evidently scattered, having come upon many bare places; but while we were listening, and working our way over to the other side of the divide, the sudden increase in the baying told Goff that they had struck the fresh trail of the beast they were after; and in two or three minutes we heard Jim’s deep voice “barking treed.” The three fighters, who had been trotting at our heels, recognized the difference in the sound quite as quickly as we did, and plunged at full speed toward it down the steep hillside, throwing up the snow like so many snowploughs. In a minute or two the chorus told us that all the dogs were around the tree, and we picked our way down toward them. While we were still some distance off we could see the cougar in a low pinyon moving about as the dogs tried to get up, and finally knocking one clean out of the top. It was the first time I had ever seen dogs with a cougar, and I was immensely interested; but Stewart’s whole concern was with his camera. When we were within fifty yards of the tree, and I was preparing to take the rifle out of the scabbard, Stewart suddenly called “halt,” with the first symptoms of excitement he had shown, and added, in an eager undertone: “Wait, there is a rabbit right here, and I want to take his picture.” Accordingly we waited, the cougar not fifty yards off and the dogs yelling and trying to get up the tree after it, while Stewart crept up to the rabbit and got a kodak some six feet distant. Then we resumed our march toward the tree, and the cougar, not liking the sight of the reinforcements, jumped out. She came down just outside the pack and ran up hill. So quick was she that the dogs failed to seize her, and for the first fifty yards she went a great deal faster than they did. Both in the jump and in the run she held her tail straight out behind her; I found out afterward that sometimes one will throw its tail straight in the air, and when walking along, when first roused by the pack, before they are close, will, if angry, lash the tail from side to side, at the same time grinning and snarling.