"Before I reached the entrance of the den the old one caught a glimpse of me, and in an instant, filled with the courage which the maternal instinct always prompts, she was upon me and trying to get the sharp point of her crooked horns into my legs to toss me over the precipice which formed one of the walls of the mountain. The trail on which I was standing was narrow and slippery. I had left my rifle on the top of the divide, and was in a mighty tight place, for the female bighorn is almost as dangerous as a tiger when enraged and solicitous for the safety of her little ones. "I fought off the infuriated mother with my hands and feet as well as I could, but the rage of the brute increased terribly every second. Just then she caught sight of her kids, and leaving me, she rushed toward them and ran around them several times, as if telling them she wanted them to do something in her great trouble. "The distance from the wall of one mountain to the precipice of the other was but eight feet. Both had originally been but one mountain, but ages ago some great convulsion of nature had split them apart, and had left a huge fissure between them at least two thousand feet deep, with walls as smooth as glass. "The old one ran back and forth from the precipice to the kids several times, showing them as plainly as if she could talk that they must make the leap to escape from their natural enemy. At last, as if the whole matter was understood, the mother flew back to the edge of the cañon, the little ones hot in her tracks, and then all three made the jump, just clearing the frightful gorge by half the length of the young ones. "I was dumfounded for an instant, but soon recovered my senses and went for my rifle, but the coveted animals were far out of range on the top of the twin peak. I then returned to my camp on Green River more than a hundred miles away, disgusted and worn out, and never again attempted to capture the kids of the bighorn in the fashion of my first venture." Joe and the rest of the family, remembering Joe's scrap with the young panther, asked the old man if he had ever had any fight with one of them. He said that he had, and would tell them all about it. Then they would go to bed, as it was very late for the ranche folks to be up. "I remember the day you had that tussle with a young panther, Joe, and I tell you that you got off mighty luckily; the chances were that the animal would have made mincemeat of you if it hadn't been for that thrust with your knife. "The California lion, puma, or panther, as the animal is indifferently called according to locality, once had a very extensive range on the North American continent. It could be found from the Adirondacks to Patagonia, but now, like nearly all of our indigenous great mammals, is relatively scarce, and is rapidly following the sad trail of the buffalo.