Brother Schoonover acquired a dog from a passing Mexican freighter and owned the mongrel for exactly seven days and six nights. Most of that period was spent by the canine back of the shack, tied to a post. Then he was released and ventured too far in the dusk, and Bowallopus gathered him in. When the nester found the remains he forgot all about the spirit of kindly charity for which he had been so strong in a two days’ debate with Brother Ducey in Texas, and railed against all created things save those man had domesticated. After this episode Bowallopus absented himself from the vicinity of the Schoonover home for a space. He went up into the mountains, where he contrived to get considerable veal and young beef. Winter was coming upon the land and a calf did not hug his mother’s side so closely of a night, being grown and prideful. In the sheen of a late November gloaming, he dropped from a jutting rock on the rim of The Hatter and padded along a burro trail. This was the way down the big mountain which the woodchoppers took; thence they drove their patient beasts of burden seventy long miles to town. Bowallopus slunk beside the well-worn path, one eye cocked for trouble. He was ferociously hungry; his stomach clamored for food; and at sight of a scurrying jackrabbit, a peculiar pulsating ache started back of his jowl. Abruptly he drew back and flopped downward behind a thorny bush. Below, on the shoulder of The Hatter, clung a shack of boughs and sod. A man was even then hammering on its roof, while a woman passed him up bits of old tin. Half way between the puma and the hut, a small boy was toiling under a pile of fagots, tied over his back. All this Bowallopus saw, but what interested him most was an object nearer at hand. Not twenty feet away a Mexican baby played in the dirt, crowing with delight over possession of a captive lizard. The child was perhaps two years old and much too naked for that time of year, but she was hearty and cared naught for that. Her brother had brought her up the trail, leaving her to amuse herself as best she might whilst he gathered firewood. Naturally he forgot all about the toddler, the job not being to his liking. Bowallopus listened and watched and waited. The baby rolled in the dust. The man and woman were busily engaged and the boy had been sent to fetch a bucket of water. A bull-bat flew over the puma’s head. A hush crept over The Hatter. It may be that he shut his eyes when he launched himself and struck, though she was so very, very little. There was no cry to betray--only the throaty snarls of the puma, now turned mankiller and more horribly afraid and fearfully daring than he had ever been in his life. “A big ol’ mountain line done eat a Mexican baby up yonder,” Brother Schoonover reported to his wife.