Another instance apparently was of a weak-minded lion. As though to attack, it came toward a little ten-year-old girl in Idaho. She struck it over the head with a bridle she was carrying. Her brother hurried to the rescue with a willow fishing pole. Together they beat the lion off and escaped with a few bad scratches. Yet had this been a lion of average strength and braveness he must have killed or severely injured both. The mountain lion rivals the shark, the devilfish, and the grizzly in being the cause of ferocious tales. The fact that he takes refuge on limbs as a place of lookout to watch for people or other objects, and that he frequently follows people for hours through the woods without their ever seeing him--and, I suppose, too, the very fact that he is so rarely seen--make him a sort of storm centre, as it were, for blood-curdling stories. Through years I investigated plausible accounts of the ferocity of mountain lions. These investigations brought little information, but they did disclose the fact that there are a few types of lion tales which are told over and over again, with slight local variations. These tales commonly are without the slightest basis of fact. They are usually revamped by a clever writer, a frightened hunter, or an interesting story teller, as occasions offer. One of the commonest of the oft-told tales that have come to me through the years is as follows: “Late Saturday evening, while Mr. and Mrs. Simpson were returning from the village through the woods, they were attacked by a half-starved mountain lion. The lion leaped out upon them from brush by the roadside and attempted to seize Mr. Simpson. Though an old man, he put up a fight, and at last beat off the lion with the butt of the buggy whip.” Sometimes this is a family and the time of day is early morning. Sometimes the lion is ferocious instead of half-starved. Sometimes it is of enormous size. Once in a while he leaps from a cliff or an overhanging tree limb. Generally he chews and claws someone up pretty badly, and occasionally attempts to carry off one of the children. Many times my letter addressed to one of the party attacked is returned unclaimed. Sometimes my letter to the postmaster or the sheriff of the locality is returned with the information: “No such party known.” Now and then I ask the sheriff, the postmaster, or the storekeeper some questions concerning this attack, and commonly their replies are: “It never happened”; “It’s a pipe dream”; “A pure fake”; or “Evidently whoever told you that story had one or two drinks too many.”