much more abundant Deer-mice, which sprang the bait and sacrificed
themselves, every time I tried for the Squeaker.

In the fall of 1912 I was staying at Standing Rock Agency in North
Dakota. On the broken ground, between the river and the high level
prairie, I noted a ridge with holes exactly like those I had seen on
the Yellowstone. A faint squeak underground gave additional and
corroborative evidence. So I set a trap and next night had a specimen of
the Squeaker as well as a couple of the omnipresent Deer-mice.

Doubtless the Calling Mouse has an interesting and peculiar life
history, but little is known of it except that it dwells on the dry
plains, is a caller by habit;--through not around the campfire--it feeds
largely on grasshoppers, and is in mortal terror of ants.

* * * * *

XI

Sneak-cats Big and Small

* * * * *

[Illustration]

XI

Sneak-cats--Big and Small

You may ride five hundred miles among the mountains, in a country where
these beasts of prey abound, and yet see never a hair of a living
Wildcat. _But how many do you suppose see you?_ Peeping from a thicket,
near the trail, glimpsing you across some open valley in the mountains,
or inspecting you from various points as you recline by the campfire,
they size you up and decide they want no nearer dealings with you; you
are bad medicine, a thing to be eluded. And oh! how clever they are at
eluding us.

If you turn out the biggest Lynx on the smoothest prairie you ever saw,
he will efface himself before you count twenty. The grass may be but
three inches high and the Lynx twenty-three, but he will melt into it,
and wholly escape the searching eyes of the keenest. One would not think
an empty skin could lie more flat. Add to this the silent sinuosity of
his glide; he seems to ooze around the bumps and stumps, and bottle up
his frightful energy for the final fearsome leap. His whole makeup is
sacrificed to efficiency in that leap; on that depends his life; his
very existence turns on the wondrous perfection of the sneak, of which
the leap is the culmination. Hunters in all parts where these creatures
abound, agree in calling Wildcat, Lynx, and Cougar by the undignified
but descriptive name of Sneak-cat.

THE BOBCAT OR MOUNTAIN WILDCAT

The Wildcat of Europe, and of literature, is a creature of almost
unparalleled ferocity. Our own Wildcat is three times as big an