he can find no injury on them."

"'Tis awful mysterious like," said Mrs. Woods, "cattle dyin' without
anything ailin' 'em! I've always thought this was a good country, but I
don't know. Tell your folks I'm sorry for 'em. Can I do anything for you?
I'll come over and see ye in the course of the day."

That night the same strange, wild, pleading cry was repeated in the
timber.

"There's something very strange about that sound," said Mrs. Woods. "It
makes me feel as though I must run toward it. It draws me. It makes me
feel curi's. It has haunted me all day, and now it comes again."

"Do you suppose that the cry has had anything to do with the death of Mr.
Bonney's cattle?" asked Gretchen.

"I don't know--we don't understand this country fully yet. There's
something very mysterious about the death of those cattle. You ought to
have seen 'em. They all lie there dead, as though they had just lost their
breath, and that was all."

The next night was silent. But, on the following morning, a boy came to
the school with a strange story. He had been driving home his father's
cows on the evening before, when an animal had dropped from a great tree
on the neck of one of the cows, which struggled and lowed for a few
minutes, then fell, and was found dead. The boy and the other cattle had
run away on the sudden appearance of the animal. The dead cow presented
the same appearance as the cows of Mr. Bonney had done.

When the old chief appeared at the school-house with Benjamin that
morning, the school gathered around him and asked him what these things
could mean. He replied, in broken Chinook, that there was a puma among
them, and that this animal sucked the blood of its victims.

The puma or cougar or panther, sometimes spelled _painter_, is the
American lion. It is commonly called the mountain lion in the Northwest.
It belongs to the cat family, and received the name of lion from its tawny
color. When its appetite for blood has been satisfied, and its face is in
repose, it is a very beautiful animal; but when seeking its prey it
presents a mean, cowardly, stealthy appearance, and its face is a picture
of cruelty and evil. It will destroy as many as fifty sheep in a night,
sucking their blood and leaving them as though they had died without any
external injury. This terrible animal is easily tamed if captured young,
and, strange to say, becomes one of the most affectionate and devoted of
pets. It will purr about the feet an