before her gaze was a certain air of overlordship, as if her supremacy
had gone long unquestioned. Suddenly, however, her attitude changed.
Her eyes narrowed, her mighty muscles drew themselves together like
springs being upcoiled, she half crouched, and her head turned sharply
to the left, listening. Far down the narrow ledge which afforded the
trail to her den she had caught the sound of something approaching.

As she listened, she crouched lower and lower, and her eyes began to
burn with a thin, green flame. Her ears would flatten back savagely,
then lift themselves again to interrogate the approaching sounds. Her
anger at the intrusion upon her private domain was mixed with some
apprehension, for behind her, in a warm corner of the den, curled up
in a soft and furry ball like kittens, were her two sleeping cubs.

Her trail being well marked and with her scent strong upon it, she
knew it could be no ignorant blunderer that drew near. It was plainly
an enemy, and an arrogant enemy, since it made no attempt at stealth.
The steps were not those of any hunter, white man or Indian, of that
she presently assured herself. With this assurance, her anxiety
diminished and her anger increased. Her tail, long and thick, doubled
in thickness and began to jerk sharply from side to side. Crouching to
the belly, she crept all the way out upon the ledge and peered
cautiously around a jutting shoulder of rock.

The intruder was not yet in sight, because the front of White Face,
though apparently a sheer and awful precipice when viewed from the
valley, was in fact wrinkled with gullies and buttresses and bucklings
of the tortured strata. But the sound of his coming was now quite
intelligible to her. That softly ponderous tread, that careless
displacing of stones, those undisguised sniffings and mumblings could
come only from a bear, and a bear frankly looking for trouble. Well,
he was going to find what he was looking for. With an antagonism
handed down to her by a thousand ancestors, the great puma hated
bears.

Many miles north of White Face, on the other side of that ragged
mountain-ridge to which he formed an isolated and towering outpost,
there was a fertile valley which had just been invaded by settlers. On
every hand awoke the sharp barking of the axe. Rifle-shots startled
the echoes. Masterful voices and confident human laughter filled all
the wild inhabitants with wonder and dismay. The undisputed lord of
the range was an