Talk became animated on dogs, cougars, horses and buffalo. Jones told
of our experience out on the range, and concluded with some salient
remarks.

"A tame wild animal is the most dangerous of beasts. My old friend,
Dick Rock, a great hunter and guide out of Idaho, laughed at my advice,
and got killed by one of his three-year-old bulls. I told him they knew
him just well enough to kill him, and they did. My friend, A. H. Cole,
of Oxford, Nebraska, tried to rope a Weetah that was too tame to be
safe, and the bull killed him. Same with General Bull, a member of the
Kansas Legislature, and two cowboys who went into a corral to tie up a
tame elk at the wrong time. I pleaded with them not to undertake it.
They had not studied animals as I had. That tame elk killed all of
them. He had to be shot in order to get General Bull off his great
antlers. You see, a wild animal must learn to respect a man. The way I
used to teach the Yellowstone Park bears to be respectful and safe
neighbors was to rope them around the front paw, swing them up on a
tree clear of the ground, and whip them with a long pole. It was a
dangerous business, and looks cruel, but it is the only way I could
find to make the bears good. You see, they eat scraps around the hotels
and get so tame they will steal everything but red-hot stoves, and will
cuff the life out of those who try to shoo them off. But after a bear
mother has had a licking, she not only becomes a good bear for the rest
of her life, but she tells all her cubs about it with a good smack of
her paw, for emphasis, and teaches them to respect peaceable citizens
generation after generation.

"One of the hardest jobs I ever tackled was that of supplying the
buffalo for Bronx Park. I rounded up a magnificent 'king' buffalo bull,
belligerent enough to fight a battleship. When I rode after him the
cowmen said I was as good as killed. I made a lance by driving a nail
into the end of a short pole and sharpening it. After he had chased me,
I wheeled my broncho, and hurled the lance into his back, ripping a
wound as long as my hand. That put the fear of Providence into him and
took the fight all out of him. I drove him uphill and down, and across
canyons at a dead run for eight miles single handed, and loaded him on
a freight car; but he came near getting me once or twice, and only
quick broncho work and lance play saved me.

"In the Yellowstone Park all our buffaloes have become docile,
excepting the