Though the cougar prefers woodland, it is not necessarily a beast of the dense forests only; for it is found in all the plains country, living in the scanty timber belts which fringe the streams, or among the patches of brush in the Bad Lands.  The persecution of hunters however always tends to drive it into the most thickly wooded and broken fastnesses of the mountains.  The she has from one to three kittens, brought forth in a cave or a secluded lair, under a dead log or in very thick brush.  It is said that the old he’s kill the small male kittens when they get a chance.  They certainly at times during the breeding season fight desperately among themselves.  Cougars are very solitary beasts; it is rare to see more than one at a time, and then only a mother and young, or a mated male and female.  While she has kittens, the mother is doubly destructive to game.  The young begin to kill for themselves very early.  The first fall, after they are born, they attack large game, and from ignorance are bolder in making their attacks than their parents; but they are clumsy and often let the prey escape.  Like all cats, cougars are comparatively easy to trap, much more so than beasts of the dog kind, such as the fox and wolf.

They are silent animals; but old hunters say that at mating time the males call loudly, while the females have a very distinct answer.  They are also sometimes noisy at other seasons.  I am not sure that I have ever heard one; but one night, while camped in a heavily timbered coulie near Kildeer Mountains, where, as their footprints showed, the beasts were plentiful, I twice heard a loud, wailing scream ringing through the impenetrable gloom which shrouded the hills around us.  My companion, an old plainsman, said that this was the cry of the cougar prowling for its prey.  Certainly no man could well listen to a stranger and wilder sound.

Ordinarily the rifleman is in no danger from a hunted cougar; the beast’s one idea seems to be flight, and even if its assailant is very close, it rarely charges if there is any chance for escape.  Yet there are occasions when it will show fight.  In the spring of 1890, a man with whom I had more than once worked on the round-up—­though I never knew his name—­was badly mauled by a cougar near my ranch.  He was hunting with a companion and they unexpectedly came on the cougar on a shelf of sandstone above their herds, only some ten feet off.  It sprang down on the man, mangled him with teeth and claws for a moment, and then ran away.  Another man I knew, a hunter named Ed. Smith, who had a small ranch near Helena, was once charged by a wounded cougar; he received a couple of deep scratches, but was not seriously hurt.

Many old frontiersmen tell tales of the cougar’s occasionally itself making the attack, and dogging to his death some unfortunate wayfarer.  Many others laugh such tales to scorn.  It is certain that if such attacks occur they are altogether exceptional, being indeed of such extreme rarity that they may be entirely disregarded in practice.  I should have no more hesitation in sleeping out in a wood where there were cougars, or walking through it after nightfall, than I should have if the cougars were tomcats.