But still a love of trooth compels me to concede that if mountain lions ain't cowardly, they're shore cautious a lot.

Cattle an' calves they passes up as too bellicose, an' none of 'em ever faces any anamile more warlike than a baby colt or mebby a half-grown deer.
I'm ridin' along the Caliente once when I hears a crashin' in the bushes on the bluff above--two hundred foot high, she is, an' as sheer as the walls of this yere tavern.

As I lifts my eyes, a fear-frenzied mare an' colt comes chargin' up an' projects themse'fs over the precipice an' lands in the valley below.

They're dead as Joolius Caesar when I rides onto 'em, while a brace of mountain lions is skirtin' up an' down the aige of the bluff they leaps from, mewin' an' lashin' their long tails in hot enthoosiasm.

Shore, the cats has been chasin' the mare an' foal, an' they locoes 'em to that extent they don't know where they're headin' an' makes the death jump I relates.