The abuses arising from this source easily could be checked, and finally suppressed.  A ten-line law would do the business,—­forbidding any person employed in any camp of sheep men, cattle men, lumbermen, miners, railway laborers or excavators to own or use a rifle in hunting wild game; and forbidding any employer of labor to feed those laborers, or permit them to be fed, on the flesh of wild game mammals or birds.  “Camp” laborers are not “pioneers;” not by a long shot!  They are soldiers of Commerce, and makers of money.

A MOUNTAIN SHEEP CASE IN COLORADO.—­The state of Colorado sincerely desires to protect and perpetuate its slender remnant of mountain sheep, but as usual the Lawless Miscreant is abroad to thwart the efforts of the guardians of the game.  Every state that strives to protect its big game has such doings as this to contend with: 

In the winter of 1911-12, a resident poacher brought into Grant, Colorado, a lot of mountain sheep meat for sale; and he actually sold it to residents of that town!  The price was six cents per pound.  A lot of it was purchased by the railway station-agent.  I have no doubt that the same man who did that job, which was made possible only by the co-operation of the citizens of Grant, will try the same poaching-and-selling game next winter, unless the State Game Commissioner is able to bring him to book.

A WYOMING CASE IN POINT.—­As a fair sample of what game wardens, and the general public, are sometimes compelled to endure through the improper decisions of judges, I will cite this case: 

In the Shoshone Mountains of northern Wyoming, about fifty miles or so from the town of Cody, in the winter of 1911-12 a man was engaged in trapping coyotes.  It was currently reported that he had been “driven out of Montana and Idaho.”  He had scores of traps.  He baited his traps with the flesh of deer, elk calves and grouse, all illegally killed and illegally used for that purpose.  A man of my acquaintance saw some of this game meat actually used as described.

The man was a notorious character, and cruel in the extreme.  Finally a game warden caught him red-handed, arrested him, and took him to Cody for trial.  It happened that the judge on the bench had once trapped with him, and therefore “he set the game-killer free, while the game-warden was roasted.”

That wolf-trapper once took into the mountains a horse, to kill and use as bear-bait.  The animal was blind in one eye, and because it would not graze precisely where the wolfer desired it to remain, he deliberately destroyed the sight of its good eye, and left it for days, without the ability to find water.

Think of the fate of any wild animal that unkind Fate places at the mercy of such a man!

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CHAPTER VIII

UNSEEN FOES OF WILD LIFE