“The big ram came down from the side of the mountain, and, to pass over to the other mountain, he had to cross the valley.  There were a number of knolls or ridges in this valley, where the snow was not so deep as in the hollows.  The ram broke a trail to a knoll, and stopped and looked back, and pretty soon I saw the rest of the sheep coming along.  They followed his trail and passed him while he was standing there looking back, always looking up at the mountain.  While he stood on this knoll where the snow was not deep—­for it had blown off—­and the other sheep had passed him, one of them took the lead to the next knoll, breaking the trail, but here the snow was not so deep as that the ram had come through.  No sooner had the sheep got to this knoll than the old ram started.  He took the trail the others had made, and joined them at the next knoll, and then plunging in, went on ahead and broke a fresh trail to the next rise of ground.  The ram did most of the trail-breaking, but sometimes one of the others went ahead; there was always one in the rear, on guard, as it were, until they had crossed the valley to a steep ridge on the next mountain.  As they went, they stopped every little while and stood for some time looking back.

“Knowing the habits of the animal, I felt sure that something had driven them off the mountain.  They looked back as if to see whether anything was following, or perhaps to look again at what had frightened them.  I thought it was a mountain lion.  Soon afterward I took my snowshoes and went up that way and found the track of a mountain lion.  From the size of the track it seemed as if the animal must have been enormous.  On soft snow, though, tracks spread and look big, and besides that, these cats commonly spread out their toes.  There was no mistake about its being a mountain lion, for I could see where the tail had struck the soft snow and made holes in it.

“Mountain lions were around there a good deal, and E. De Long, who had a cabin a little further up in the valley, told me that three times in his experience of hunting up there he had come on a place where a mountain lion had just killed a sheep.  In each case he found the sheep in nearly the same place, and in each case the sheep was freshly killed, and he dressed it and took it home.

“This seemed to be a favorite place for the lions to kill sheep.  They are great hands to kill sheep in about the same place.  Far up on the Boulder—­way up near the head—­Col.  Pickett and I found nineteen or twenty skulls of sheep by one rock.  There was a wonderful lot of them.  They had been killed at various times, and in a place where they never could have been killed by snowslides.  It was under a very high rock, fifteen feet perpendicular on one side, and in the valley a game trail passed close under this side.  On the other side the rock was not so high, but sloped off to the side of the hill.  A lion could easily lie there without being seen, but could himself see both ways.  The game trail was so close that he could jump right down on to it.  The number of skulls that we saw here was so remarkable that Col.  Pickett and I counted them; there were more than eighteen.