Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/168

160 some measure at least she had mastered them. She could shoot straight with her pistol: if indeed Broken Fang—the great cougar that had begun to display a rather disquieting arrogance in the presence of men—should find and follow her trail, she had full confidence that the fire from her six pistol cartridges would frighten him away. She had lived long enough in the mountains to know that rare and few are the wild animals that will even menace human beings. The coyotes were abject cowards, the ordinary run of cougars—although sometimes given to trailing a night wanderer for long and unpleasant hours on the mountain trails—always seemed to lack courage to attack, and the wolves would not have their pack strength until the winter. The wolf pack in the snow, she knew perfectly, was not a thing to trifle with. But the gray creatures were living singly now, or in pairs, and starvation had not yet come upon them. In these days of full feeding they were scarcely braver than the coyotes. It seems to be true that any animal that hunts in packs or groups acquires a ferocity, a wild and frenzied courage not possessed by the lone hunter. Partly it is a matter of mob psychology, partly a sense of resistless strength,—but its reality naturalists are unable to deny. It can be seen even in the swarms of miniature ants that—with appalling ferocity—will attack the greatest creatures of the wild. But there were no packs here. The moonlit aisles were safe.