Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/168

 150 JONN MiNTO. of bird-shot at close range. Panthers were easily killed with the aid of a dog that barked at them. It was another matter with the coyote; a breeding pair would fight a single dog. We started in 1849 with eighteen sheep which gave fleeces of nine pounds average in 1850 ; the wool being washed on the sheep in Mill Creek from about the 25th to the last of May— luscious wild strawberries generally forming part of our noon lunch. The coyotes would follow from the hills, two and a half miles to the creek and back, watching. I became quite expert at anticipating their move- ments and killing them with a gun. One of my first feats was performed under the eye of a stranger giving his name as E. B. Ball (1850.) He was looking for bacon to purchase for the miners, having a pack-train of mules then at the Waldo farm. He had staid all night with us and I judged from his conversation that he had led a company to California in '49 and had had trouble to maintain discipline on the way. He was saddling his mule when sight of a coyote made me silent. Judging the point the prowler was aiming for, I took brush cover to get a shot and had not stopped running when he came out of the brush where I expected. He started running, anct T dropped on my knee to try a shot; this caused him to stop. It was fatal. The stranger had seen the game and came with spurs jingling, crying,'', stranger, that was the best shot I ever saw in my life." We parted good friends, and I saw the man next by portrait in the American Illustrated Maga- zine in 1897 or 8, as Ehenezar B. Ball, of the family whose name attaches to Ball's Bluff, and kin of General Washington, who in dress and figure resembled the E. B. Ball who saw my coyote shot. The Mr. Ball of the magazine was one of the living pictures then (1897-8) seen about the Capitol at Washington. But long after this killing the coyote took such heavy toll out of our flocks that we collected a team of eleven hounds and in seven hunts killed eight small wolves and a lynx — a tassel-eared fellow. It was well-spent time. In thirty-five years of time this lynx had grown to be a panther and the killer of it the hero of camp fire stories amid the