A 'Rastle with a Wildcat

One of my very first experiences in the West was a midnight tussle with a fifty-four pound wildcat in a lonely cabin in the Greenhorn Mountains of Colorado. I shall never forget my horror at the sight of that huge puss on a beam over my head; for I had had a serious experience with the wildcat of the Northeast, and supposed that this fellow, who was twice as big, was likewise twice as much to be dreaded.

I did not know that the Rocky Mountain wildcat is not nearly so fierce, and that he never attacks man as does sometimes his cousin of the Maine and New Hampshire forests; and I had very slight hopes for the outcome of a struggle twice as severe as that which a furry freebooter in the Pemigewassett wilderness gave me a good many years ago. I need not have worried. The Colorado Cat was easy game; and when the last charge in my six-shooter had brought him to the floor, his life was soon ended.