One reason I haunt used bookstores is to find great old tomes that time seems to have buried. At McKay’s in Chattanooga, TN I found a copy of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail,” originally published in 1888.
TR had a keen eye for the habits and beauty of wild game, and was not hesitant to pursue same under the most strenuous and demanding circumstances. The illustrations, line drawings by Frederic Remington himself, were a wonderful bonus.
“The hunter is the arch-type of freedom,” TR wrote, but he didn’t glamorize the frontier lifestyle without warning of its extreme dangers and hardships.
Roosevelt also understood that on a lawless frontier, citizens sometimes had to enforce the law themselves. He writes of a long trek to bring three thieves to the distant authorities at gunpoint. He commented, “The prisoners being unarmed, and kept close together, there was no possibility of their escaping, and the guard kept at such a distance that they could not overpower him by springing on him, he having a Winchester or the double-barreled shot-gun always in his hands cocked and at the ready.”
Things were different then…
Mas, I may have read years ago the book that you mention. The hunting of mountain lions with dogs was thoroughly described in what I read. The description of detaining “thieves” at gunpoint leads me to wonder about the organization of justice in territories like the old Dakota, Minnesota, and more yet, “unorganized territories,” would make interesting study. I am thinking now of TV shows such as Gunsmoke and Laramie, vs. the actual history of the U.S. Marshals. Jamestown, North Dakota has a fascinating history as the home town of luminaries such as Louis L’Amour, Eric Sevareid, and General Dupuy. I have always thought that the public school there must have had at least one or two outstanding elementary teachers!