Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1894 — A STORY FROM COLORADO. [ARTICLE]

A STORY FROM COLORADO.

The Truth and a mountain Lion Pretty Badly Stretched. A Colorado man has tamed a mountain lion, writes a Denver liar. It is i the toughest of beasts—so tough a | butcher could not cut its shadow with i a hatchet. Dave Snyder, Jr., of 631 Champa street, Denver, shot one of i these yellow terrors in Gracd Can- | yon, but the lion failed to die, and bit Snyder through the arm. Then lit was captured by the dogs. To be ! revenged, Snyder fastened the aaii mal between two tall pines, standing I seventy feet from each other. It took a double team of mules and six drivers, with two gallons of Utah whisky, half a day to bring those trees together. The plan was to cut the rope and let them lly apart, Grecian style. The great crowds of first citizens expected to see menageries and fiddle strings drop for an hour. The two mining towns of Silverton and Ouray, including Dave Day’s “Solid Muldoon” printing office, shut down business to see the fun. At the words, “Let her go, Miss Gallagher!” the rope was cut. The tall trees flew back with the swish and roar of a cyclone. But the lion didn’t drop. It stretched. High up in dizzy midair the people saw something like a huge yellow sausage (with hair on it) seventy feet long. Two big eyes and a row of teeth gleamed at one end and a bushy tail wagged at the other. The lion’s roar also stretched as thin as a razor and cut the ear like the scream of a buzz-saw. The brute’s fur, however, didn’t stretch, so there was but a single hair to each square inch of mountain lion. The pluck , of the .beast took the people by storm. They ordered its life spared. Accordingly the trees were felled and the lion released. When taken down to earth, its anatomy shut up like a Sixth avenue concertina. Alas! the

stretching had, done its work too well. The lion was now sixteen feet in diameter (half an hour before dinner), with a growl like an ocean fog horn. But the terror was thoroughly tamed and it won every heart. The sheriff used the brute for hunting train robbers. When it got within half a mile of a Bitter Greek outlaw, it stood on its hind legs and shot its head forward like a catapult, pulveriz : ng tbe ; . cruel robber. And its teeth did tbe rest. On returning home the smiling countenance of the lion reached town 20 minutes ahead of its tail. Moral: Never stretch the truth with the hair.