[Battle Axe]

I was a long way from home, maybe 10 miles out in the Lava Beds National Monument area, but probably on Forest Service land. I was on an older mare my dad had bought from a dealer who said he got it from the Chiloquin Indian Reservation. This was near the west border of Modoc County and Siskiyou county, California.

We were on some sort of a trail and came to a fork in the trail with an unusually large sagebrush at the fork. Suddenly the mare planted all four feet and snorted. I sensed she wanted to run home, so I gathered her up, and I am bareback!!! and held on tight. I could see nothing, smell nothing, no tracks, anything. Then she began to shake in freight. It was all I could do to hold her. She would go no farther.

I made her walk back to the house and it was the last mile that she began to stop shaking.

Old timers told me it was a cat marking post and that she had smelled it. I thought it I turned around to see what was behind me, I would lose my balance and if she took off I was a gonner.

They have since killed big cats in that area as well as black bears.

[Chode]

always amazed me how an animal that has prolly never seen a predator knows the scent of one and to be afraid of it... talk about hard wired