The Cougar was the name of a bucking horse, the main attraction, and challenger to all the good riders of the country. No line was drawed as to where them riders came from or how far, and the purse that was offered for the one who could ride that horse and scratch him was enough to make any good rider want to come a long way and try.
Many had come and tried him at other rodeos and where The Cougar had performed, and found that that pony was no ordinary bucking horse; and as all that tried him could tell, afterwards, there was more than his bucking to contend with. He was mean, there was murder in his eye, and if it wasn’t for the “pickup” men who hazed him, many a cowboy would of been pawed to pieces even before he could of hit the ground.
That pony seemed to have a grudge against humans in general; his ambition was for exterminating ’em all off the face of the earth. But there was one thing which the riders noticed in him as most queer, and that was in the way he seemed to hate some humans worse than others—his hate was plainest for the face that showed dark.
A story followed the horse, and which kept a being repeated as rider met rider at different rodeos and frontier day celebrations. It was that the horse had been found on the desert, amongst a bunch of wild horses and packing an empty saddle. There’d been dried blood sticking to the hair along his jaw, and some more on his knees; the horse had been roped and tied down and the riders had looked for signs of wounds or cuts on his hide but nary a scratch had been found.
The horse was then advertised in the county and State papers and described as “A mouse colored, blaze-faced, stocking legged gelding, and packing a brand that looked like a blotched wagon wheel.” 
The advertisement was kept running for two weeks and nobody showed to claim the horse. He was kept in the pasture for a few days more, and then one day one of the riders run him in the corral.
The cowboy had liked the looks of the pony from the day he’d set eyes on him; he’d figgered him as an ordinary horse that’d been spoiled a little, and shaking out a loop, there’d been no doubt in his mind but what that could be took out of him easy enough. But he hadn’t got very far when he found that the pony would have to be throwed before a saddle could ever be put on his back. There was a look in the horse’s eye which he didn’t like, and that cowboy having handled all kinds of horses knowed mighty well what that look meant.
He kept his distance, and from there worked his ropes till the horse went down to his knees and then flat to the ground. The saddle was cinched on tight, and seeing that the hackamore was on the pony’s head to stay, the cowboy took his seat while the horse was down, and reaching over took the foot ropes off.
What went on in the next few minutes was past ever being described with talk, and as that cowboy felt, telling about it would be a disgrace as compared with what really happened—something like trying to paint the Grand Canyon of Arizona on black canvas with black paint.
Anyway, that cowboy had reached for the top pole of the corral and got on the other side of it before the pony had really got started to whatever he was up to; and there on the safe side he done a mental roundup, and it all came to him. He remembered the empty saddle that was on the pony’s back when found that day two weeks past—then the dried blood that’d been on his jaw and more of it on his knees.
The cowboy had remarked as thru the corral poles he’d watched the man killer:
“A twelve hundred pound mountain lion is what that horse is.”
That’s where his name Cougar had come in, and no horse never lived up to a name like the mouse colored gelding did to his.
Then had come rumors of a Fourth of July celebration which was going to be pulled off in some big town to the south; there was to be bronc riding and everything that went with it. A prize of a hundred dollars had been offered for the best bucking horse, and that’s how come one day that The Cougar made his first appearance before a grandstand. A warning was given to the “pickup” man and “hazers” to be on hand and watch out nobody got hurt, and them few words of warning that way had proved to sound mighty right before that day was over.
The Cougar had been tried out, and then a hundred dollars was handed to the rider who’d brought him in. He’d won the prize. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind but what that pony was by a long ways the meanest and hardest horse to ride there, and not only there, but anywhere else and wherever hard bucking horses was rode. Fifty dollars additional was offered for the right to keep the horse for rodeo purposes. That was refused, and when the last day of the doings come, and the riders came up for the “finals,” another fifty was added to the first offer, and accepted. A bill of sale was made out, and The Cougar from that day on was drove from
