"Oh, goody! and mountain lions! Say, you deer slayers, you may have knocked over some bucks, but it took me to stop a mountain lion."
"So you were the one who got him, eh?" asked Bill. "He must have been asleep. You can't hit a deer, and yet you got a mountain lion, which is smaller."
"He wasn't asleep, and I made a dandy long shot. Tom said so," declared his brother hotly.
"You certainly did well, son," interposed his father.
"Then we've all bagged something, if you can call my getting the deer Bill wounded a hit," said Larry. "This is sure Jim dandy hunting. Back home you can tramp all day without even seeing a woodchuck."
Heartily the others laughed at this statement of the difference in hunting grounds, and for an hour or so they talked and joked.
"Are we going to camp here for the night?" inquired Horace at last of his father.
"No. I reckon we'll go farther into the mountains. We'll have a better chance for bear there. This is a little too near the plains."
Well rested, the boys were eager to be on the move and gladly they made ready to advance.
In and out among the hills the trail wound, and sundown found them entering a basin similar to that where they had captured their deer. On two sides walls of rocks towered and dense forests formed the others.