Trapper Jim, thinking that the dogs had had all the excitement necessary, and wishing to put a stop to their racket, blew a whistle he carried.
So well trained were the dogs that upon hearing the signal to return to their master they immediately stopped barking and a few minutes later Ajax showed up, quickly followed by Don.
"You chased him off, didn't you?" said the trapper, stooping down to pat his pets by turns.
The dogs each gave a single bark, as though to say "yes," and their wagging tails told how much they appreciated these few words of praise from their master.
"Will the cat come back again, do you think?" Owen asked.
"I reckon not," laughed Trapper Jim; "since he's found out we keep dogs around the camp. A bobcat hates dogs about as much as human beings do skunks. If you ever run across him again, Steve, it'll be somewhere else; p'r'aps up where you left the rest of your fine buck."
"Well, he didn't get our breakfast, anyway," remarked Bandy-legs, quite bold again, since all the danger seemed past.
"Will you leave it out there after this, Uncle Jim?" asked Max.
"On the whole," replied the other, "I guess not. It'll keep all right indoors. And if that hungry cat should come back, the dogs'll smell him and keep up a tarnal barkin' that'll knock our sleep galley-west."
So he proceeded to lower what was left of the venison, which was thereupon carried inside the house and hung up from the rafters, along with numerous other things—packages of dried herbs, stalks of tobacco which Jim had had sent up from Kentucky, where a friend grew the weed, and some dried venison that he called "pemmican" or jerked meat.