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At any rate all the ladies of Carcajou were soon aware of the unusual happening, scenting strange news and perhaps even a bit of scandal.
It was a bitter and lean season, and the lynx, after eating his fill, had taken care to bury the remnant deep. The carcajou burrowed down till only the tip of her dingy tail was visible before she found the object of her search. It proved to be nothing but one hind quarter of a little blue fox.
Whether or not she really loved Ennis, or had turned to him merely because his general ways and appearance showed him to be a man of some breeding, with education superior to the usual standard of Carcajou, such as she would have been glad to marry, at any rate her brow narrowed, her lips closed into a thin straight line and her hands were clenched tight.
A fearful-looking monster he was as he lay stretched before me, and not unlike the carcajou which had killed our ox at the camp, only smaller. I did not attempt to take his carcass with me, as it was a useless burden. Moreover, from the fetid smell which he emitted, I was glad to part company as soon as I had killed him; and, leaving him where he lay, I took the shortest road back to the camp."
A moment later the whole pack, their famine still unsatisfied, swept off again upon the trail of the moose. The carcajou came down, sniffed angrily at the clean bones which had been cracked for their marrow, then hurried off on the track of the wolves.
So the old hunter continued his search, and late that day found the other damaged beyond repair. That night, filled with rage and despondency, he returned to his old camp, and as usual placed his gun upright in the snow away from the heat of the fire. In the morning it was gone. New tracks marked the snow and showed where the carcajou had dragged it away.
One day, in the middle of winter, and in quickly gathering shadows, Pete Coogan, their foreman, was walking the track back towards the village and had reached the big cut whose other end led to the bridge at Carcajou.
Finally she placed the heavy iron bar against the front door and went up the creaking stairs to her room as the loud-ticking clock boomed out eleven strokes, an unearthly hour for Carcajou. A couple of weeks later a copy of the Matrimonial Journal was forwarded to A.B.C., P.O. Box 17, Carcajou, Ontario, Canada.
But in a few minutes there was nothing left of the unfortunate lynx but a few of the heavier bones to which the pack might return later and the scrap of fur and flesh that was held in the jaws of the trap. As the carcajou saw her prospective meal disappearing, her rage became almost uncontrollable, and she crept down the tree-trunk as if she would fling herself upon the pack.
He hoped that she had been able to rest, that he would find her less weary and overwrought. This girl had been badly treated, sinned against most grievously. If there was anything he could do he would offer his services eagerly. "I expect she'll want to turn right back to Carcajou," he told himself. "I wish I were feeling more fit for the journey.
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