Bill nodded; the girl's face showed unspeakable relief. She was glad that this lover of hers had logical and acceptable reasons for his omissions. The incident was past, the issue dead. They gathered about the gray grizzled form in the snow.
"Does this—help our food problem any?" Virginia asked.
"Except in an emergency—no. Virginia, you ought to try to cut that foreleg muscle." He lifted one of the front feet of the bear in his hands. "You'd see what it would be like to try to bite it. He's an old, tough brute—worse eating than a wolf. Strong as mink and hard as rock. If we were starving, we'd cut off one of those hams in a minute; but we can wait a while at least. If we don't pick up some more game during the day, I'll hike over to my Twenty-three Mile cabin and get the supplies I've left over there. There's a smoked caribou ham, among other things. I'll bring back a backload, anyway." Then his voice changed, and he looked earnestly into Virginia's eyes. "But you won't want to hunt any more to-day. I forgot—what a shock this experience would be to you."
She smiled, and the paleness about her lips was almost gone. "I'm getting used to shocks. I feel a little shaky—but it doesn't amount to anything. I want to climb up and look at the caribou trail, at least."
"Sure enough—if you feel you can stand it. It's only a hundred yards or so up the hill. I'd like to take old Bruin's hide, but I don't see how we could handle it. I believe we'd better leave him with all his clothes on, in the snow. And Heaven knows I'd like to find out what the old boy was doing out—at a time when all the other bears are hibernating."
They continued on up the creek until the grade of the hill was less, then clambered slowly up. Fifty yards up the slope they encountered the old caribou trail, but none of these wilderness creatures had been along in recent days. They followed it a short distance, however, back in the direction they had come and above the scene of their battle with the bear.
"No profit here," Bill said at last. "We might as well go down to the creek bed and find better walking."
They turned, and in an instant more came back to their own tracks. And suddenly Bill stopped and stared at them in dumb amazement.
He looked so astonished, so inexpressibly baffled, that for a moment his two companions were stricken silent. Virginia's heart leaped in her throat. Yet the tracks contained no message for her.
"What's the matter?" Harold asked. "What do you see?"