Completely bewildered, Alice and Carl returned to the cabin for their delayed breakfast. The raid on the apiary was a mystery. They knew of no animal in the Canadian woods that could have made such a track, though all through breakfast and afterward they discussed and guessed and tried to imagine some explanation. At last Carl, half in joke, began to recount Indian legends of the wendigo,—a giant, cannibal demon supposed to prey on hunters in the North,—until Alice implored him to stop.
“I shall be afraid to go to bed to-night,” she said. “Suppose I awoke and saw that great terrible thing looking in through the window at me!”
“Perhaps we’ll catch it in the trap,” Carl tried to reassure her. “Don’t be frightened, Allie. The wendigo doesn’t leave any tracks where it walks, and besides I don’t believe it would eat honey. It loves stronger stuff, like blood and bones.”
“Oh, stop!” cried Alice, putting her hands to her ears.
Thinking it over, Carl came to the conclusion that the tracks must have been made by a very large bear, whose feet were deformed in some way, perhaps by an injury. Perhaps only one foot was misshapen, for he had never clearly made out more than one track at a time. Anyhow this was the only explanation that he could give for the strange trail.
When darkness fell they gathered a great store of wood and sat late in the bright firelight. They hesitated about separating to their rooms, and Alice, at last, flatly refused to go. Carl did not insist, and they brought out blankets and spread them on the floor by the fire, laying both guns loaded and handy.
Neither of them slept well. Several times Carl jumped up, fancying that he had heard some sound outside; but all was quiet when he opened the door. But toward daylight they both fell soundly asleep and did not awake until the sun was high over the cedars.
The trap had not been sprung; the bees had not been disturbed, and there were no fresh tracks in the yard. Carl and Alice both felt decidedly languid after their bad night, but the hot breakfast coffee was stimulating, and in the bright sunlight they began to feel much more courageous.
Shortly after breakfast Alice caught sight of one of Carl’s cats, eating a quantity of trout-heads that had been thrown out behind the cabin. It was really a wild-looking creature, enormously large, yellowish-gray, and very thick-furred.
“Pussy, pussy! Come here, poor kitty!” she called, coaxingly.