With clenched fist he struck the table a blow that startled Maigan, who barked, leaping up to his feet.
“It’s all right, boy,” said his master. “Men are pretty big fools, excepting when they’re nothing but infernal cowards. I tell you, boy, some one will have to pay heavily for this. Good Lord! Who would have thought of such a thing? I––I think I must be getting crazy! But no––she’s over there at Papineau’s, and some one wrote to her, and everything she said was the plain truth, as she understood it. Great Heavens! It’s no wonder she looked at me as if I’d been the dirt under her feet. That thing’s got to be 149 straightened out, somehow, but first I must see Stefan, of course.”
For a moment a wild idea came to him of going over to Carcajou in the darkness. Such an undertaking was by no means particularly difficult for a strong man, who knew the way, but suddenly he realized that he was played out and would never reach his destination that night. This irked his soul, unbearably, until he had recourse to his old briar pipe. In spite of the fact that his arm was beginning to hurt him badly he sat near the stove, where he had kindled a fire again, thinking hard. He was racking his brain to seek some motive that could have impelled any one he knew to play such a frightful joke. One after another he named every man he had ever known or even merely met in Carcajou and the surrounding, sparsely settled country. But they were nearly all friends of his, he knew, or at least had no reason to bear him ill-will. There was one chap he had had quite a scrap with one day, over a dog-fight in which the man had urged his animal first and then kicked Maigan when he saw his brute having by far the worst of it. But soon afterwards they had shaken hands and the matter had been forgotten. Besides, the fellow was now working in Sudbury, far east down the line. 150 No, that wasn’t a trail worth following. The more he thought the matter over the more utterly mysterious it seemed to become. But of one thing he was determined. He was going to move heaven and earth to get at the bottom of all this, and when he found out who was responsible the fur would fly.
It was perhaps fortunate for her that the idea of the red-headed girl in old McGurn’s store never entered his head for a moment. She had always been friendly, perhaps even a little forward in her attentions to him, though he had always paid her rather scant notice. He had never been more than decently civil to her.
When he sought his bunk, an hour or two later, a long time elapsed before he could fall asleep. It seemed to him that his head throbbed a good deal, and that shoulder was growing mightily uncomfortable. He hoped it would be better in the morning. Finally he fell asleep, restlessly. Upon the floor, stretched out upon an old deerskin close to the stove, Maigan was sleeping more profoundly, though now and then he whined and sighed in his slumber, perhaps dreaming of hares and porcupines. A cricket ensconced beneath the flat stones under the stove began to chirp, shrilly. Outside a big-horned owl 151 was hooting, dismally, while the big falls continued to roar out their eternal song. And thus the long night wore out till a flaming crimson and copper dawn came up, with flashing rays that stabbed the great rolling clouds while the trees kept on cracking in the intense frost and the ice in the big pool churned and groaned under the torment of waters seeking to burst their shackles.
CHAPTER VII
Carcajou Is Shocked
After Stefan had started away with Madge, Miss Sophy McGurn, who had been on the watch, was delighted to see Mrs. Olsen coming to the store. She greeted her customer more pleasantly than ever and served her with a bag of beans, two spools of black thread and a pound of the best oleo-butter. The older woman was nothing loath to talk, and confirmed the girl’s suspicion that Stefan had taken that young woman to Hugo’s. Mrs. Olsen insisted on the fact that her visitor was a real pretty girl, though awfully thin and looking as if a breath would blow her over. She also commented on the lack of suitable clothing for such dreadful weather, and on the utter ignorance Madge seemed to display of anything connected with Carcajou or, in fact, any part of Ontario. When questioned, cautiously, she admitted that she knew no reason whatever for the girl’s coming, but she hastened to assert that Stefan had said it was all right, which settled the question, and, 153 with her rather waddling gait, started off for her house again.