Within the hour they returned. And such a load as they carried on their backs! Three bear skins and two hundred pounds of meat they cast down upon the ground. Then kicking off the hungry dogs, they cut away broad slices to throw them in the midst of the fighting pack.
“Three bears!” said Faye when she saw them. “How can they have killed them so soon?”
“Not kill,” said the Indian who understood English. “Dead, that one, two, three bear.”
“Dead! Then there is someone about.”
“No. Not anyone.”
“Then who killed them?” She was examining one of the skins. The marks she found there had not been made by bullets, but by arrows.
“White man no save,” said the Indian, shaking his head. “That one Indian,” nodding to his companion, “how you say it? Him one doctor, one shamin. Plenty spirits help him. Spirit eagle, spirit white fox, spirit old man, long time dead, never shoot rifle, always bow and arrow, that one help him.
“So this one morning he say, that one (another nod toward his companion), that one say, ‘Spirit of old man, kill bear for my dinner. Kill one, two, three bear. Kill him.’ That’s all. See old man’s tracks, mine. So big!” He stretched out his arms at full length.
“He is trying to tell you,” said Gordon Duncan, “that his companion has a familiar spirit; that he is in league with the ghost of an old man and that the ghost, at his request, has killed three bears.”
Faye shook her head. She did not believe it.