From that moment he went hunting on a new plan, as it were. The Lindsays must have started from this promontory. He was sure of that. Therefore the point most evident was to find the start. From the fire he worked round, taking a semicircle on the land side and back again. By dusk he had not discovered what he wanted, but he believed he should, so he camped there that night and began again as soon as he could see well.
Of course he found the trail made by Nell, David, and the dog, right across by the north shore to beyond the first big bend of the river, where they took to the ice again. The thaw had made it more difficult, but such an old trailer as Stenson could not be deceived easily.
He found the fire where they stopped, and finally in the dusk, as described, he followed the trail up the steep to the neighbourhood of the bear’s den. If he had not done that he would, of course, have surprised the two in the shack. As it was, the bear became, after all, a friend to the pair he had attacked in the first place.
When Stenson appeared the big black brute was in a worse mood than before. He was more hungry and he had smelt the scent of cooking that came from the stove-pipe of the log house. The trapper fired at him, because he was obviously dangerous and it had not occurred to him that the trail he had followed ended so soon. If it had, he would have been more cautious probably.
The bear, slightly wounded, made a dash for the man, who ran behind a tree and fired again. But the light was deceiving, and the affair ended in the bear retreating into the rocky fortress--to fight another day. Stenson, seeing drops of blood on the snow, decided to come again, kill the bear, and get the pelt; meanwhile he would go on down to the shack, which was, he knew, not far distant on this curve of the river bank. Therefore he presently came down to the log hut and found it was locked. That did not surprise him much, but he expected to find the key hung as usual in some place under the sheltering eaves of the log roof.
By this time it was too dark to see a trail, or find a small thing like a key. So Mr. Jan Stenson lost his temper, as he usually did, and blew in the lock of the door, as he had done to another log house not long before!