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long at one time in a month. It was my turn. I changed the subject.  
    "The way the head was chewed, and the hands. That wouldn't happen if the bear had killed him, only if he'd found him dead," I suggested carefully.  
    He nodded slowly. "A bear maul you, he rip you with his feet, front feet, back feet, he don't care."
    I went slowly. "Did you tell any of this to the police chief?"
    Misquadis spat carefully. "He never ask me."
    "But he must've seen maulings before this, if he's been here all this time."
    Misquadis looked up at me, still working the bear grease into the release of the trap. "He just been here a year. Before that he was down south someplace. He just hear me say bear and that was it. When it come time to write it down, he done it and read it to me."  
    I stood and thought about that for a while. Gallagher had looked like an old-time pro. But he might have fallen into the veteran's trap of looking for easy solutions to vexing problems. Maybe he had forced the pace. But that didn't mean he was the only guy who had made a mistake. There was the coroner to consider. He had said the facial damage was compatible with a bear's physique. This meant that Gallagher had gone to the end of his own experience and then allowed other people to fill in the appropriate blanks for him. Only they had left more than they had filled in.  
    "What about the doctor? What'd he say?"
    Misquadis laughed. "Him? He was too busy lookin' at the teeth marks. 'Bear did that/ he said. 'First bear bite I've ever seen.' "  
    I had learned as much as I was going to learn here.
    Misquadis wiped his hands again and dug once more for his makin's. "The chief tell you about the bounty?" he asked.
    "Bounty, on the bear?" I was surprised. "Haven't heard about that at all."
    He accepted a light and sucked in smoke. "Yeah. The chamber of commerce put a bounty on the bear, five hundred bucks. Been guys up there all week tryin' shoot 'im."  
    "And they came up empty?"
    He grinned, grinning around the butt in the center of his mouth. "They're not Indian," he said.
    "Yeah, but there must've been some Indians went out after that kind of money," I argued.
    He looked at me without speaking, and for the first time I could see the pride that filled him. "They wouldn't go until I go," he said.  
    "And when do you plan to do that?"
    "Tomorrow," he said softly, and then added the words I was hoping for. "You ever hunt bear?"
    "Not yet," I said, and let it hang there while he finished his smoke. Then he asked me, "Got a gun?"
    "Yeah, in the trunk." I don't hunt, but I was just back from an investigation in Toronto where a gun would have been useful so this time I had stuck the station rifle in its case and put it in the trunk. Call it a veteran's precaution, a reflex after a bad experience.  
    Misquadis nodded. "We take your car maybe." He waved to one side of his shack where an aluminum canoe lay upside down. "I got some rope."  
    "Good, when?" I was falling back into the pattern of working with up-country people, white or Indian, no spare words at all.
    "First t'ing," he said, and turned back to his traps as if I were not there. I nodded at his back, got into the car, turned it in the space on top of the bare rock in front of his cabin, and headed out toward town. I wasn't sure what I would find at the bear hunt but at least it would get me to the place where the body had been found, otherwise I was going to have to hire a helicopter and that would cost.  
    I was puzzled. If Misquadis hadn't seen a bear then there probably hadn't been a bear on the island. And if there wasn't, either Prudhomme had been killed somewhere else and moved or else somebody had killed him using bear's teeth and claws. And why would anybody do that? And if they did, why would they take so much trouble going over and over the exposed flesh until it was unidentifiable? It didn't make any sense. Unless maybe it was some grudge killing, some maniac hated the poor guy