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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10897 ***
+
+THE WENDIGO
+
+Algernon Blackwood
+
+1910
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year without
+finding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, and
+the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective families
+with the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr.
+Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he brought
+instead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all the
+bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, was
+interested in other things besides moose--amongst them the vagaries of
+the human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in his
+book on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confided
+once to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a part
+in it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole....
+
+Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson, his
+nephew, a divinity student destined for the "Wee Kirk" (then on his
+first visit to Canadian backwoods), and the latter's guide, Défago.
+Joseph Défago was a French "Canuck," who had strayed from his native
+Province of Quebec years before, and had got caught in Rat Portage when
+the Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who, in addition to
+his unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore, could also sing
+the old _voyageur_ songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into the
+bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spell
+which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved the
+wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to
+an obsession. The life of the backwoods fascinated him--whence,
+doubtless, his surpassing efficiency in dealing with their mysteries.
+
+On this particular expedition he was Hank's choice. Hank knew him and
+swore by him. He also swore at him, "jest as a pal might," and since he
+had a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless, oaths, the
+conversation between the two stalwart and hardy woodsmen was often of a
+rather lively description. This river of expletives, however, Hank
+agreed to dam a little out of respect for his old "hunting boss," Dr.
+Cathcart, whom of course he addressed after the fashion of the country
+as "Doc," and also because he understood that young Simpson was already
+a "bit of a parson." He had, however, one objection to Défago, and one
+only--which was, that the French Canadian sometimes exhibited what Hank
+described as "the output of a cursed and dismal mind," meaning
+apparently that he sometimes was true to type, Latin type, and suffered
+fits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing could induce him to
+utter speech. Défago, that is to say, was imaginative and melancholy.
+And, as a rule, it was too long a spell of "civilization" that induced
+the attacks, for a few days of the wilderness invariably cured them.
+
+This, then, was the party of four that found themselves in camp the last
+week in October of that "shy moose year" 'way up in the wilderness north
+of Rat Portage--a forsaken and desolate country. There was also Punk, an
+Indian, who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their hunting trips
+in previous years, and who acted as cook. His duty was merely to stay in
+camp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks and coffee at a few
+minutes' notice. He dressed in the worn-out clothes bequeathed to him by
+former patrons, and, except for his coarse black hair and dark skin, he
+looked in these city garments no more like a real redskin than a stage
+Negro looks like a real African. For all that, however, Punk had in him
+still the instincts of his dying race; his taciturn silence and his
+endurance survived; also his superstition.
+
+The party round the blazing fire that night were despondent, for a week
+had passed without a single sign of recent moose discovering itself.
+Défago had sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank, in bad
+humor, reminded him so often that "he kep' mussing-up the fac's so, that
+it was 'most all nothin' but a petered-out lie," that the Frenchman had
+finally subsided into a sulky silence which nothing seemed likely to
+break. Dr. Cathcart and his nephew were fairly done after an exhausting
+day. Punk was washing up the dishes, grunting to himself under the
+lean-to of branches, where he later also slept. No one troubled to stir
+the slowly dying fire. Overhead the stars were brilliant in a sky quite
+wintry, and there was so little wind that ice was already forming
+stealthily along the shores of the still lake behind them. The silence
+of the vast listening forest stole forward and enveloped them.
+
+Hank broke in suddenly with his nasal voice.
+
+"I'm in favor of breaking new ground tomorrow, Doc," he observed with
+energy, looking across at his employer. "We don't stand a dead Dago's
+chance around here."
+
+"Agreed," said Cathcart, always a man of few words. "Think the idea's
+good."
+
+"Sure pop, it's good," Hank resumed with confidence. "S'pose, now, you
+and I strike west, up Garden Lake way for a change! None of us ain't
+touched that quiet bit o' land yet--"
+
+"I'm with you."
+
+"And you, Défago, take Mr. Simpson along in the small canoe, skip across
+the lake, portage over into Fifty Island Water, and take a good squint
+down that thar southern shore. The moose 'yarded' there like hell last
+year, and for all we know they may be doin' it agin this year jest to
+spite us."
+
+Défago, keeping his eyes on the fire, said nothing by way of reply. He
+was still offended, possibly, about his interrupted story.
+
+"No one's been up that way this year, an' I'll lay my bottom dollar on
+_that!_" Hank added with emphasis, as though he had a reason for
+knowing. He looked over at his partner sharply. "Better take the little
+silk tent and stay away a couple o' nights," he concluded, as though the
+matter were definitely settled. For Hank was recognized as general
+organizer of the hunt, and in charge of the party.
+
+It was obvious to anyone that Défago did not jump at the plan, but his
+silence seemed to convey something more than ordinary disapproval, and
+across his sensitive dark face there passed a curious expression like a
+flash of firelight--not so quickly, however, that the three men had not
+time to catch it.
+
+"He funked for some reason, _I_ thought," Simpson said afterwards in the
+tent he shared with his uncle. Dr. Cathcart made no immediate reply,
+although the look had interested him enough at the time for him to make
+a mental note of it. The expression had caused him a passing uneasiness
+he could not quite account for at the moment.
+
+But Hank, of course, had been the first to notice it, and the odd thing
+was that instead of becoming explosive or angry over the other's
+reluctance, he at once began to humor him a bit.
+
+"But there ain't no _speshul_ reason why no one's been up there this
+year," he said with a perceptible hush in his tone; "not the reason you
+mean, anyway! Las' year it was the fires that kep' folks out, and this
+year I guess--I guess it jest happened so, that's all!" His manner was
+clearly meant to be encouraging.
+
+Joseph Défago raised his eyes a moment, then dropped them again. A
+breath of wind stole out of the forest and stirred the embers into a
+passing blaze. Dr. Cathcart again noticed the expression in the guide's
+face, and again he did not like it. But this time the nature of the look
+betrayed itself. In those eyes, for an instant, he caught the gleam of a
+man scared in his very soul. It disquieted him more than he cared to
+admit.
+
+"Bad Indians up that way?" he asked, with a laugh to ease matters a
+little, while Simpson, too sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, moved
+off to bed with a prodigious yawn; "or--or anything wrong with the
+country?" he added, when his nephew was out of hearing.
+
+Hank met his eye with something less than his usual frankness.
+
+"He's jest skeered," he replied good-humouredly. "Skeered stiff about
+some ole feery tale! That's all, ain't it, ole pard?" And he gave Défago
+a friendly kick on the moccasined foot that lay nearest the fire.
+
+Défago looked up quickly, as from an interrupted reverie, a reverie,
+however, that had not prevented his seeing all that went on about him.
+
+"Skeered--_nuthin'!_" he answered, with a flush of defiance. "There's
+nuthin' in the Bush that can skeer Joseph Défago, and don't you forget
+it!" And the natural energy with which he spoke made it impossible to
+know whether he told the whole truth or only a part of it.
+
+Hank turned towards the doctor. He was just going to add something when
+he stopped abruptly and looked round. A sound close behind them in the
+darkness made all three start. It was old Punk, who had moved up from
+his lean-to while they talked and now stood there just beyond the circle
+of firelight--listening.
+
+"'Nother time, Doc!" Hank whispered, with a wink, "when the gallery
+ain't stepped down into the stalls!" And, springing to his feet, he
+slapped the Indian on the back and cried noisily, "Come up t' the fire
+an' warm yer dirty red skin a bit." He dragged him towards the blaze and
+threw more wood on. "That was a mighty good feed you give us an hour or
+two back," he continued heartily, as though to set the man's thoughts on
+another scent, "and it ain't Christian to let you stand out there
+freezin' yer ole soul to hell while we're gettin' all good an' toasted!"
+Punk moved in and warmed his feet, smiling darkly at the other's
+volubility which he only half understood, but saying nothing. And
+presently Dr. Cathcart, seeing that further conversation was impossible,
+followed his nephew's example and moved off to the tent, leaving the
+three men smoking over the now blazing fire.
+
+It is not easy to undress in a small tent without waking one's
+companion, and Cathcart, hardened and warm-blooded as he was in spite of
+his fifty odd years, did what Hank would have described as "considerable
+of his twilight" in the open. He noticed, during the process, that Punk
+had meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, and that Hank and Défago were
+at it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammer and anvil, the little French
+Canadian being the anvil. It was all very like the conventional stage
+picture of Western melodrama: the fire lighting up their faces with
+patches of alternate red and black; Défago, in slouch hat and moccasins
+in the part of the "badlands" villain; Hank, open-faced and hatless,
+with that reckless fling of his shoulders, the honest and deceived hero;
+and old Punk, eavesdropping in the background, supplying the atmosphere
+of mystery. The doctor smiled as he noticed the details; but at the same
+time something deep within him--he hardly knew what--shrank a little, as
+though an almost imperceptible breath of warning had touched the surface
+of his soul and was gone again before he could seize it. Probably it was
+traceable to that "scared expression" he had seen in the eyes of Défago;
+"probably"--for this hint of fugitive emotion otherwise escaped his
+usually so keen analysis. Défago, he was vaguely aware, might cause
+trouble somehow ...He was not as steady a guide as Hank, for
+instance ... Further than that he could not get ...
+
+He watched the men a moment longer before diving into the stuffy tent
+where Simpson already slept soundly. Hank, he saw, was swearing like a
+mad African in a New York nigger saloon; but it was the swearing of
+"affection." The ridiculous oaths flew freely now that the cause of
+their obstruction was asleep. Presently he put his arm almost tenderly
+upon his comrade's shoulder, and they moved off together into the
+shadows where their tent stood faintly glimmering. Punk, too, a moment
+later followed their example and disappeared between his odorous
+blankets in the opposite direction.
+
+Dr. Cathcart then likewise turned in, weariness and sleep still fighting
+in his mind with an obscure curiosity to know what it was that had
+scared Défago about the country up Fifty Island Water way,--wondering,
+too, why Punk's presence had prevented the completion of what Hank had
+to say. Then sleep overtook him. He would know tomorrow. Hank would tell
+him the story while they trudged after the elusive moose.
+
+Deep silence fell about the little camp, planted there so audaciously in
+the jaws of the wilderness. The lake gleamed like a sheet of black glass
+beneath the stars. The cold air pricked. In the draughts of night that
+poured their silent tide from the depths of the forest, with messages
+from distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze, there lay
+already the faint, bleak odors of coming winter. White men, with their
+dull scent, might never have divined them; the fragrance of the wood
+fire would have concealed from them these almost electrical hints of
+moss and bark and hardening swamp a hundred miles away. Even Hank and
+Défago, subtly in league with the soul of the woods as they were, would
+probably have spread their delicate nostrils in vain....
+
+But an hour later, when all slept like the dead, old Punk crept from his
+blankets and went down to the shore of the lake like a shadow--silently,
+as only Indian blood can move. He raised his head and looked about him.
+The thick darkness rendered sight of small avail, but, like the animals,
+he possessed other senses that darkness could not mute. He
+listened--then sniffed the air. Motionless as a hemlock stem he stood
+there. After five minutes again he lifted his head and sniffed, and yet
+once again. A tingling of the wonderful nerves that betrayed itself by
+no outer sign, ran through him as he tasted the keen air. Then, merging
+his figure into the surrounding blackness in a way that only wild men
+and animals understand, he turned, still moving like a shadow, and went
+stealthily back to his lean-to and his bed.
+
+And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirred
+gently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising among the far
+ridges of the country beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from the
+direction in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleeping camp
+with a faint and sighing murmur through the tops of the big trees that
+was almost too delicate to be audible. With it, down the desert paths of
+night, though too faint, too high even for the Indian's hair-like
+nerves, there passed a curious, thin odor, strangely disquieting, an
+odor of something that seemed unfamiliar--utterly unknown.
+
+The French Canadian and the man of Indian blood each stirred uneasily in
+his sleep just about this time, though neither of them woke. Then the
+ghost of that unforgettably strange odor passed away and was lost among
+the leagues of tenantless forest beyond.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+In the morning the camp was astir before the sun. There had been a
+light fall of snow during the night and the air was sharp. Punk had done
+his duty betimes, for the odors of coffee and fried bacon reached every
+tent. All were in good spirits.
+
+"Wind's shifted!" cried Hank vigorously, watching Simpson and his guide
+already loading the small canoe. "It's across the lake--dead right for
+you fellers. And the snow'll make bully trails! If there's any moose
+mussing around up thar, they'll not get so much as a tail-end scent of
+you with the wind as it is. Good luck, Monsieur Défago!" he added,
+facetiously giving the name its French pronunciation for once, "_bonne
+chance!_"
+
+Défago returned the good wishes, apparently in the best of spirits, the
+silent mood gone. Before eight o'clock old Punk had the camp to
+himself, Cathcart and Hank were far along the trail that led westwards,
+while the canoe that carried Défago and Simpson, with silk tent and grub
+for two days, was already a dark speck bobbing on the bosom of the lake,
+going due east.
+
+The wintry sharpness of the air was tempered now by a sun that topped
+the wooded ridges and blazed with a luxurious warmth upon the world of
+lake and forest below; loons flew skimming through the sparkling spray
+that the wind lifted; divers shook their dripping heads to the sun and
+popped smartly out of sight again; and as far as eye could reach rose
+the leagues of endless, crowding Bush, desolate in its lonely sweep and
+grandeur, untrodden by foot of man, and stretching its mighty and
+unbroken carpet right up to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay.
+
+Simpson, who saw it all for the first time as he paddled hard in the
+bows of the dancing canoe, was enchanted by its austere beauty. His
+heart drank in the sense of freedom and great spaces just as his lungs
+drank in the cool and perfumed wind. Behind him in the stern seat,
+singing fragments of his native chanties, Défago steered the craft of
+birch bark like a thing of life, answering cheerfully all his
+companion's questions. Both were gay and light-hearted. On such
+occasions men lose the superficial, worldly distinctions; they become
+human beings working together for a common end. Simpson, the employer,
+and Défago the employed, among these primitive forces, were simply--two
+men, the "guider" and the "guided." Superior knowledge, of course,
+assumed control, and the younger man fell without a second thought into
+the quasi-subordinate position. He never dreamed of objecting when
+Défago dropped the "Mr.," and addressed him as "Say, Simpson," or
+"Simpson, boss," which was invariably the case before they reached the
+farther shore after a stiff paddle of twelve miles against a head wind.
+He only laughed, and liked it; then ceased to notice it at all.
+
+For this "divinity student" was a young man of parts and character,
+though as yet, of course, untraveled; and on this trip--the first time
+he had seen any country but his own and little Switzerland--the huge
+scale of things somewhat bewildered him. It was one thing, he realized,
+to hear about primeval forests, but quite another to see them. While to
+dwell in them and seek acquaintance with their wild life was, again, an
+initiation that no intelligent man could undergo without a certain
+shifting of personal values hitherto held for permanent and sacred.
+
+Simpson knew the first faint indication of this emotion when he held the
+new. 303 rifle in his hands and looked along its pair of faultless,
+gleaming barrels. The three days' journey to their headquarters, by lake
+and portage, had carried the process a stage farther. And now that he
+was about to plunge beyond even the fringe of wilderness where they were
+camped into the virgin heart of uninhabited regions as vast as Europe
+itself, the true nature of the situation stole upon him with an effect
+of delight and awe that his imagination was fully capable of
+appreciating. It was himself and Défago against a multitude--at least,
+against a Titan!
+
+The bleak splendors of these remote and lonely forests rather
+overwhelmed him with the sense of his own littleness. That stern quality
+of the tangled backwoods which can only be described as merciless and
+terrible, rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon,
+and revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized his
+own utter helplessness. Only Défago, as a symbol of a distant
+civilization where man was master, stood between him and a pitiless
+death by exhaustion and starvation.
+
+It was thrilling to him, therefore, to watch Défago turn over the canoe
+upon the shore, pack the paddles carefully underneath, and then proceed
+to "blaze" the spruce stems for some distance on either side of an
+almost invisible trail, with the careless remark thrown in, "Say,
+Simpson, if anything happens to me, you'll find the canoe all correc' by
+these marks;--then strike doo west into the sun to hit the home camp
+agin, see?"
+
+It was the most natural thing in the world to say, and he said it
+without any noticeable inflexion of the voice, only it happened to
+express the youth's emotions at the moment with an utterance that was
+symbolic of the situation and of his own helplessness as a factor in it.
+He was alone with Défago in a primitive world: that was all. The canoe,
+another symbol of man's ascendancy, was now to be left behind. Those
+small yellow patches, made on the trees by the axe, were the only
+indications of its hiding place.
+
+Meanwhile, shouldering the packs between them, each man carrying his own
+rifle, they followed the slender trail over rocks and fallen trunks and
+across half-frozen swamps; skirting numerous lakes that fairly gemmed
+the forest, their borders fringed with mist; and towards five o'clock
+found themselves suddenly on the edge of the woods, looking out across a
+large sheet of water in front of them, dotted with pine-clad islands of
+all describable shapes and sizes.
+
+"Fifty Island Water," announced Défago wearily, "and the sun jest goin'
+to dip his bald old head into it!" he added, with unconscious poetry;
+and immediately they set about pitching camp for the night.
+
+In a very few minutes, under those skilful hands that never made a
+movement too much or a movement too little, the silk tent stood taut and
+cozy, the beds of balsam boughs ready laid, and a brisk cooking fire
+burned with the minimum of smoke. While the young Scotchman cleaned the
+fish they had caught trolling behind the canoe, Défago "guessed" he
+would "jest as soon" take a turn through the Bush for indications of
+moose. "_May_ come across a trunk where they bin and rubbed horns," he
+said, as he moved off, "or feedin' on the last of the maple leaves"--and
+he was gone.
+
+His small figure melted away like a shadow in the dusk, while Simpson
+noted with a kind of admiration how easily the forest absorbed him into
+herself. A few steps, it seemed, and he was no longer visible.
+
+Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts; the trees stood somewhat
+apart, well spaced; and in the clearings grew silver birch and maple,
+spearlike and slender, against the immense stems of spruce and hemlock.
+But for occasional prostrate monsters, and the boulders of grey rock
+that thrust uncouth shoulders here and there out of the ground, it might
+well have been a bit of park in the Old Country. Almost, one might have
+seen in it the hand of man. A little to the right, however, began the
+great burnt section, miles in extent, proclaiming its real
+character--_brulé_, as it is called, where the fires of the previous
+year had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps now rose gaunt and
+ugly, bereft of branches, like gigantic match heads stuck into the
+ground, savage and desolate beyond words. The perfume of charcoal and
+rain-soaked ashes still hung faintly about it.
+
+The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the
+fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the
+only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that
+vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the
+woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might
+stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees. In front,
+through doorways pillared by huge straight stems, lay the stretch of
+Fifty Island Water, a crescent-shaped lake some fifteen miles from tip
+to tip, and perhaps five miles across where they were camped. A sky of
+rose and saffron, more clear than any atmosphere Simpson had ever
+known, still dropped its pale streaming fires across the waves, where
+the islands--a hundred, surely, rather than fifty--floated like the
+fairy barques of some enchanted fleet. Fringed with pines, whose crests
+fingered most delicately the sky, they almost seemed to move upwards as
+the light faded--about to weigh anchor and navigate the pathways of the
+heavens instead of the currents of their native and desolate lake.
+
+And strips of colored cloud, like flaunting pennons, signaled their
+departure to the stars....
+
+The beauty of the scene was strangely uplifting. Simpson smoked the fish
+and burnt his fingers into the bargain in his efforts to enjoy it and at
+the same time tend the frying pan and the fire. Yet, ever at the back of
+his thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness: the indifference
+to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of
+man. The sense of his utter loneliness, now that even Défago had gone,
+came close as he looked about him and listened for the sound of his
+companion's returning footsteps.
+
+There was pleasure in the sensation, yet with it a perfectly
+comprehensible alarm. And instinctively the thought stirred in him:
+"What should I--_could_ I, do--if anything happened and he did not come
+back--?"
+
+They enjoyed their well-earned supper, eating untold quantities of fish,
+and drinking unmilked tea strong enough to kill men who had not covered
+thirty miles of hard "going," eating little on the way. And when it was
+over, they smoked and told stories round the blazing fire, laughing,
+stretching weary limbs, and discussing plans for the morrow. Défago was
+in excellent spirits, though disappointed at having no signs of moose to
+report. But it was dark and he had not gone far. The _brulé_, too, was
+bad. His clothes and hands were smeared with charcoal. Simpson, watching
+him, realized with renewed vividness their position--alone together in
+the wilderness.
+
+"Défago," he said presently, "these woods, you know, are a bit too big
+to feel quite at home in--to feel comfortable in, I mean!... Eh?" He
+merely gave expression to the mood of the moment; he was hardly prepared
+for the earnestness, the solemnity even, with which the guide took him
+up.
+
+"You've hit it right, Simpson, boss," he replied, fixing his searching
+brown eyes on his face, "and that's the truth, sure. There's no end to
+'em--no end at all." Then he added in a lowered tone as if to himself,
+"There's lots found out _that_, and gone plumb to pieces!"
+
+But the man's gravity of manner was not quite to the other's liking; it
+was a little too suggestive for this scenery and setting; he was sorry
+he had broached the subject. He remembered suddenly how his uncle had
+told him that men were sometimes stricken with a strange fever of the
+wilderness, when the seduction of the uninhabited wastes caught them so
+fiercely that they went forth, half fascinated, half deluded, to their
+death. And he had a shrewd idea that his companion held something in
+sympathy with that queer type. He led the conversation on to other
+topics, on to Hank and the doctor, for instance, and the natural rivalry
+as to who should get the first sight of moose.
+
+"If they went doo west," observed Défago carelessly, "there's sixty
+miles between us now--with ole Punk at halfway house eatin' himself full
+to bustin' with fish and coffee." They laughed together over the
+picture. But the casual mention of those sixty miles again made Simpson
+realize the prodigious scale of this land where they hunted; sixty miles
+was a mere step; two hundred little more than a step. Stories of lost
+hunters rose persistently before his memory. The passion and mystery of
+homeless and wandering men, seduced by the beauty of great forests,
+swept his soul in a way too vivid to be quite pleasant. He wondered
+vaguely whether it was the mood of his companion that invited the
+unwelcome suggestion with such persistence.
+
+"Sing us a song, Défago, if you're not too tired," he asked; "one of
+those old _voyageur_ songs you sang the other night." He handed his
+tobacco pouch to the guide and then filled his own pipe, while the
+Canadian, nothing loth, sent his light voice across the lake in one of
+those plaintive, almost melancholy chanties with which lumbermen and
+trappers lessen the burden of their labor. There was an appealing and
+romantic flavor about it, something that recalled the atmosphere of the
+old pioneer days when Indians and wilderness were leagued together,
+battles frequent, and the Old Country farther off than it is today. The
+sound traveled pleasantly over the water, but the forest at their backs
+seemed to swallow it down with a single gulp that permitted neither echo
+nor resonance.
+
+It was in the middle of the third verse that Simpson noticed something
+unusual--something that brought his thoughts back with a rush from
+faraway scenes. A curious change had come into the man's voice. Even
+before he knew what it was, uneasiness caught him, and looking up
+quickly, he saw that Défago, though still singing, was peering about him
+into the Bush, as though he heard or saw something. His voice grew
+fainter--dropped to a hush--then ceased altogether. The same instant,
+with a movement amazingly alert, he started to his feet and stood
+upright--_sniffing the air_. Like a dog scenting game, he drew the air
+into his nostrils in short, sharp breaths, turning quickly as he did so
+in all directions, and finally "pointing" down the lake shore,
+eastwards. It was a performance unpleasantly suggestive and at the same
+time singularly dramatic. Simpson's heart fluttered disagreeably as he
+watched it.
+
+"Lord, man! How you made me jump!" he exclaimed, on his feet beside him
+the same instant, and peering over his shoulder into the sea of
+darkness. "What's up? Are you frightened--?"
+
+Even before the question was out of his mouth he knew it was foolish,
+for any man with a pair of eyes in his head could see that the Canadian
+had turned white down to his very gills. Not even sunburn and the glare
+of the fire could hide that.
+
+The student felt himself trembling a little, weakish in the knees.
+"What's up?" he repeated quickly. "D'you smell moose? Or anything queer,
+anything--wrong?" He lowered his voice instinctively.
+
+The forest pressed round them with its encircling wall; the nearer tree
+stems gleamed like bronze in the firelight; beyond that--blackness, and,
+so far as he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them a passing
+puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softly
+down again without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as if a
+million invisible causes had combined just to produce that single
+visible effect. _Other_ life pulsed about them--and was gone.
+
+Défago turned abruptly; the livid hue of his face had turned to a dirty
+grey.
+
+"I never said I heered--or smelt--nuthin'," he said slowly and
+emphatically, in an oddly altered voice that conveyed somehow a touch of
+defiance. "I was only--takin' a look round--so to speak. It's always a
+mistake to be too previous with yer questions." Then he added suddenly
+with obvious effort, in his more natural voice, "Have you got the
+matches, Boss Simpson?" and proceeded to light the pipe he had half
+filled just before he began to sing.
+
+Without speaking another word they sat down again by the fire. Défago
+changing his side so that he could face the direction the wind came
+from. For even a tenderfoot could tell that. Défago changed his position
+in order to hear and smell--all there was to be heard and smelt. And,
+since he now faced the lake with his back to the trees it was evidently
+nothing in the forest that had sent so strange and sudden a warning to
+his marvelously trained nerves.
+
+"Guess now I don't feel like singing any," he explained presently of his
+own accord. "That song kinder brings back memories that's troublesome to
+me; I never oughter've begun it. It sets me on t' imagining things,
+see?"
+
+Clearly the man was still fighting with some profoundly moving emotion.
+He wished to excuse himself in the eyes of the other. But the
+explanation, in that it was only a part of the truth, was a lie, and he
+knew perfectly well that Simpson was not deceived by it. For nothing
+could explain away the livid terror that had dropped over his face while
+he stood there sniffing the air. And nothing--no amount of blazing fire,
+or chatting on ordinary subjects--could make that camp exactly as it had
+been before. The shadow of an unknown horror, naked if unguessed, that
+had flashed for an instant in the face and gestures of the guide, had
+also communicated itself, vaguely and therefore more potently, to his
+companion. The guide's visible efforts to dissemble the truth only made
+things worse. Moreover, to add to the younger man's uneasiness, was the
+difficulty, nay, the impossibility he felt of asking questions, and also
+his complete ignorance as to the cause ...Indians, wild animals, forest
+fires--all these, he knew, were wholly out of the question. His
+imagination searched vigorously, but in vain....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet, somehow or other, after another long spell of smoking, talking and
+roasting themselves before the great fire, the shadow that had so
+suddenly invaded their peaceful camp began to shift. Perhaps Défago's
+efforts, or the return of his quiet and normal attitude accomplished
+this; perhaps Simpson himself had exaggerated the affair out of all
+proportion to the truth; or possibly the vigorous air of the wilderness
+brought its own powers of healing. Whatever the cause, the feeling of
+immediate horror seemed to have passed away as mysteriously as it had
+come, for nothing occurred to feed it. Simpson began to feel that he had
+permitted himself the unreasoning terror of a child. He put it down
+partly to a certain subconscious excitement that this wild and immense
+scenery generated in his blood, partly to the spell of solitude, and
+partly to overfatigue. That pallor in the guide's face was, of course,
+uncommonly hard to explain, yet it _might_ have been due in some way to
+an effect of firelight, or his own imagination ...He gave it the benefit
+of the doubt; he was Scotch.
+
+When a somewhat unordinary emotion has disappeared, the mind always
+finds a dozen ways of explaining away its causes ...Simpson lit a last
+pipe and tried to laugh to himself. On getting home to Scotland it would
+make quite a good story. He did not realize that this laughter was a
+sign that terror still lurked in the recesses of his soul--that, in
+fact, it was merely one of the conventional signs by which a man,
+seriously alarmed, tries to persuade himself that he is _not_ so.
+
+Défago, however, heard that low laughter and looked up with surprise on
+his face. The two men stood, side by side, kicking the embers about
+before going to bed. It was ten o'clock--a late hour for hunters to be
+still awake.
+
+"What's ticklin' yer?" he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely.
+
+"I--I was thinking of our little toy woods at home, just at that
+moment," stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated his
+mind, and startled by the question, "and comparing them to--to all
+this," and he swept his arm round to indicate the Bush.
+
+A pause followed in which neither of them said anything.
+
+"All the same I wouldn't laugh about it, if I was you," Défago added,
+looking over Simpson's shoulder into the shadows. "There's places in
+there nobody won't never see into--nobody knows what lives in there
+either."
+
+"Too big--too far off?" The suggestion in the guide's manner was immense
+and horrible.
+
+Défago nodded. The expression on his face was dark. He, too, felt
+uneasy. The younger man understood that in a _hinterland_ of this size
+there might well be depths of wood that would never in the life of the
+world be known or trodden. The thought was not exactly the sort he
+welcomed. In a loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time for
+bed. But the guide lingered, tinkering with the fire, arranging the
+stones needlessly, doing a dozen things that did not really need doing.
+Evidently there was something he wanted to say, yet found it difficult
+to "get at."
+
+"Say, you, Boss Simpson," he began suddenly, as the last shower of
+sparks went up into the air, "you don't--smell nothing, do you--nothing
+pertickler, I mean?" The commonplace question, Simpson realized, veiled
+a dreadfully serious thought in his mind. A shiver ran down his back.
+
+"Nothing but burning wood," he replied firmly, kicking again at the
+embers. The sound of his own foot made him start.
+
+"And all the evenin' you ain't smelt--nothing?" persisted the guide,
+peering at him through the gloom; "nothing extrordiny, and different to
+anything else you ever smelt before?"
+
+"No, no, man; nothing at all!" he replied aggressively, half angrily.
+
+Défago's face cleared. "That's good!" he exclaimed with evident relief.
+"That's good to hear."
+
+"Have _you?_" asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted the
+question.
+
+The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He shook his head. "I guess
+not," he said, though without overwhelming conviction. "It must've been
+just that song of mine that did it. It's the song they sing in lumber
+camps and godforsaken places like that, when they're skeered the
+Wendigo's somewhere around, doin' a bit of swift traveling.--"
+
+"And what's the Wendigo, pray?" Simpson asked quickly, irritated because
+again he could not prevent that sudden shiver of the nerves. He knew
+that he was close upon the man's terror and the cause of it. Yet a
+rushing passionate curiosity overcame his better judgment, and his fear.
+
+Défago turned swiftly and looked at him as though he were suddenly about
+to shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open. Yet all he said,
+or whispered rather, for his voice sank very low, was: "It's
+nuthin'--nuthin' but what those lousy fellers believe when they've bin
+hittin' the bottle too long--a sort of great animal that lives up
+yonder," he jerked his head northwards, "quick as lightning in its
+tracks, an' bigger'n anything else in the Bush, an' ain't supposed to be
+very good to look at--that's all!"
+
+"A backwoods superstition--" began Simpson, moving hastily toward the
+tent in order to shake off the hand of the guide that clutched his arm.
+"Come, come, hurry up for God's sake, and get the lantern going! It's
+time we were in bed and asleep if we're going to be up with the sun
+tomorrow...."
+
+The guide was close on his heels. "I'm coming," he answered out of the
+darkness, "I'm coming." And after a slight delay he appeared with the
+lantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. The
+shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so,
+and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole
+tent trembled as though a gust of wind struck it.
+
+The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft balsam
+boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside, all was warm and cozy, but outside
+the world of crowding trees pressed close about them, marshalling their
+million shadows, and smothering the little tent that stood there like a
+wee white shell facing the ocean of tremendous forest.
+
+Between the two lonely figures within, however, there pressed another
+shadow that was _not_ a shadow from the night. It was the Shadow cast by
+the strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped suddenly upon
+Défago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson, as he lay there,
+watching the darkness through the open flap of the tent, ready to plunge
+into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that unique and profound
+stillness of a primeval forest when no wind stirs ... and when the night
+has weight and substance that enters into the soul to bind a veil about
+it.... Then sleep took him....
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Thus, it seemed to him, at least. Yet it was true that the lap of the
+water, just beyond the tent door, still beat time with his lessening
+pulses when he realized that he was lying with his eyes open and that
+another sound had recently introduced itself with cunning softness
+between the splash and murmur of the little waves.
+
+And, long before he understood what this sound was, it had stirred in
+him the centers of pity and alarm. He listened intently, though at first
+in vain, for the running blood beat all its drums too noisily in his
+ears. Did it come, he wondered, from the lake, or from the woods?...
+
+Then, suddenly, with a rush and a flutter of the heart, he knew that it
+was close beside him in the tent; and, when he turned over for a better
+hearing, it focused itself unmistakably not two feet away. It was a
+sound of weeping; Défago upon his bed of branches was sobbing in the
+darkness as though his heart would break, the blankets evidently stuffed
+against his mouth to stifle it.
+
+And his first feeling, before he could think or reflect, was the rush of
+a poignant and searching tenderness. This intimate, human sound, heard
+amid the desolation about them, woke pity. It was so incongruous, so
+pitifully incongruous--and so vain! Tears--in this vast and cruel
+wilderness: of what avail? He thought of a little child crying in
+mid-Atlantic.... Then, of course, with fuller realization, and the
+memory of what had gone before, came the descent of the terror upon him,
+and his blood ran cold.
+
+"Défago," he whispered quickly, "what's the matter?" He tried to make
+his voice very gentle. "Are you in pain--unhappy--?" There was no reply,
+but the sounds ceased abruptly. He stretched his hand out and touched
+him. The body did not stir.
+
+"Are you awake?" for it occurred to him that the man was crying in his
+sleep. "Are you cold?" He noticed that his feet, which were uncovered,
+projected beyond the mouth of the tent. He spread an extra fold of his
+own blankets over them. The guide had slipped down in his bed, and the
+branches seemed to have been dragged with him. He was afraid to pull the
+body back again, for fear of waking him.
+
+One or two tentative questions he ventured softly, but though he waited
+for several minutes there came no reply, nor any sign of movement.
+Presently he heard his regular and quiet breathing, and putting his hand
+again gently on the breast, felt the steady rise and fall beneath.
+
+"Let me know if anything's wrong," he whispered, "or if I can do
+anything. Wake me at once if you feel--queer."
+
+He hardly knew what to say. He lay down again, thinking and wondering
+what it all meant. Défago, of course, had been crying in his sleep. Some
+dream or other had afflicted him. Yet never in his life would he forget
+that pitiful sound of sobbing, and the feeling that the whole awful
+wilderness of woods listened....
+
+His own mind busied itself for a long time with the recent events, of
+which _this_ took its mysterious place as one, and though his reason
+successfully argued away all unwelcome suggestions, a sensation of
+uneasiness remained, resisting ejection, very deep-seated--peculiar
+beyond ordinary.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+But sleep, in the long run, proves greater than all emotions. His
+thoughts soon wandered again; he lay there, warm as toast, exceedingly
+weary; the night soothed and comforted, blunting the edges of memory and
+alarm. Half an hour later he was oblivious of everything in the outer
+world about him.
+
+Yet sleep, in this case, was his great enemy, concealing all approaches,
+smothering the warning of his nerves.
+
+As, sometimes, in a nightmare events crowd upon each other's heels with
+a conviction of dreadfulest reality, yet some inconsistent detail
+accuses the whole display of incompleteness and disguise, so the events
+that now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the mind
+somehow that the detail which could explain them had been overlooked in
+the confusion, and that therefore they were but partly true, the rest
+delusion. At the back of the sleeper's mind something remains awake,
+ready to let slip the judgment. "All this is not _quite_ real; when you
+wake up you'll understand."
+
+And thus, in a way, it was with Simpson. The events, not wholly
+inexplicable or incredible in themselves, yet remain for the man who saw
+and heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold horror, because the
+little piece that might have made the puzzle clear lay concealed or
+overlooked.
+
+So far as he can recall, it was a violent movement, running downwards
+through the tent towards the door, that first woke him and made him
+aware that his companion was sitting bolt upright beside him--quivering.
+Hours must have passed, for it was the pale gleam of the dawn that
+revealed his outline against the canvas. This time the man was not
+crying; he was quaking like a leaf; the trembling he felt plainly
+through the blankets down the entire length of his own body. Défago had
+huddled down against him for protection, shrinking away from something
+that apparently concealed itself near the door flaps of the little tent.
+
+Simpson thereupon called out in a loud voice some question or other--in
+the first bewilderment of waking he does not remember exactly what--and
+the man made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare lay
+horribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult. At first,
+indeed, he was not sure where he was--whether in one of the earlier
+camps, or at home in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense of confusion was
+very troubling.
+
+And next--almost simultaneous with his waking, it seemed--the profound
+stillness of the dawn outside was shattered by a most uncommon sound. It
+came without warning, or audible approach; and it was unspeakably
+dreadful. It was a voice, Simpson declares, possibly a human voice;
+hoarse yet plaintive--a soft, roaring voice close outside the tent,
+overhead rather than upon the ground, of immense volume, while in some
+strange way most penetratingly and seductively sweet. It rang out, too,
+in three separate and distinct notes, or cries, that bore in some odd
+fashion a resemblance, farfetched yet recognizable, to the name of the
+guide: "_Dé-fa-go!_"
+
+The student admits he is unable to describe it quite intelligently, for
+it was unlike any sound he had ever heard in his life, and combined a
+blending of such contrary qualities. "A sort of windy, crying voice," he
+calls it, "as of something lonely and untamed, wild and of abominable
+power...."
+
+And, even before it ceased, dropping back into the great gulfs of
+silence, the guide beside him had sprung to his feet with an answering
+though unintelligible cry. He blundered against the tent pole with
+violence, shaking the whole structure, spreading his arms out
+frantically for more room, and kicking his legs impetuously free of the
+clinging blankets. For a second, perhaps two, he stood upright by the
+door, his outline dark against the pallor of the dawn; then, with a
+furious, rushing speed, before his companion could move a hand to stop
+him, he shot with a plunge through the flaps of canvas--and was gone.
+And as he went--so astonishingly fast that the voice could actually be
+heard dying in the distance--he called aloud in tones of anguished
+terror that at the same time held something strangely like the frenzied
+exultation of delight--
+
+"Oh! oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire! Oh! oh! This height
+and fiery speed!"
+
+And then the distance quickly buried it, and the deep silence of very
+early morning descended upon the forest as before.
+
+It had all come about with such rapidity that, but for the evidence of
+the empty bed beside him, Simpson could almost have believed it to have
+been the memory of a nightmare carried over from sleep. He still felt
+the warm pressure of that vanished body against his side; there lay the
+twisted blankets in a heap; the very tent yet trembled with the
+vehemence of the impetuous departure. The strange words rang in his
+ears, as though he still heard them in the distance--wild language of a
+suddenly stricken mind. Moreover, it was not only the senses of sight
+and hearing that reported uncommon things to his brain, for even while
+the man cried and ran, he had become aware that a strange perfume, faint
+yet pungent, pervaded the interior of the tent. And it was at this
+point, it seems, brought to himself by the consciousness that his
+nostrils were taking this distressing odor down into his throat, that he
+found his courage, sprang quickly to his feet--and went out.
+
+The grey light of dawn that dropped, cold and glimmering, between the
+trees revealed the scene tolerably well. There stood the tent behind
+him, soaked with dew; the dark ashes of the fire, still warm; the lake,
+white beneath a coating of mist, the islands rising darkly out of it
+like objects packed in wool; and patches of snow beyond among the
+clearer spaces of the Bush--everything cold, still, waiting for the sun.
+But nowhere a sign of the vanished guide--still, doubtless, flying at
+frantic speed through the frozen woods. There was not even the sound of
+disappearing footsteps, nor the echoes of the dying voice. He had
+gone--utterly.
+
+There was nothing; nothing but the sense of his recent presence, so
+strongly left behind about the camp; _and_--this penetrating,
+all-pervading odor.
+
+And even this was now rapidly disappearing in its turn. In spite of his
+exceeding mental perturbation, Simpson struggled hard to detect its
+nature, and define it, but the ascertaining of an elusive scent, not
+recognized subconsciously and at once, is a very subtle operation of
+the mind. And he failed. It was gone before he could properly seize or
+name it. Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult,
+for it was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid rather, not unlike the odor
+of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not wholly unpleasing, with
+something almost sweet in it that reminded him of the scent of decaying
+garden leaves, earth, and the myriad, nameless perfumes that make up the
+odor of a big forest. Yet the "odor of lions" is the phrase with which
+he usually sums it all up.
+
+Then--it was wholly gone, and he found himself standing by the ashes of
+the fire in a state of amazement and stupid terror that left him the
+helpless prey of anything that chose to happen. Had a muskrat poked its
+pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled in that instant down
+the bark of a tree, he would most likely have collapsed without more ado
+and fainted. For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a
+great Outer Horror ... and his scattered powers had not as yet had time
+to collect themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-control.
+
+Nothing did happen, however. A great kiss of wind ran softly through the
+awakening forest, and a few maple leaves here and there rustled
+tremblingly to earth. The sky seemed to grow suddenly much lighter.
+Simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek and uncovered head; realized
+that he was shivering with the cold; and, making a great effort,
+realized next that he was alone in the Bush--_and_ that he was called
+upon to take immediate steps to find and succor his vanished companion.
+
+Make an effort, accordingly, he did, though an ill-calculated and futile
+one. With that wilderness of trees about him, the sheet of water cutting
+him off behind, and the horror of that wild cry in his blood, he did
+what any other inexperienced man would have done in similar
+bewilderment: he ran about, without any sense of direction, like a
+frantic child, and called loudly without ceasing the name of the guide:
+
+"Défago! Défago! Défago!" he yelled, and the trees gave him back the
+name as often as he shouted, only a little softened--"Défago! Défago!
+Défago!"
+
+He followed the trail that lay a short distance across the patches of
+snow, and then lost it again where the trees grew too thickly for snow
+to lie. He shouted till he was hoarse, and till the sound of his own
+voice in all that unanswering and listening world began to frighten him.
+His confusion increased in direct ratio to the violence of his efforts.
+His distress became formidably acute, till at length his exertions
+defeated their own object, and from sheer exhaustion he headed back to
+the camp again. It remains a wonder that he ever found his way. It was
+with great difficulty, and only after numberless false clues, that he at
+last saw the white tent between the trees, and so reached safety.
+
+Exhaustion then applied its own remedy, and he grew calmer. He made the
+fire and breakfasted. Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense and
+judgment into him again, and he realized that he had been behaving like
+a boy. He now made another, and more successful attempt to face the
+situation collectedly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to his
+assistance, he decided that he must first make as thorough a search as
+possible, failing success in which, he must find his way into the home
+camp as best he could and bring help.
+
+And this was what he did. Taking food, matches and rifle with him, and a
+small axe to blaze the trees against his return journey, he set forth.
+It was eight o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the tops of
+the trees in a sky without clouds. Pinned to a stake by the fire he left
+a note in case Défago returned while he was away.
+
+This time, according to a careful plan, he took a new direction,
+intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or later cut into
+indications of the guide's trail; and, before he had gone a quarter of a
+mile he came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow, and beside
+it the light and smaller tracks of what were beyond question human
+feet--the feet of Défago. The relief he at once experienced was natural,
+though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple
+explanation of the whole matter: these big marks had surely been left by
+a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, and
+uttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was
+apparent. Défago, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the
+point of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the wind
+hours before. His excitement and disappearance were due, of course,
+to--to his--
+
+Then the impossible explanation at which he grasped faded, as common
+sense showed him mercilessly that none of this was true. No guide, much
+less a guide like Défago, could have acted in so irrational a way, going
+off even without his rifle ...! The whole affair demanded a far more
+complicated elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all--the
+cry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face of horror when his
+nostrils first caught the new odor; that muffled sobbing in the
+darkness, and--for this, too, now came back to him dimly--the man's
+original aversion for this particular bit of country....
+
+Besides, now that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks of
+a bull moose at all! Hank had explained to him the outline of a bull's
+hoofs, of a cow's or calf's, too, for that matter; he had drawn them
+clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were wholly different. They
+were big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs.
+He wondered for a moment whether bear tracks were like that. There was
+no other animal he could think of, for caribou did not come so far
+south at this season, and, even if they did, would leave hoof marks.
+
+They were ominous signs--these mysterious writings left in the snow by
+the unknown creature that had lured a human being away from safety--and
+when he coupled them in his imagination with that haunting sound that
+broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind,
+distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the _threatening_ aspect of
+it all. And, stooping down to examine the marks more closely, he caught
+a faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odor that made him instantly
+straighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.
+
+Then his memory played him another evil trick. He suddenly recalled
+those uncovered feet projecting beyond the edge of the tent, and the
+body's appearance of having been dragged towards the opening; the man's
+shrinking from something by the door when he woke later. The details now
+beat against his trembling mind with concerted attack. They seemed to
+gather in those deep spaces of the silent forest about him, where the
+host of trees stood waiting, listening, watching to see what he would
+do. The woods were closing round him.
+
+With the persistence of true pluck, however, Simpson went forward,
+following the tracks as best he could, smothering these ugly emotions
+that sought to weaken his will. He blazed innumerable trees as he went,
+ever fearful of being unable to find the way back, and calling aloud at
+intervals of a few seconds the name of the guide. The dull tapping of
+the axe upon the massive trunks, and the unnatural accents of his own
+voice became at length sounds that he even dreaded to make, dreaded to
+hear. For they drew attention without ceasing to his presence and exact
+whereabouts, and if it were really the case that something was hunting
+himself down in the same way that he was hunting down another--
+
+With a strong effort, he crushed the thought out the instant it rose.
+It was the beginning, he realized, of a bewilderment utterly diabolical
+in kind that would speedily destroy him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Although the snow was not continuous, lying merely in shallow flurries
+over the more open spaces, he found no difficulty in following the
+tracks for the first few miles. They went straight as a ruled line
+wherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to increase in
+length, till it finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutely
+impossible for any ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps
+they became. One of these he measured, and though he knew that "stretch"
+of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was at a complete loss to
+understand why he found no signs on the snow between the extreme points.
+But what perplexed him even more, making him feel his vision had gone
+utterly awry, was that Défago's stride increased in the same manner, and
+finally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as if the great
+beast had lifted him with it and carried him across these astonishing
+intervals. Simpson, who was much longer in the limb, found that he could
+not compass even half the stretch by taking a running jump.
+
+And the sight of these huge tracks, running side by side, silent
+evidence of a dreadful journey in which terror or madness had urged to
+impossible results, was profoundly moving. It shocked him in the secret
+depths of his soul. It was the most horrible thing his eyes had ever
+looked upon. He began to follow them mechanically, absentmindedly
+almost, ever peering over his shoulder to see if he, too, were being
+followed by something with a gigantic tread.... And soon it came about
+that he no longer quite realized what it was they signified--these
+impressions left upon the snow by something nameless and untamed, always
+accompanied by the footmarks of the little French Canadian, his guide,
+his comrade, the man who had shared his tent a few hours before,
+chatting, laughing, even singing by his side....
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+For a man of his years and inexperience, only a canny Scot, perhaps,
+grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have preserved
+even that measure of balance that this youth somehow or other did manage
+to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two things he
+presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him
+headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of only
+making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his
+heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way
+to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change,
+so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some
+undecipherable manner--appalling.
+
+It was in the bigger tracks he first noticed this, and for a long time
+he could not quite believe his eyes. Was it the blown leaves that
+produced odd effects of light and shade, or that the dry snow, drifting
+like finely ground rice about the edges, cast shadows and high lights?
+Or was it actually the fact that the great marks had become faintly
+colored? For round about the deep, plunging holes of the animal there
+now appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more like an effect of
+light than of anything that dyed the substance of the snow itself. Every
+mark had it, and had it increasingly--this indistinct fiery tinge that
+painted a new touch of ghastliness into the picture.
+
+But when, wholly unable to explain or to credit it, he turned his
+attention to the other tracks to discover if they, too, bore similar
+witness, he noticed that these had meanwhile undergone a change that was
+infinitely worse, and charged with far more horrible suggestion. For, in
+the last hundred yards or so, he saw that they had grown gradually into
+the semblance of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the change had come
+about, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see where the change first
+began. The result, however, was beyond question. Smaller, neater, more
+cleanly modeled, they formed now an exact and careful duplicate of the
+larger tracks beside them. The feet that produced them had, therefore,
+also changed. And something in his mind reared up with loathing and with
+terror as he saw it.
+
+Simpson, for the first time, hesitated; then, ashamed of his alarm and
+indecision, took a few hurried steps ahead; the next instant stopped
+dead in his tracks. Immediately in front of him all signs of the trail
+ceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for a hundred
+yards and more, he searched in vain for the least indication of their
+continuance. There was--nothing.
+
+The trees were very thick just there, big trees all of them, spruce,
+cedar, hemlock; there was no underbrush. He stood, looking about him,
+all distraught; bereft of any power of judgment. Then he set to work to
+search again, and again, and yet again, but always with the same result:
+_nothing_. The feet that printed the surface of the snow thus far had
+now, apparently, left the ground!
+
+And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip of
+terror laid its most nicely calculated lash about his heart. It dropped
+with deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving
+him. He had been secretly dreading all the time that it would come--and
+come it did.
+
+Far overhead, muted by great height and distance, strangely thinned and
+wailing, he heard the crying voice of Défago, the guide.
+
+The sound dropped upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an effect
+of dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stood
+motionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, then
+staggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganized
+hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the
+most shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so that
+his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden
+draught.
+
+"Oh! oh! This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire ...!" ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this
+voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called--then silence through all
+the listening wilderness of trees.
+
+And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himself
+running wildly to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots and
+boulders, and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after
+the Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion with which
+experience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half-deranged,
+picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and
+heart and soul. For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him in
+that far voice--the Power of untamed Distance--the Enticement of the
+Desolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the pains of
+someone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust and
+travail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of Défago, eternally
+hunted, driven and pursued across the skiey vastness of those ancient
+forests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his thoughts ...
+
+It seemed ages before he could find anything in the chaos of his
+disorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for a
+moment, and think ...
+
+The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling brought no response;
+the inscrutable forces of the Wild had summoned their victim beyond
+recall--and held him fast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet he searched and called, it seems, for hours afterwards, for it was
+late in the afternoon when at length he decided to abandon a useless
+pursuit and return to his camp on the shores of Fifty Island Water. Even
+then he went with reluctance, that crying voice still echoing in his
+ears. With difficulty he found his rifle and the homeward trail. The
+concentration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees, and a biting
+hunger that gnawed, helped to keep his mind steady. Otherwise, he
+admits, the temporary aberration he had suffered might have been
+prolonged to the point of positive disaster. Gradually the ballast
+shifted back again, and he regained something that approached his normal
+equilibrium.
+
+But for all that the journey through the gathering dusk was miserably
+haunted. He heard innumerable following footsteps; voices that laughed
+and whispered; and saw figures crouching behind trees and boulders,
+making signs to one another for a concerted attack the moment he had
+passed. The creeping murmur of the wind made him start and listen. He
+went stealthily, trying to hide where possible, and making as little
+sound as he could. The shadows of the woods, hitherto protective or
+covering merely, had now become menacing, challenging; and the pageantry
+in his frightened mind masked a host of possibilities that were all the
+more ominous for being obscure. The presentiment of a nameless doom
+lurked ill-concealed behind every detail of what had happened.
+
+It was really admirable how he emerged victor in the end; men of riper
+powers and experience might have come through the ordeal with less
+success. He had himself tolerably well in hand, all things considered,
+and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of the
+question and traveling an unknown trail in the darkness equally
+impracticable, he sat up the whole of that night, rifle in hand, before
+a fire he never for a single moment allowed to die down. The severity of
+the haunted vigil marked his soul for life; but it was successfully
+accomplished; and with the very first signs of dawn he set forth upon
+the long return journey to the home camp to get help. As before, he left
+a written note to explain his absence, and to indicate where he had left
+a plentiful _cache_ of food and matches--though he had no expectation
+that any human hands would find them!
+
+How Simpson found his way alone by the lake and forest might well make a
+story in itself, for to hear him tell it is to _know_ the passionate
+loneliness of soul that a man can feel when the Wilderness holds him in
+the hollow of its illimitable hand--and laughs. It is also to admire his
+indomitable pluck.
+
+He claims no skill, declaring that he followed the almost invisible
+trail mechanically, and without thinking. And this, doubtless, is the
+truth. He relied upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which is
+instinct. Perhaps, too, some sense of orientation, known to animals and
+primitive men, may have helped as well, for through all that tangled
+region he succeeded in reaching the exact spot where Défago had hidden
+the canoe nearly three days before with the remark, "Strike doo west
+across the lake into the sun to find the camp."
+
+There was not much sun left to guide him, but he used his compass to the
+best of his ability, embarking in the frail craft for the last twelve
+miles of his journey with a sensation of immense relief that the forest
+was at last behind him. And, fortunately, the water was calm; he took
+his line across the center of the lake instead of coasting round the
+shores for another twenty miles. Fortunately, too, the other hunters
+were back. The light of their fires furnished a steering point without
+which he might have searched all night long for the actual position of
+the camp.
+
+It was close upon midnight all the same when his canoe grated on the
+sandy cove, and Hank, Punk and his uncle, disturbed in their sleep by
+his cries, ran quickly down and helped a very exhausted and broken
+specimen of Scotch humanity over the rocks toward a dying fire.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The sudden entrance of his prosaic uncle into this world of wizardry
+and horror that had haunted him without interruption now for two days
+and two nights, had the immediate effect of giving to the affair an
+entirely new aspect. The sound of that crisp "Hulloa, my boy! And what's
+up _now_?" and the grasp of that dry and vigorous hand introduced
+another standard of judgment. A revulsion of feeling washed through him.
+He realized that he had let himself "go" rather badly. He even felt
+vaguely ashamed of himself. The native hard-headedness of his race
+reclaimed him.
+
+And this doubtless explains why he found it so hard to tell that group
+round the fire--everything. He told enough, however, for the immediate
+decision to be arrived at that a relief party must start at the earliest
+possible moment, and that Simpson, in order to guide it capably, must
+first have food and, above all, sleep. Dr. Cathcart observing the lad's
+condition more shrewdly than his patient knew, gave him a very slight
+injection of morphine. For six hours he slept like the dead.
+
+From the description carefully written out afterwards by this student of
+divinity, it appears that the account he gave to the astonished group
+omitted sundry vital and important details. He declares that, with his
+uncle's wholesome, matter-of-fact countenance staring him in the face,
+he simply had not the courage to mention them. Thus, all the search
+party gathered, it would seem, was that Défago had suffered in the night
+an acute and inexplicable attack of mania, had imagined himself "called"
+by someone or something, and had plunged into the bush after it without
+food or rifle, where he must die a horrible and lingering death by cold
+and starvation unless he could be found and rescued in time. "In time,"
+moreover, meant _at once_.
+
+In the course of the following day, however--they were off by seven,
+leaving Punk in charge with instructions to have food and fire always
+ready--Simpson found it possible to tell his uncle a good deal more of
+the story's true inwardness, without divining that it was drawn out of
+him as a matter of fact by a very subtle form of cross examination. By
+the time they reached the beginning of the trail, where the canoe was
+laid up against the return journey, he had mentioned how Défago spoke
+vaguely of "something he called a 'Wendigo'"; how he cried in his sleep;
+how he imagined an unusual scent about the camp; and had betrayed other
+symptoms of mental excitement. He also admitted the bewildering effect
+of "that extraordinary odor" upon himself, "pungent and acrid like the
+odor of lions." And by the time they were within an easy hour of Fifty
+Island Water he had let slip the further fact--a foolish avowal of his
+own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards--that he had heard the
+vanished guide call "for help." He omitted the singular phrases used,
+for he simply could not bring himself to repeat the preposterous
+language. Also, while describing how the man's footsteps in the snow had
+gradually assumed an exact miniature likeness of the animal's plunging
+tracks, he left out the fact that they measured a _wholly_ incredible
+distance. It seemed a question, nicely balanced between individual pride
+and honesty, what he should reveal and what suppress. He mentioned the
+fiery tinge in the snow, for instance, yet shrank from telling that body
+and bed had been partly dragged out of the tent....
+
+With the net result that Dr. Cathcart, adroit psychologist that he
+fancied himself to be, had assured him clearly enough exactly where his
+mind, influenced by loneliness, bewilderment and terror, had yielded to
+the strain and invited delusion. While praising his conduct, he managed
+at the same time to point out where, when, and how his mind had gone
+astray. He made his nephew think himself finer than he was by judicious
+praise, yet more foolish than he was by minimizing the value of the
+evidence. Like many another materialist, that is, he lied cleverly on
+the basis of insufficient knowledge, _because_ the knowledge supplied
+seemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible.
+
+"The spell of these terrible solitudes," he said, "cannot leave any mind
+untouched, any mind, that is, possessed of the higher imaginative
+qualities. It has worked upon yours exactly as it worked upon my own
+when I was your age. The animal that haunted your little camp was
+undoubtedly a moose, for the 'belling' of a moose may have, sometimes, a
+very peculiar quality of sound. The colored appearance of the big tracks
+was obviously a defect of vision in your own eyes produced by
+excitement. The size and stretch of the tracks we shall prove when we
+come to them. But the hallucination of an audible voice, of course, is
+one of the commonest forms of delusion due to mental excitement--an
+excitement, my dear boy, perfectly excusable, and, let me add,
+wonderfully controlled by you under the circumstances. For the rest, I
+am bound to say, you have acted with a splendid courage, for the terror
+of feeling oneself lost in this wilderness is nothing short of awful,
+and, had I been in your place, I don't for a moment believe I could have
+behaved with one quarter of your wisdom and decision. The only thing I
+find it uncommonly difficult to explain is--that--damned odor."
+
+"It made me feel sick, I assure you," declared his nephew, "positively
+dizzy!" His uncle's attitude of calm omniscience, merely because he knew
+more psychological formulae, made him slightly defiant. It was so easy
+to be wise in the explanation of an experience one has not personally
+witnessed. "A kind of desolate and terrible odor is the only way I can
+describe it," he concluded, glancing at the features of the quiet,
+unemotional man beside him.
+
+"I can only marvel," was the reply, "that under the circumstances it did
+not seem to you even worse." The dry words, Simpson knew, hovered
+between the truth, and his uncle's interpretation of "the truth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so at last they came to the little camp and found the tent still
+standing, the remains of the fire, and the piece of paper pinned to a
+stake beside it--untouched. The cache, poorly contrived by inexperienced
+hands, however, had been discovered and opened--by musk rats, mink and
+squirrel. The matches lay scattered about the opening, but the food had
+been taken to the last crumb.
+
+"Well, fellers, he ain't here," exclaimed Hank loudly after his fashion.
+"And that's as sartain as the coal supply down below! But whar he's got
+to by this time is 'bout as unsartain as the trade in crowns in t'other
+place." The presence of a divinity student was no barrier to his
+language at such a time, though for the reader's sake it may be severely
+edited. "I propose," he added, "that we start out at once an' hunt for'm
+like hell!"
+
+The gloom of Défago's probable fate oppressed the whole party with a
+sense of dreadful gravity the moment they saw the familiar signs of
+recent occupancy. Especially the tent, with the bed of balsam branches
+still smoothed and flattened by the pressure of his body, seemed to
+bring his presence near to them. Simpson, feeling vaguely as if his
+world were somehow at stake, went about explaining particulars in a
+hushed tone. He was much calmer now, though overwearied with the strain
+of his many journeys. His uncle's method of explaining--"explaining
+away," rather--the details still fresh in his haunted memory helped,
+too, to put ice upon his emotions.
+
+"And that's the direction he ran off in," he said to his two companions,
+pointing in the direction where the guide had vanished that morning in
+the grey dawn. "Straight down there he ran like a deer, in between the
+birch and the hemlock...."
+
+Hank and Dr. Cathcart exchanged glances.
+
+"And it was about two miles down there, in a straight line," continued
+the other, speaking with something of the former terror in his voice,
+"that I followed his trail to the place where--it stopped--dead!"
+
+"And where you heered him callin' an' caught the stench, an' all the
+rest of the wicked entertainment," cried Hank, with a volubility that
+betrayed his keen distress.
+
+"And where your excitement overcame you to the point of producing
+illusions," added Dr. Cathcart under his breath, yet not so low that his
+nephew did not hear it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was early in the afternoon, for they had traveled quickly, and there
+were still a good two hours of daylight left. Dr. Cathcart and Hank lost
+no time in beginning the search, but Simpson was too exhausted to
+accompany them. They would follow the blazed marks on the trees, and
+where possible, his footsteps. Meanwhile the best thing he could do was
+to keep a good fire going, and rest.
+
+But after something like three hours' search, the darkness already down,
+the two men returned to camp with nothing to report. Fresh snow had
+covered all signs, and though they had followed the blazed trees to the
+spot where Simpson had turned back, they had not discovered the smallest
+indication of a human being--or for that matter, of an animal. There
+were no fresh tracks of any kind; the snow lay undisturbed.
+
+It was difficult to know what was best to do, though in reality there
+was nothing more they _could_ do. They might stay and search for weeks
+without much chance of success. The fresh snow destroyed their only
+hope, and they gathered round the fire for supper, a gloomy and
+despondent party. The facts, indeed, were sad enough, for Défago had a
+wife at Rat Portage, and his earnings were the family's sole means of
+support.
+
+Now that the whole truth in all its ugliness was out, it seemed useless
+to deal in further disguise or pretense. They talked openly of the facts
+and probabilities. It was not the first time, even in the experience of
+Dr. Cathcart, that a man had yielded to the singular seduction of the
+Solitudes and gone out of his mind; Défago, moreover, was predisposed to
+something of the sort, for he already had a touch of melancholia in his
+blood, and his fiber was weakened by bouts of drinking that often lasted
+for weeks at a time. Something on this trip--one might never know
+precisely what--had sufficed to push him over the line, that was all.
+And he had gone, gone off into the great wilderness of trees and lakes
+to die by starvation and exhaustion. The chances against his finding
+camp again were overwhelming; the delirium that was upon him would also
+doubtless have increased, and it was quite likely he might do violence
+to himself and so hasten his cruel fate. Even while they talked, indeed,
+the end had probably come. On the suggestion of Hank, his old pal,
+however, they proposed to wait a little longer and devote the whole of
+the following day, from dawn to darkness, to the most systematic search
+they could devise. They would divide the territory between them. They
+discussed their plan in great detail. All that men could do they would
+do. And, meanwhile, they talked about the particular form in which the
+singular Panic of the Wilderness had made its attack upon the mind of
+the unfortunate guide. Hank, though familiar with the legend in its
+general outline, obviously did not welcome the turn the conversation had
+taken. He contributed little, though that little was illuminating. For
+he admitted that a story ran over all this section of country to the
+effect that several Indians had "seen the Wendigo" along the shores of
+Fifty Island Water in the "fall" of last year, and that this was the
+true reason of Défago's disinclination to hunt there. Hank doubtless
+felt that he had in a sense helped his old pal to death by
+overpersuading him. "When an Indian goes crazy," he explained, talking
+to himself more than to the others, it seemed, "it's always put that
+he's 'seen the Wendigo.' An' pore old Défaygo was superstitious down to
+he very heels ...!"
+
+And then Simpson, feeling the atmosphere more sympathetic, told over
+again the full story of his astonishing tale; he left out no details
+this time; he mentioned his own sensations and gripping fears. He only
+omitted the strange language used.
+
+"But Défago surely had already told you all these details of the Wendigo
+legend, my dear fellow," insisted the doctor. "I mean, he had talked
+about it, and thus put into your mind the ideas which your own
+excitement afterwards developed?"
+
+Whereupon Simpson again repeated the facts. Défago, he declared, had
+barely mentioned the beast. He, Simpson, knew nothing of the story, and,
+so far as he remembered, had never even read about it. Even the word was
+unfamiliar.
+
+Of course he was telling the truth, and Dr. Cathcart was reluctantly
+compelled to admit the singular character of the whole affair. He did
+not do this in words so much as in manner, however. He kept his back
+against a good, stout tree; he poked the fire into a blaze the moment it
+showed signs of dying down; he was quicker than any of them to notice
+the least sound in the night about them--a fish jumping in the lake, a
+twig snapping in the bush, the dropping of occasional fragments of
+frozen snow from the branches overhead where the heat loosened them. His
+voice, too, changed a little in quality, becoming a shade less
+confident, lower also in tone. Fear, to put it plainly, hovered close
+about that little camp, and though all three would have been glad to
+speak of other matters, the only thing they seemed able to discuss was
+this--the source of their fear. They tried other subjects in vain; there
+was nothing to say about them. Hank was the most honest of the group; he
+said next to nothing. He never once, however, turned his back to the
+darkness. His face was always to the forest, and when wood was needed he
+didn't go farther than was necessary to get it.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+A wall of silence wrapped them in, for the snow, though not thick, was
+sufficient to deaden any noise, and the frost held things pretty tight
+besides. No sound but their voices and the soft roar of the flames made
+itself heard. Only, from time to time, something soft as the flutter of
+a pine moth's wings went past them through the air. No one seemed
+anxious to go to bed. The hours slipped towards midnight.
+
+"The legend is picturesque enough," observed the doctor after one of the
+longer pauses, speaking to break it rather than because he had anything
+to say, "for the Wendigo is simply the Call of the Wild personified,
+which some natures hear to their own destruction."
+
+"That's about it," Hank said presently. "An' there's no misunderstandin'
+when you hear it. It calls you by name right 'nough."
+
+Another pause followed. Then Dr. Cathcart came back to the forbidden
+subject with a rush that made the others jump.
+
+"The allegory _is_ significant," he remarked, looking about him into the
+darkness, "for the Voice, they say, resembles all the minor sounds of
+the Bush--wind, falling water, cries of the animals, and so forth. And,
+once the victim hears _that_--he's off for good, of course! His most
+vulnerable points, moreover, are said to be the feet and the eyes; the
+feet, you see, for the lust of wandering, and the eyes for the lust of
+beauty. The poor beggar goes at such a dreadful speed that he bleeds
+beneath the eyes, and his feet burn."
+
+Dr. Cathcart, as he spoke, continued to peer uneasily into the
+surrounding gloom. His voice sank to a hushed tone.
+
+"The Wendigo," he added, "is said to burn his feet--owing to the
+friction, apparently caused by its tremendous velocity--till they drop
+off, and new ones form exactly like its own."
+
+Simpson listened in horrified amazement; but it was the pallor on Hank's
+face that fascinated him most. He would willingly have stopped his ears
+and closed his eyes, had he dared.
+
+"It don't always keep to the ground neither," came in Hank's slow, heavy
+drawl, "for it goes so high that he thinks the stars have set him all
+a-fire. An' it'll take great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an' run along the
+tops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an' then droppin' him
+jest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin'. An' its
+food, of all the muck in the whole Bush is--moss!" And he laughed a
+short, unnatural laugh. "It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo," he added,
+looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. "Moss-eater," he
+repeated, with a string of the most outlandish oaths he could invent.
+
+But Simpson now understood the true purpose of all this talk. What
+these two men, each strong and "experienced" in his own way, dreaded
+more than anything else was--silence. They were talking against time.
+They were also talking against darkness, against the invasion of panic,
+against the admission reflection might bring that they were in an
+enemy's country--against anything, in fact, rather than allow their
+inmost thoughts to assume control. He himself, already initiated by the
+awful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He had
+reached the stage where he was immune. But these two, the scoffing,
+analytical doctor, and the honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sat
+trembling in the depths of his being.
+
+Thus the hours passed; and thus, with lowered voices and a kind of taut
+inner resistance of spirit, this little group of humanity sat in the
+jaws of the wilderness and talked foolishly of the terrible and haunting
+legend. It was an unequal contest, all things considered, for the
+wilderness had already the advantage of first attack--and of a hostage.
+The fate of their comrade hung over them with a steadily increasing
+weight of oppression that finally became insupportable.
+
+It was Hank, after a pause longer than the preceding ones that no one
+seemed able to break, who first let loose all this pent-up emotion in
+very unexpected fashion, by springing suddenly to his feet and letting
+out the most ear-shattering yell imaginable into the night. He could not
+contain himself any longer, it seemed. To make it carry even beyond an
+ordinary cry he interrupted its rhythm by shaking the palm of his hand
+before his mouth.
+
+"That's for Défago," he said, looking down at the other two with a
+queer, defiant laugh, "for it's my belief"--the sandwiched oaths may be
+omitted--"that my ole partner's not far from us at this very minute."
+
+There was a vehemence and recklessness about his performance that made
+Simpson, too, start to his feet in amazement, and betrayed even the
+doctor into letting the pipe slip from between his lips. Hank's face was
+ghastly, but Cathcart's showed a sudden weakness--a loosening of all his
+faculties, as it were. Then a momentary anger blazed into his eyes, and
+he too, though with deliberation born of habitual self-control, got upon
+his feet and faced the excited guide. For this was unpermissible,
+foolish, dangerous, and he meant to stop it in the bud.
+
+What might have happened in the next minute or two one may speculate
+about, yet never definitely know, for in the instant of profound silence
+that followed Hank's roaring voice, and as though in answer to it,
+something went past through the darkness of the sky overhead at terrific
+speed--something of necessity very large, for it displaced much air,
+while down between the trees there fell a faint and windy cry of a human
+voice, calling in tones of indescribable anguish and appeal--
+
+"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire!"
+
+White to the very edge of his shirt, Hank looked stupidly about him like
+a child. Dr. Cathcart uttered some kind of unintelligible cry, turning
+as he did so with an instinctive movement of blind terror towards the
+protection of the tent, then halting in the act as though frozen.
+Simpson, alone of the three, retained his presence of mind a little. His
+own horror was too deep to allow of any immediate reaction. He had heard
+that cry before.
+
+Turning to his stricken companions, he said almost calmly--
+
+"That's exactly the cry I heard--the very words he used!"
+
+Then, lifting his face to the sky, he cried aloud, "Défago, Défago! Come
+down here to us! Come down--!"
+
+And before there was time for anybody to take definite action one way or
+another, there came the sound of something dropping heavily between the
+trees, striking the branches on the way down, and landing with a
+dreadful thud upon the frozen earth below. The crash and thunder of it
+was really terrific.
+
+"That's him, s'help me the good Gawd!" came from Hank in a whispering
+cry half choked, his hand going automatically toward the hunting knife
+in his belt. "And he's coming! He's coming!" he added, with an
+irrational laugh of horror, as the sounds of heavy footsteps crunching
+over the snow became distinctly audible, approaching through the
+blackness towards the circle of light.
+
+And while the steps, with their stumbling motion, moved nearer and
+nearer upon them, the three men stood round that fire, motionless and
+dumb. Dr. Cathcart had the appearance of a man suddenly withered; even
+his eyes did not move. Hank, suffering shockingly, seemed on the verge
+again of violent action; yet did nothing. He, too, was hewn of stone.
+Like stricken children they seemed. The picture was hideous. And,
+meanwhile, their owner still invisible, the footsteps came closer,
+crunching the frozen snow. It was endless--too prolonged to be quite
+real--this measured and pitiless approach. It was accursed.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Then at length the darkness, having thus laboriously conceived, brought
+forth--a figure. It drew forward into the zone of uncertain light where
+fire and shadows mingled, not ten feet away; then halted, staring at
+them fixedly. The same instant it started forward again with the
+spasmodic motion as of a thing moved by wires, and coming up closer to
+them, full into the glare of the fire, they perceived then that--it was
+a man; and apparently that this man was--Défago.
+
+Something like a skin of horror almost perceptibly drew down in that
+moment over every face, and three pairs of eyes shone through it as
+though they saw across the frontiers of normal vision into the Unknown.
+
+Défago advanced, his tread faltering and uncertain; he made his way
+straight up to them as a group first, then turned sharply and peered
+close into the face of Simpson. The sound of a voice issued from his
+lips--
+
+"Here I am, Boss Simpson. I heered someone calling me." It was a faint,
+dried up voice, made wheezy and breathless as by immense exertion. "I'm
+havin' a reg'lar hellfire kind of a trip, I am." And he laughed,
+thrusting his head forward into the other's face.
+
+But that laugh started the machinery of the group of waxwork figures
+with the wax-white skins. Hank immediately sprang forward with a stream
+of oaths so farfetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English at
+all, but thought he had lapsed into Indian or some other lingo. He only
+realized that Hank's presence, thrust thus between them, was
+welcome--uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly and
+leisurely, advanced behind him, heavily stumbling.
+
+Simpson seems hazy as to what was actually said and done in those next
+few seconds, for the eyes of that detestable and blasted visage peering
+at such close quarters into his own utterly bewildered his senses at
+first. He merely stood still. He said nothing. He had not the trained
+will of the older men that forced them into action in defiance of all
+emotional stress. He watched them moving as behind a glass that half
+destroyed their reality; it was dreamlike; perverted. Yet, through the
+torrent of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing his uncle's
+tone of authority--hard and forced--saying several things about food and
+warmth, blankets, whisky and the rest ... and, further, that whiffs of
+that penetrating, unaccustomed odor, vile yet sweetly bewildering,
+assailed his nostrils during all that followed.
+
+It was no less a person than himself, however--less experienced and
+adroit than the others though he was--who gave instinctive utterance to
+the sentence that brought a measure of relief into the ghastly situation
+by expressing the doubt and thought in each one's heart.
+
+"It _is_--YOU, isn't it, Défago?" he asked under his breath, horror
+breaking his speech.
+
+And at once Cathcart burst out with the loud answer before the other had
+time to move his lips. "Of course it is! Of course it is! Only--can't
+you see--he's nearly dead with exhaustion, cold and terror! Isn't _that_
+enough to change a man beyond all recognition?" It was said in order to
+convince himself as much as to convince the others. The overemphasis
+alone proved that. And continually, while he spoke and acted, he held a
+handkerchief to his nose. That odor pervaded the whole camp.
+
+For the "Défago" who sat huddled by the big fire, wrapped in blankets,
+drinking hot whisky and holding food in wasted hands, was no more like
+the guide they had last seen alive than the picture of a man of sixty is
+like a daguerreotype of his early youth in the costume of another
+generation. Nothing really can describe that ghastly caricature, that
+parody, masquerading there in the firelight as Défago. From the ruins of
+the dark and awful memories he still retains, Simpson declares that the
+face was more animal than human, the features drawn about into wrong
+proportions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had been subjected
+to extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely of
+those bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that change
+their expression as they swell, and as they collapse emit a faint and
+wailing imitation of a voice. Both face and voice suggested some such
+abominable resemblance. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking to
+describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a face
+and body that had been in air so rarified that, the weight of atmosphere
+being removed, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder and
+become--_incoherent_....
+
+It was Hank, though all distraught and shaking with a tearing volume of
+emotion he could neither handle nor understand, who brought things to a
+head without much ado. He went off to a little distance from the fire,
+apparently so that the light should not dazzle him too much, and shading
+his eyes for a moment with both hands, shouted in a loud voice that held
+anger and affection dreadfully mingled:
+
+"You ain't Défaygo! You ain't Défaygo at all! I don't give a--damn, but
+that ain't you, my ole pal of twenty years!" He glared upon the huddled
+figure as though he would destroy him with his eyes. "An' if it is I'll
+swab the floor of hell with a wad of cotton wool on a toothpick, s'help
+me the good Gawd!" he added, with a violent fling of horror and disgust.
+
+It was impossible to silence him. He stood there shouting like one
+possessed, horrible to see, horrible to hear--_because it was the
+truth_. He repeated himself in fifty different ways, each more
+outlandish than the last. The woods rang with echoes. At one time it
+looked as if he meant to fling himself upon "the intruder," for his hand
+continually jerked towards the long hunting knife in his belt.
+
+But in the end he did nothing, and the whole tempest completed itself
+very shortly with tears. Hank's voice suddenly broke, he collapsed on
+the ground, and Cathcart somehow or other persuaded him at last to go
+into the tent and lie quiet. The remainder of the affair, indeed, was
+witnessed by him from behind the canvas, his white and terrified face
+peeping through the crack of the tent door flap.
+
+Then Dr. Cathcart, closely followed by his nephew who so far had kept
+his courage better than all of them, went up with a determined air and
+stood opposite to the figure of Défago huddled over the fire. He looked
+him squarely in the face and spoke. At first his voice was firm.
+
+"Défago, tell us what's happened--just a little, so that we can know
+how best to help you?" he asked in a tone of authority, almost of
+command. And at that point, it _was_ command. At once afterwards,
+however, it changed in quality, for the figure turned up to him a face
+so piteous, so terrible and so little like humanity, that the doctor
+shrank back from him as from something spiritually unclean. Simpson,
+watching close behind him, says he got the impression of a mask that was
+on the verge of dropping off, and that underneath they would discover
+something black and diabolical, revealed in utter nakedness. "Out with
+it, man, out with it!" Cathcart cried, terror running neck and neck with
+entreaty. "None of us can stand this much longer ...!" It was the cry of
+instinct over reason.
+
+And then "Défago," smiling _whitely_, answered in that thin and fading
+voice that already seemed passing over into a sound of quite another
+character--
+
+"I seen that great Wendigo thing," he whispered, sniffing the air about
+him exactly like an animal. "I been with it too--"
+
+Whether the poor devil would have said more, or whether Dr. Cathcart
+would have continued the impossible cross examination cannot be known,
+for at that moment the voice of Hank was heard yelling at the top of his
+voice from behind the canvas that concealed all but his terrified eyes.
+Such a howling was never heard.
+
+"His feet! Oh, Gawd, his feet! Look at his great changed--feet!"
+
+Défago, shuffling where he sat, had moved in such a way that for the
+first time his legs were in full light and his feet were visible. Yet
+Simpson had no time, himself, to see properly what Hank had seen. And
+Hank has never seen fit to tell. That same instant, with a leap like
+that of a frightened tiger, Cathcart was upon him, bundling the folds of
+blanket about his legs with such speed that the young student caught
+little more than a passing glimpse of something dark and oddly massed
+where moccasined feet ought to have been, and saw even that but with
+uncertain vision.
+
+Then, before the doctor had time to do more, or Simpson time to even
+think a question, much less ask it, Défago was standing upright in front
+of them, balancing with pain and difficulty, and upon his shapeless and
+twisted visage an expression so dark and so malicious that it was, in
+the true sense, monstrous.
+
+"Now _you_ seen it too," he wheezed, "you seen my fiery, burning feet!
+And now--that is, unless you kin save me an' prevent--it's 'bout time
+for--"
+
+His piteous and beseeching voice was interrupted by a sound that was
+like the roar of wind coming across the lake. The trees overhead shook
+their tangled branches. The blazing fire bent its flames as before a
+blast. And something swept with a terrific, rushing noise about the
+little camp and seemed to surround it entirely in a single moment of
+time. Défago shook the clinging blankets from his body, turned towards
+the woods behind, and with the same stumbling motion that had brought
+him--was gone: gone, before anyone could move muscle to prevent him,
+gone with an amazing, blundering swiftness that left no time to act. The
+darkness positively swallowed him; and less than a dozen seconds later,
+above the roar of the swaying trees and the shout of the sudden wind,
+all three men, watching and listening with stricken hearts, heard a cry
+that seemed to drop down upon them from a great height of sky and
+distance--
+
+"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire ...!" then died away, into untold space and silence.
+
+Dr. Cathcart--suddenly master of himself, and therefore of the
+others--was just able to seize Hank violently by the arm as he tried to
+dash headlong into the Bush.
+
+"But I want ter know,--you!" shrieked the guide. "I want ter see! That
+ain't him at all, but some--devil that's shunted into his place ...!"
+
+Somehow or other--he admits he never quite knew how he accomplished
+it--he managed to keep him in the tent and pacify him. The doctor,
+apparently, had reached the stage where reaction had set in and allowed
+his own innate force to conquer. Certainly he "managed" Hank admirably.
+It was his nephew, however, hitherto so wonderfully controlled, who gave
+him most cause for anxiety, for the cumulative strain had now produced a
+condition of lachrymose hysteria which made it necessary to isolate him
+upon a bed of boughs and blankets as far removed from Hank as was
+possible under the circumstances.
+
+And there he lay, as the watches of that haunted night passed over the
+lonely camp, crying startled sentences, and fragments of sentences, into
+the folds of his blanket. A quantity of gibberish about speed and height
+and fire mingled oddly with biblical memories of the classroom. "People
+with broken faces all on fire are coming at a most awful, awful, pace
+towards the camp!" he would moan one minute; and the next would sit up
+and stare into the woods, intently listening, and whisper, "How terrible
+in the wilderness are--are the feet of them that--" until his uncle came
+across to change the direction of his thoughts and comfort him.
+
+The hysteria, fortunately, proved but temporary. Sleep cured him, just
+as it cured Hank.
+
+Till the first signs of daylight came, soon after five o'clock, Dr.
+Cathcart kept his vigil. His face was the color of chalk, and there were
+strange flushes beneath the eyes. An appalling terror of the soul
+battled with his will all through those silent hours. These were some of
+the outer signs ...
+
+At dawn he lit the fire himself, made breakfast, and woke the others,
+and by seven they were well on their way back to the home camp--three
+perplexed and afflicted men, but each in his own way having reduced his
+inner turmoil to a condition of more or less systematized order again.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+They talked little, and then only of the most wholesome and common
+things, for their minds were charged with painful thoughts that
+clamoured for explanation, though no one dared refer to them. Hank,
+being nearest to primitive conditions, was the first to find himself,
+for he was also less complex. In Dr. Cathcart "civilization" championed
+his forces against an attack singular enough. To this day, perhaps, he
+is not _quite_ sure of certain things. Anyhow, he took longer to "find
+himself."
+
+Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions
+probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order.
+Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely
+witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that
+had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically,
+betraying a scale of life still monstrous and immature. He envisaged it
+rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic
+and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men; when the forces of nature
+were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe
+not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later
+in a sermon "savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of
+men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity
+as it exists."
+
+With his uncle he never discussed the matter in detail, for the barrier
+between the two types of mind made it difficult. Only once, years later,
+something led them to the frontier of the subject--of a single detail of
+the subject, rather--
+
+"Can't you even tell me what--_they_ were like?" he asked; and the reply,
+though conceived in wisdom, was not encouraging, "It is far better you
+should not try to know, or to find out."
+
+"Well--that odour...?" persisted the nephew. "What do you make of that?"
+
+Dr. Cathcart looked at him and raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Odours," he replied, "are not so easy as sounds and sights of telepathic
+communication. I make as much, or as little, probably, as you do
+yourself."
+
+He was not quite so glib as usual with his explanations. That was all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the fall of day, cold, exhausted, famished, the party came to the
+end of the long portage and dragged themselves into a camp that at
+first glimpse seemed empty. Fire there was none, and no Punk came
+forward to welcome them. The emotional capacity of all three was too
+over-spent to recognize either surprise or annoyance; but the cry of
+spontaneous affection that burst from the lips of Hank, as he rushed
+ahead of them towards the fire-place, came probably as a warning that
+the end of the amazing affair was not quite yet. And both Cathcart and
+his nephew confessed afterwards that when they saw him kneel down in
+his excitement and embrace something that reclined, gently moving,
+beside the extinguished ashes, they felt in their very bones that this
+"something" would prove to be Défago--the true Défago, returned.
+
+And so, indeed, it was.
+
+It is soon told. Exhausted to the point of emaciation, the French
+Canadian--what was left of him, that is--fumbled among the ashes, trying
+to make a fire. His body crouched there, the weak fingers obeying feebly
+the instinctive habit of a lifetime with twigs and matches. But there
+was no longer any mind to direct the simple operation. The mind had
+fled beyond recall. And with it, too, had fled memory. Not only recent
+events, but all previous life was a blank.
+
+This time it was the real man, though incredibly and horribly shrunken.
+On his face was no expression of any kind whatever--fear, welcome, or
+recognition. He did not seem to know who it was that embraced him, or
+who it was that fed, warmed and spoke to him the words of comfort and
+relief. Forlorn and broken beyond all reach of human aid, the little man
+did meekly as he was bidden. The "something" that had constituted him
+"individual" had vanished for ever.
+
+In some ways it was more terribly moving than anything they had yet
+seen--that idiot smile as he drew wads of coarse moss from his swollen
+cheeks and told them that he was "a damned moss-eater"; the continued
+vomiting of even the simplest food; and, worst of all, the piteous
+and childish voice of complaint in which he told them that his feet
+pained him--"burn like fire"--which was natural enough when Dr. Cathcart
+examined them and found that both were dreadfully frozen. Beneath the
+eyes there were faint indications of recent bleeding.
+
+The details of how he survived the prolonged exposure, of where he had
+been, or of how he covered the great distance from one camp to the
+other, including an immense detour of the lake on foot since he had
+no canoe--all this remains unknown. His memory had vanished completely.
+And before the end of the winter whose beginning witnessed this strange
+occurrence, Défago, bereft of mind, memory and soul, had gone with it.
+He lingered only a few weeks.
+
+And what Punk was able to contribute to the story throws no further
+light upon it. He was cleaning fish by the lake shore about five o'clock
+in the evening--an hour, that is, before the search party returned--when
+he saw this shadow of the guide picking its way weakly into camp. In
+advance of him, he declares, came the faint whiff of a certain singular
+odour.
+
+That same instant old Punk started for home. He covered the entire
+journey of three days as only Indian blood could have covered it. The
+terror of a whole race drove him. He knew what it all meant. Défago
+had "seen the Wendigo."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10897 ***
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood.
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10897 ***</div>
+
+<h1>The Wendigo</h1>
+
+<h3>Algernon Blackwood</h3>
+
+<h5>1910</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="I"></a><h2>I</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year without
+finding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, and
+the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective families
+with the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr.
+Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he brought
+instead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all the
+bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, was
+interested in other things besides moose&mdash;amongst them the vagaries of
+the human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in his
+book on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confided
+once to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a part
+in it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole....</p>
+
+<p>Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson, his
+nephew, a divinity student destined for the &quot;Wee Kirk&quot; (then on his
+first visit to Canadian backwoods), and the latter's guide, D&eacute;fago.
+Joseph D&eacute;fago was a French &quot;Canuck,&quot; who had strayed from his native
+Province of Quebec years before, and had got caught in Rat Portage when
+the Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who, in addition to
+his unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore, could also sing
+the old <i>voyageur</i> songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into the
+bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spell
+which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved the
+wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to
+an obsession. The life of the backwoods fascinated him&mdash;whence,
+doubtless, his surpassing efficiency in dealing with their mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>On this particular expedition he was Hank's choice. Hank knew him and
+swore by him. He also swore at him, &quot;jest as a pal might,&quot; and since he
+had a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless, oaths, the
+conversation between the two stalwart and hardy woodsmen was often of a
+rather lively description. This river of expletives, however, Hank
+agreed to dam a little out of respect for his old &quot;hunting boss,&quot; Dr.
+Cathcart, whom of course he addressed after the fashion of the country
+as &quot;Doc,&quot; and also because he understood that young Simpson was already
+a &quot;bit of a parson.&quot; He had, however, one objection to D&eacute;fago, and one
+only&mdash;which was, that the French Canadian sometimes exhibited what Hank
+described as &quot;the output of a cursed and dismal mind,&quot; meaning
+apparently that he sometimes was true to type, Latin type, and suffered
+fits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing could induce him to
+utter speech. D&eacute;fago, that is to say, was imaginative and melancholy.
+And, as a rule, it was too long a spell of &quot;civilization&quot; that induced
+the attacks, for a few days of the wilderness invariably cured them.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, was the party of four that found themselves in camp the last
+week in October of that &quot;shy moose year&quot; 'way up in the wilderness north
+of Rat Portage&mdash;a forsaken and desolate country. There was also Punk, an
+Indian, who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their hunting trips
+in previous years, and who acted as cook. His duty was merely to stay in
+camp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks and coffee at a few
+minutes' notice. He dressed in the worn-out clothes bequeathed to him by
+former patrons, and, except for his coarse black hair and dark skin, he
+looked in these city garments no more like a real redskin than a stage
+Negro looks like a real African. For all that, however, Punk had in him
+still the instincts of his dying race; his taciturn silence and his
+endurance survived; also his superstition.</p>
+
+<p>The party round the blazing fire that night were despondent, for a week
+had passed without a single sign of recent moose discovering itself.
+D&eacute;fago had sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank, in bad
+humor, reminded him so often that &quot;he kep' mussing-up the fac's so, that
+it was 'most all nothin' but a petered-out lie,&quot; that the Frenchman had
+finally subsided into a sulky silence which nothing seemed likely to
+break. Dr. Cathcart and his nephew were fairly done after an exhausting
+day. Punk was washing up the dishes, grunting to himself under the
+lean-to of branches, where he later also slept. No one troubled to stir
+the slowly dying fire. Overhead the stars were brilliant in a sky quite
+wintry, and there was so little wind that ice was already forming
+stealthily along the shores of the still lake behind them. The silence
+of the vast listening forest stole forward and enveloped them.</p>
+
+<p>Hank broke in suddenly with his nasal voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm in favor of breaking new ground tomorrow, Doc,&quot; he observed with
+energy, looking across at his employer. &quot;We don't stand a dead Dago's
+chance around here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Agreed,&quot; said Cathcart, always a man of few words. &quot;Think the idea's
+good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure pop, it's good,&quot; Hank resumed with confidence. &quot;S'pose, now, you
+and I strike west, up Garden Lake way for a change! None of us ain't
+touched that quiet bit o' land yet&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you, D&eacute;fago, take Mr. Simpson along in the small canoe, skip across
+the lake, portage over into Fifty Island Water, and take a good squint
+down that thar southern shore. The moose 'yarded' there like hell last
+year, and for all we know they may be doin' it agin this year jest to
+spite us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago, keeping his eyes on the fire, said nothing by way of reply. He
+was still offended, possibly, about his interrupted story.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No one's been up that way this year, an' I'll lay my bottom dollar on
+<i>that!</i>&quot; Hank added with emphasis, as though he had a reason for
+knowing. He looked over at his partner sharply. &quot;Better take the little
+silk tent and stay away a couple o' nights,&quot; he concluded, as though the
+matter were definitely settled. For Hank was recognized as general
+organizer of the hunt, and in charge of the party.</p>
+
+<p>It was obvious to anyone that D&eacute;fago did not jump at the plan, but his
+silence seemed to convey something more than ordinary disapproval, and
+across his sensitive dark face there passed a curious expression like a
+flash of firelight&mdash;not so quickly, however, that the three men had not
+time to catch it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He funked for some reason, <i>I</i> thought,&quot; Simpson said afterwards in the
+tent he shared with his uncle. Dr. Cathcart made no immediate reply,
+although the look had interested him enough at the time for him to make
+a mental note of it. The expression had caused him a passing uneasiness
+he could not quite account for at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>But Hank, of course, had been the first to notice it, and the odd thing
+was that instead of becoming explosive or angry over the other's
+reluctance, he at once began to humor him a bit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But there ain't no <i>speshul</i> reason why no one's been up there this
+year,&quot; he said with a perceptible hush in his tone; &quot;not the reason you
+mean, anyway! Las' year it was the fires that kep' folks out, and this
+year I guess&mdash;I guess it jest happened so, that's all!&quot; His manner was
+clearly meant to be encouraging.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph D&eacute;fago raised his eyes a moment, then dropped them again. A
+breath of wind stole out of the forest and stirred the embers into a
+passing blaze. Dr. Cathcart again noticed the expression in the guide's
+face, and again he did not like it. But this time the nature of the look
+betrayed itself. In those eyes, for an instant, he caught the gleam of a
+man scared in his very soul. It disquieted him more than he cared to
+admit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bad Indians up that way?&quot; he asked, with a laugh to ease matters a
+little, while Simpson, too sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, moved
+off to bed with a prodigious yawn; &quot;or&mdash;or anything wrong with the
+country?&quot; he added, when his nephew was out of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>Hank met his eye with something less than his usual frankness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's jest skeered,&quot; he replied good-humouredly. &quot;Skeered stiff about
+some ole feery tale! That's all, ain't it, ole pard?&quot; And he gave D&eacute;fago
+a friendly kick on the moccasined foot that lay nearest the fire.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago looked up quickly, as from an interrupted reverie, a reverie,
+however, that had not prevented his seeing all that went on about him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Skeered&mdash;<i>nuthin'!</i>&quot; he answered, with a flush of defiance. &quot;There's
+nuthin' in the Bush that can skeer Joseph D&eacute;fago, and don't you forget
+it!&quot; And the natural energy with which he spoke made it impossible to
+know whether he told the whole truth or only a part of it.</p>
+
+<p>Hank turned towards the doctor. He was just going to add something when
+he stopped abruptly and looked round. A sound close behind them in the
+darkness made all three start. It was old Punk, who had moved up from
+his lean-to while they talked and now stood there just beyond the circle
+of firelight&mdash;listening.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Nother time, Doc!&quot; Hank whispered, with a wink, &quot;when the gallery
+ain't stepped down into the stalls!&quot; And, springing to his feet, he
+slapped the Indian on the back and cried noisily, &quot;Come up t' the fire
+an' warm yer dirty red skin a bit.&quot; He dragged him towards the blaze and
+threw more wood on. &quot;That was a mighty good feed you give us an hour or
+two back,&quot; he continued heartily, as though to set the man's thoughts on
+another scent, &quot;and it ain't Christian to let you stand out there
+freezin' yer ole soul to hell while we're gettin' all good an' toasted!&quot;
+Punk moved in and warmed his feet, smiling darkly at the other's
+volubility which he only half understood, but saying nothing. And
+presently Dr. Cathcart, seeing that further conversation was impossible,
+followed his nephew's example and moved off to the tent, leaving the
+three men smoking over the now blazing fire.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to undress in a small tent without waking one's
+companion, and Cathcart, hardened and warm-blooded as he was in spite of
+his fifty odd years, did what Hank would have described as &quot;considerable
+of his twilight&quot; in the open. He noticed, during the process, that Punk
+had meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, and that Hank and D&eacute;fago were
+at it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammer and anvil, the little French
+Canadian being the anvil. It was all very like the conventional stage
+picture of Western melodrama: the fire lighting up their faces with
+patches of alternate red and black; D&eacute;fago, in slouch hat and moccasins
+in the part of the &quot;badlands&quot; villain; Hank, open-faced and hatless,
+with that reckless fling of his shoulders, the honest and deceived hero;
+and old Punk, eavesdropping in the background, supplying the atmosphere
+of mystery. The doctor smiled as he noticed the details; but at the same
+time something deep within him&mdash;he hardly knew what&mdash;shrank a little, as
+though an almost imperceptible breath of warning had touched the surface
+of his soul and was gone again before he could seize it. Probably it was
+traceable to that &quot;scared expression&quot; he had seen in the eyes of D&eacute;fago;
+&quot;probably&quot;&mdash;for this hint of fugitive emotion otherwise escaped his
+usually so keen analysis. D&eacute;fago, he was vaguely aware, might cause
+trouble somehow ...He was not as steady a guide as Hank, for
+instance ... Further than that he could not get ...</p>
+
+<p>He watched the men a moment longer before diving into the stuffy tent
+where Simpson already slept soundly. Hank, he saw, was swearing like a
+mad African in a New York nigger saloon; but it was the swearing of
+&quot;affection.&quot; The ridiculous oaths flew freely now that the cause of
+their obstruction was asleep. Presently he put his arm almost tenderly
+upon his comrade's shoulder, and they moved off together into the
+shadows where their tent stood faintly glimmering. Punk, too, a moment
+later followed their example and disappeared between his odorous
+blankets in the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Cathcart then likewise turned in, weariness and sleep still fighting
+in his mind with an obscure curiosity to know what it was that had
+scared D&eacute;fago about the country up Fifty Island Water way,&mdash;wondering,
+too, why Punk's presence had prevented the completion of what Hank had
+to say. Then sleep overtook him. He would know tomorrow. Hank would tell
+him the story while they trudged after the elusive moose.</p>
+
+<p>Deep silence fell about the little camp, planted there so audaciously in
+the jaws of the wilderness. The lake gleamed like a sheet of black glass
+beneath the stars. The cold air pricked. In the draughts of night that
+poured their silent tide from the depths of the forest, with messages
+from distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze, there lay
+already the faint, bleak odors of coming winter. White men, with their
+dull scent, might never have divined them; the fragrance of the wood
+fire would have concealed from them these almost electrical hints of
+moss and bark and hardening swamp a hundred miles away. Even Hank and
+D&eacute;fago, subtly in league with the soul of the woods as they were, would
+probably have spread their delicate nostrils in vain....</p>
+
+<p>But an hour later, when all slept like the dead, old Punk crept from his
+blankets and went down to the shore of the lake like a shadow&mdash;silently,
+as only Indian blood can move. He raised his head and looked about him.
+The thick darkness rendered sight of small avail, but, like the animals,
+he possessed other senses that darkness could not mute. He
+listened&mdash;then sniffed the air. Motionless as a hemlock stem he stood
+there. After five minutes again he lifted his head and sniffed, and yet
+once again. A tingling of the wonderful nerves that betrayed itself by
+no outer sign, ran through him as he tasted the keen air. Then, merging
+his figure into the surrounding blackness in a way that only wild men
+and animals understand, he turned, still moving like a shadow, and went
+stealthily back to his lean-to and his bed.</p>
+
+<p>And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirred
+gently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising among the far
+ridges of the country beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from the
+direction in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleeping camp
+with a faint and sighing murmur through the tops of the big trees that
+was almost too delicate to be audible. With it, down the desert paths of
+night, though too faint, too high even for the Indian's hair-like
+nerves, there passed a curious, thin odor, strangely disquieting, an
+odor of something that seemed unfamiliar&mdash;utterly unknown.</p>
+
+<p>The French Canadian and the man of Indian blood each stirred uneasily in
+his sleep just about this time, though neither of them woke. Then the
+ghost of that unforgettably strange odor passed away and was lost among
+the leagues of tenantless forest beyond.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="II"></a><h2>II</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>In the morning the camp was astir before the sun. There had been a
+light fall of snow during the night and the air was sharp. Punk had done
+his duty betimes, for the odors of coffee and fried bacon reached every
+tent. All were in good spirits.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wind's shifted!&quot; cried Hank vigorously, watching Simpson and his guide
+already loading the small canoe. &quot;It's across the lake&mdash;dead right for
+you fellers. And the snow'll make bully trails! If there's any moose
+mussing around up thar, they'll not get so much as a tail-end scent of
+you with the wind as it is. Good luck, Monsieur D&eacute;fago!&quot; he added,
+facetiously giving the name its French pronunciation for once, &quot;<i>bonne
+chance!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago returned the good wishes, apparently in the best of spirits, the
+silent mood gone. Before eight o'clock old Punk had the camp to
+himself, Cathcart and Hank were far along the trail that led westwards,
+while the canoe that carried D&eacute;fago and Simpson, with silk tent and grub
+for two days, was already a dark speck bobbing on the bosom of the lake,
+going due east.</p>
+
+<p>The wintry sharpness of the air was tempered now by a sun that topped
+the wooded ridges and blazed with a luxurious warmth upon the world of
+lake and forest below; loons flew skimming through the sparkling spray
+that the wind lifted; divers shook their dripping heads to the sun and
+popped smartly out of sight again; and as far as eye could reach rose
+the leagues of endless, crowding Bush, desolate in its lonely sweep and
+grandeur, untrodden by foot of man, and stretching its mighty and
+unbroken carpet right up to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay.</p>
+
+<p>Simpson, who saw it all for the first time as he paddled hard in the
+bows of the dancing canoe, was enchanted by its austere beauty. His
+heart drank in the sense of freedom and great spaces just as his lungs
+drank in the cool and perfumed wind. Behind him in the stern seat,
+singing fragments of his native chanties, D&eacute;fago steered the craft of
+birch bark like a thing of life, answering cheerfully all his
+companion's questions. Both were gay and light-hearted. On such
+occasions men lose the superficial, worldly distinctions; they become
+human beings working together for a common end. Simpson, the employer,
+and D&eacute;fago the employed, among these primitive forces, were simply&mdash;two
+men, the &quot;guider&quot; and the &quot;guided.&quot; Superior knowledge, of course,
+assumed control, and the younger man fell without a second thought into
+the quasi-subordinate position. He never dreamed of objecting when
+D&eacute;fago dropped the &quot;Mr.,&quot; and addressed him as &quot;Say, Simpson,&quot; or
+&quot;Simpson, boss,&quot; which was invariably the case before they reached the
+farther shore after a stiff paddle of twelve miles against a head wind.
+He only laughed, and liked it; then ceased to notice it at all.</p>
+
+<p>For this &quot;divinity student&quot; was a young man of parts and character,
+though as yet, of course, untraveled; and on this trip&mdash;the first time
+he had seen any country but his own and little Switzerland&mdash;the huge
+scale of things somewhat bewildered him. It was one thing, he realized,
+to hear about primeval forests, but quite another to see them. While to
+dwell in them and seek acquaintance with their wild life was, again, an
+initiation that no intelligent man could undergo without a certain
+shifting of personal values hitherto held for permanent and sacred.</p>
+
+<p>Simpson knew the first faint indication of this emotion when he held the
+new .303 rifle in his hands and looked along its pair of faultless,
+gleaming barrels. The three days' journey to their headquarters, by lake
+and portage, had carried the process a stage farther. And now that he
+was about to plunge beyond even the fringe of wilderness where they were
+camped into the virgin heart of uninhabited regions as vast as Europe
+itself, the true nature of the situation stole upon him with an effect
+of delight and awe that his imagination was fully capable of
+appreciating. It was himself and D&eacute;fago against a multitude&mdash;at least,
+against a Titan!</p>
+
+<p>The bleak splendors of these remote and lonely forests rather
+overwhelmed him with the sense of his own littleness. That stern quality
+of the tangled backwoods which can only be described as merciless and
+terrible, rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon,
+and revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized his
+own utter helplessness. Only D&eacute;fago, as a symbol of a distant
+civilization where man was master, stood between him and a pitiless
+death by exhaustion and starvation.</p>
+
+<p>It was thrilling to him, therefore, to watch D&eacute;fago turn over the canoe
+upon the shore, pack the paddles carefully underneath, and then proceed
+to &quot;blaze&quot; the spruce stems for some distance on either side of an
+almost invisible trail, with the careless remark thrown in, &quot;Say,
+Simpson, if anything happens to me, you'll find the canoe all correc' by
+these marks;&mdash;then strike doo west into the sun to hit the home camp
+agin, see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was the most natural thing in the world to say, and he said it
+without any noticeable inflexion of the voice, only it happened to
+express the youth's emotions at the moment with an utterance that was
+symbolic of the situation and of his own helplessness as a factor in it.
+He was alone with D&eacute;fago in a primitive world: that was all. The canoe,
+another symbol of man's ascendancy, was now to be left behind. Those
+small yellow patches, made on the trees by the axe, were the only
+indications of its hiding place.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, shouldering the packs between them, each man carrying his own
+rifle, they followed the slender trail over rocks and fallen trunks and
+across half-frozen swamps; skirting numerous lakes that fairly gemmed
+the forest, their borders fringed with mist; and towards five o'clock
+found themselves suddenly on the edge of the woods, looking out across a
+large sheet of water in front of them, dotted with pine-clad islands of
+all describable shapes and sizes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fifty Island Water,&quot; announced D&eacute;fago wearily, &quot;and the sun jest goin'
+to dip his bald old head into it!&quot; he added, with unconscious poetry;
+and immediately they set about pitching camp for the night.</p>
+
+<p>In a very few minutes, under those skilful hands that never made a
+movement too much or a movement too little, the silk tent stood taut and
+cozy, the beds of balsam boughs ready laid, and a brisk cooking fire
+burned with the minimum of smoke. While the young Scotchman cleaned the
+fish they had caught trolling behind the canoe, D&eacute;fago &quot;guessed&quot; he
+would &quot;jest as soon&quot; take a turn through the Bush for indications of
+moose. &quot;<i>May</i> come across a trunk where they bin and rubbed horns,&quot; he
+said, as he moved off, &quot;or feedin' on the last of the maple leaves&quot;&mdash;and
+he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>His small figure melted away like a shadow in the dusk, while Simpson
+noted with a kind of admiration how easily the forest absorbed him into
+herself. A few steps, it seemed, and he was no longer visible.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts; the trees stood somewhat
+apart, well spaced; and in the clearings grew silver birch and maple,
+spearlike and slender, against the immense stems of spruce and hemlock.
+But for occasional prostrate monsters, and the boulders of grey rock
+that thrust uncouth shoulders here and there out of the ground, it might
+well have been a bit of park in the Old Country. Almost, one might have
+seen in it the hand of man. A little to the right, however, began the
+great burnt section, miles in extent, proclaiming its real
+character&mdash;<i>brul&eacute;</i>, as it is called, where the fires of the previous
+year had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps now rose gaunt and
+ugly, bereft of branches, like gigantic match heads stuck into the
+ground, savage and desolate beyond words. The perfume of charcoal and
+rain-soaked ashes still hung faintly about it.</p>
+
+<p>The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the
+fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the
+only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that
+vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the
+woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might
+stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees. In front,
+through doorways pillared by huge straight stems, lay the stretch of
+Fifty Island Water, a crescent-shaped lake some fifteen miles from tip
+to tip, and perhaps five miles across where they were camped. A sky of
+rose and saffron, more clear than any atmosphere Simpson had ever
+known, still dropped its pale streaming fires across the waves, where
+the islands&mdash;a hundred, surely, rather than fifty&mdash;floated like the
+fairy barques of some enchanted fleet. Fringed with pines, whose crests
+fingered most delicately the sky, they almost seemed to move upwards as
+the light faded&mdash;about to weigh anchor and navigate the pathways of the
+heavens instead of the currents of their native and desolate lake.</p>
+
+<p>And strips of colored cloud, like flaunting pennons, signaled their
+departure to the stars....</p>
+
+<p>The beauty of the scene was strangely uplifting. Simpson smoked the fish
+and burnt his fingers into the bargain in his efforts to enjoy it and at
+the same time tend the frying pan and the fire. Yet, ever at the back of
+his thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness: the indifference
+to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of
+man. The sense of his utter loneliness, now that even D&eacute;fago had gone,
+came close as he looked about him and listened for the sound of his
+companion's returning footsteps.</p>
+
+<p>There was pleasure in the sensation, yet with it a perfectly
+comprehensible alarm. And instinctively the thought stirred in him:
+&quot;What should I&mdash;<i>could</i> I, do&mdash;if anything happened and he did not come
+back&mdash;?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They enjoyed their well-earned supper, eating untold quantities of fish,
+and drinking unmilked tea strong enough to kill men who had not covered
+thirty miles of hard &quot;going,&quot; eating little on the way. And when it was
+over, they smoked and told stories round the blazing fire, laughing,
+stretching weary limbs, and discussing plans for the morrow. D&eacute;fago was
+in excellent spirits, though disappointed at having no signs of moose to
+report. But it was dark and he had not gone far. The <i>brul&eacute;</i>, too, was
+bad. His clothes and hands were smeared with charcoal. Simpson, watching
+him, realized with renewed vividness their position&mdash;alone together in
+the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;D&eacute;fago,&quot; he said presently, &quot;these woods, you know, are a bit too big
+to feel quite at home in&mdash;to feel comfortable in, I mean!... Eh?&quot; He
+merely gave expression to the mood of the moment; he was hardly prepared
+for the earnestness, the solemnity even, with which the guide took him
+up.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've hit it right, Simpson, boss,&quot; he replied, fixing his searching
+brown eyes on his face, &quot;and that's the truth, sure. There's no end to
+'em&mdash;no end at all.&quot; Then he added in a lowered tone as if to himself,
+&quot;There's lots found out <i>that</i>, and gone plumb to pieces!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the man's gravity of manner was not quite to the other's liking; it
+was a little too suggestive for this scenery and setting; he was sorry
+he had broached the subject. He remembered suddenly how his uncle had
+told him that men were sometimes stricken with a strange fever of the
+wilderness, when the seduction of the uninhabited wastes caught them so
+fiercely that they went forth, half fascinated, half deluded, to their
+death. And he had a shrewd idea that his companion held something in
+sympathy with that queer type. He led the conversation on to other
+topics, on to Hank and the doctor, for instance, and the natural rivalry
+as to who should get the first sight of moose.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If they went doo west,&quot; observed D&eacute;fago carelessly, &quot;there's sixty
+miles between us now&mdash;with ole Punk at halfway house eatin' himself full
+to bustin' with fish and coffee.&quot; They laughed together over the
+picture. But the casual mention of those sixty miles again made Simpson
+realize the prodigious scale of this land where they hunted; sixty miles
+was a mere step; two hundred little more than a step. Stories of lost
+hunters rose persistently before his memory. The passion and mystery of
+homeless and wandering men, seduced by the beauty of great forests,
+swept his soul in a way too vivid to be quite pleasant. He wondered
+vaguely whether it was the mood of his companion that invited the
+unwelcome suggestion with such persistence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sing us a song, D&eacute;fago, if you're not too tired,&quot; he asked; &quot;one of
+those old <i>voyageur</i> songs you sang the other night.&quot; He handed his
+tobacco pouch to the guide and then filled his own pipe, while the
+Canadian, nothing loth, sent his light voice across the lake in one of
+those plaintive, almost melancholy chanties with which lumbermen and
+trappers lessen the burden of their labor. There was an appealing and
+romantic flavor about it, something that recalled the atmosphere of the
+old pioneer days when Indians and wilderness were leagued together,
+battles frequent, and the Old Country farther off than it is today. The
+sound traveled pleasantly over the water, but the forest at their backs
+seemed to swallow it down with a single gulp that permitted neither echo
+nor resonance.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the middle of the third verse that Simpson noticed something
+unusual&mdash;something that brought his thoughts back with a rush from
+faraway scenes. A curious change had come into the man's voice. Even
+before he knew what it was, uneasiness caught him, and looking up
+quickly, he saw that D&eacute;fago, though still singing, was peering about him
+into the Bush, as though he heard or saw something. His voice grew
+fainter&mdash;dropped to a hush&mdash;then ceased altogether. The same instant,
+with a movement amazingly alert, he started to his feet and stood
+upright&mdash;<i>sniffing the air</i>. Like a dog scenting game, he drew the air
+into his nostrils in short, sharp breaths, turning quickly as he did so
+in all directions, and finally &quot;pointing&quot; down the lake shore,
+eastwards. It was a performance unpleasantly suggestive and at the same
+time singularly dramatic. Simpson's heart fluttered disagreeably as he
+watched it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord, man! How you made me jump!&quot; he exclaimed, on his feet beside him
+the same instant, and peering over his shoulder into the sea of
+darkness. &quot;What's up? Are you frightened&mdash;?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Even before the question was out of his mouth he knew it was foolish,
+for any man with a pair of eyes in his head could see that the Canadian
+had turned white down to his very gills. Not even sunburn and the glare
+of the fire could hide that.</p>
+
+<p>The student felt himself trembling a little, weakish in the knees.
+&quot;What's up?&quot; he repeated quickly. &quot;D'you smell moose? Or anything queer,
+anything&mdash;wrong?&quot; He lowered his voice instinctively.</p>
+
+<p>The forest pressed round them with its encircling wall; the nearer tree
+stems gleamed like bronze in the firelight; beyond that&mdash;blackness, and,
+so far as he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them a passing
+puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softly
+down again without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as if a
+million invisible causes had combined just to produce that single
+visible effect. <i>Other</i> life pulsed about them&mdash;and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago turned abruptly; the livid hue of his face had turned to a dirty
+grey.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never said I heered&mdash;or smelt&mdash;nuthin',&quot; he said slowly and
+emphatically, in an oddly altered voice that conveyed somehow a touch of
+defiance. &quot;I was only&mdash;takin' a look round&mdash;so to speak. It's always a
+mistake to be too previous with yer questions.&quot; Then he added suddenly
+with obvious effort, in his more natural voice, &quot;Have you got the
+matches, Boss Simpson?&quot; and proceeded to light the pipe he had half
+filled just before he began to sing.</p>
+
+<p>Without speaking another word they sat down again by the fire. D&eacute;fago
+changing his side so that he could face the direction the wind came
+from. For even a tenderfoot could tell that. D&eacute;fago changed his position
+in order to hear and smell&mdash;all there was to be heard and smelt. And,
+since he now faced the lake with his back to the trees it was evidently
+nothing in the forest that had sent so strange and sudden a warning to
+his marvelously trained nerves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Guess now I don't feel like singing any,&quot; he explained presently of his
+own accord. &quot;That song kinder brings back memories that's troublesome to
+me; I never oughter've begun it. It sets me on t' imagining things,
+see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Clearly the man was still fighting with some profoundly moving emotion.
+He wished to excuse himself in the eyes of the other. But the
+explanation, in that it was only a part of the truth, was a lie, and he
+knew perfectly well that Simpson was not deceived by it. For nothing
+could explain away the livid terror that had dropped over his face while
+he stood there sniffing the air. And nothing&mdash;no amount of blazing fire,
+or chatting on ordinary subjects&mdash;could make that camp exactly as it had
+been before. The shadow of an unknown horror, naked if unguessed, that
+had flashed for an instant in the face and gestures of the guide, had
+also communicated itself, vaguely and therefore more potently, to his
+companion. The guide's visible efforts to dissemble the truth only made
+things worse. Moreover, to add to the younger man's uneasiness, was the
+difficulty, nay, the impossibility he felt of asking questions, and also
+his complete ignorance as to the cause ...Indians, wild animals, forest
+fires&mdash;all these, he knew, were wholly out of the question. His
+imagination searched vigorously, but in vain....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>Yet, somehow or other, after another long spell of smoking, talking and
+roasting themselves before the great fire, the shadow that had so
+suddenly invaded their peaceful camp began to shift. Perhaps D&eacute;fago's
+efforts, or the return of his quiet and normal attitude accomplished
+this; perhaps Simpson himself had exaggerated the affair out of all
+proportion to the truth; or possibly the vigorous air of the wilderness
+brought its own powers of healing. Whatever the cause, the feeling of
+immediate horror seemed to have passed away as mysteriously as it had
+come, for nothing occurred to feed it. Simpson began to feel that he had
+permitted himself the unreasoning terror of a child. He put it down
+partly to a certain subconscious excitement that this wild and immense
+scenery generated in his blood, partly to the spell of solitude, and
+partly to overfatigue. That pallor in the guide's face was, of course,
+uncommonly hard to explain, yet it <i>might</i> have been due in some way to
+an effect of firelight, or his own imagination ...He gave it the benefit
+of the doubt; he was Scotch.</p>
+
+<p>When a somewhat unordinary emotion has disappeared, the mind always
+finds a dozen ways of explaining away its causes ...Simpson lit a last
+pipe and tried to laugh to himself. On getting home to Scotland it would
+make quite a good story. He did not realize that this laughter was a
+sign that terror still lurked in the recesses of his soul&mdash;that, in
+fact, it was merely one of the conventional signs by which a man,
+seriously alarmed, tries to persuade himself that he is <i>not</i> so.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago, however, heard that low laughter and looked up with surprise on
+his face. The two men stood, side by side, kicking the embers about
+before going to bed. It was ten o'clock&mdash;a late hour for hunters to be
+still awake.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's ticklin' yer?&quot; he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I&mdash;I was thinking of our little toy woods at home, just at that
+moment,&quot; stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated his
+mind, and startled by the question, &quot;and comparing them to&mdash;to all
+this,&quot; and he swept his arm round to indicate the Bush.</p>
+
+<p>A pause followed in which neither of them said anything.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All the same I wouldn't laugh about it, if I was you,&quot; D&eacute;fago added,
+looking over Simpson's shoulder into the shadows. &quot;There's places in
+there nobody won't never see into&mdash;nobody knows what lives in there
+either.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Too big&mdash;too far off?&quot; The suggestion in the guide's manner was immense
+and horrible.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago nodded. The expression on his face was dark. He, too, felt
+uneasy. The younger man understood that in a <i>hinterland</i> of this size
+there might well be depths of wood that would never in the life of the
+world be known or trodden. The thought was not exactly the sort he
+welcomed. In a loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time for
+bed. But the guide lingered, tinkering with the fire, arranging the
+stones needlessly, doing a dozen things that did not really need doing.
+Evidently there was something he wanted to say, yet found it difficult
+to &quot;get at.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, you, Boss Simpson,&quot; he began suddenly, as the last shower of
+sparks went up into the air, &quot;you don't&mdash;smell nothing, do you&mdash;nothing
+pertickler, I mean?&quot; The commonplace question, Simpson realized, veiled
+a dreadfully serious thought in his mind. A shiver ran down his back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing but burning wood,&quot; he replied firmly, kicking again at the
+embers. The sound of his own foot made him start.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And all the evenin' you ain't smelt&mdash;nothing?&quot; persisted the guide,
+peering at him through the gloom; &quot;nothing extrordiny, and different to
+anything else you ever smelt before?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no, man; nothing at all!&quot; he replied aggressively, half angrily.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago's face cleared. &quot;That's good!&quot; he exclaimed with evident relief.
+&quot;That's good to hear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have <i>you?</i>&quot; asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted the
+question.</p>
+
+<p>The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He shook his head. &quot;I guess
+not,&quot; he said, though without overwhelming conviction. &quot;It must've been
+just that song of mine that did it. It's the song they sing in lumber
+camps and godforsaken places like that, when they're skeered the
+Wendigo's somewhere around, doin' a bit of swift traveling.&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what's the Wendigo, pray?&quot; Simpson asked quickly, irritated because
+again he could not prevent that sudden shiver of the nerves. He knew
+that he was close upon the man's terror and the cause of it. Yet a
+rushing passionate curiosity overcame his better judgment, and his fear.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago turned swiftly and looked at him as though he were suddenly about
+to shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open. Yet all he said,
+or whispered rather, for his voice sank very low, was: &quot;It's
+nuthin'&mdash;nuthin' but what those lousy fellers believe when they've bin
+hittin' the bottle too long&mdash;a sort of great animal that lives up
+yonder,&quot; he jerked his head northwards, &quot;quick as lightning in its
+tracks, an' bigger'n anything else in the Bush, an' ain't supposed to be
+very good to look at&mdash;that's all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A backwoods superstition&mdash;&quot; began Simpson, moving hastily toward the
+tent in order to shake off the hand of the guide that clutched his arm.
+&quot;Come, come, hurry up for God's sake, and get the lantern going! It's
+time we were in bed and asleep if we're going to be up with the sun
+tomorrow....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The guide was close on his heels. &quot;I'm coming,&quot; he answered out of the
+darkness, &quot;I'm coming.&quot; And after a slight delay he appeared with the
+lantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. The
+shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so,
+and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole
+tent trembled as though a gust of wind struck it.</p>
+
+<p>The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft balsam
+boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside, all was warm and cozy, but outside
+the world of crowding trees pressed close about them, marshalling their
+million shadows, and smothering the little tent that stood there like a
+wee white shell facing the ocean of tremendous forest.</p>
+
+<p>Between the two lonely figures within, however, there pressed another
+shadow that was <i>not</i> a shadow from the night. It was the Shadow cast by
+the strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped suddenly upon
+D&eacute;fago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson, as he lay there,
+watching the darkness through the open flap of the tent, ready to plunge
+into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that unique and profound
+stillness of a primeval forest when no wind stirs ... and when the night
+has weight and substance that enters into the soul to bind a veil about
+it.... Then sleep took him....</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="III"></a><h2>III</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Thus, it seemed to him, at least. Yet it was true that the lap of the
+water, just beyond the tent door, still beat time with his lessening
+pulses when he realized that he was lying with his eyes open and that
+another sound had recently introduced itself with cunning softness
+between the splash and murmur of the little waves.</p>
+
+<p>And, long before he understood what this sound was, it had stirred in
+him the centers of pity and alarm. He listened intently, though at first
+in vain, for the running blood beat all its drums too noisily in his
+ears. Did it come, he wondered, from the lake, or from the woods?...</p>
+
+<p>Then, suddenly, with a rush and a flutter of the heart, he knew that it
+was close beside him in the tent; and, when he turned over for a better
+hearing, it focused itself unmistakably not two feet away. It was a
+sound of weeping; D&eacute;fago upon his bed of branches was sobbing in the
+darkness as though his heart would break, the blankets evidently stuffed
+against his mouth to stifle it.</p>
+
+<p>And his first feeling, before he could think or reflect, was the rush of
+a poignant and searching tenderness. This intimate, human sound, heard
+amid the desolation about them, woke pity. It was so incongruous, so
+pitifully incongruous&mdash;and so vain! Tears&mdash;in this vast and cruel
+wilderness: of what avail? He thought of a little child crying in
+mid-Atlantic.... Then, of course, with fuller realization, and the
+memory of what had gone before, came the descent of the terror upon him,
+and his blood ran cold.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;D&eacute;fago,&quot; he whispered quickly, &quot;what's the matter?&quot; He tried to make
+his voice very gentle. &quot;Are you in pain&mdash;unhappy&mdash;?&quot; There was no reply,
+but the sounds ceased abruptly. He stretched his hand out and touched
+him. The body did not stir.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you awake?&quot; for it occurred to him that the man was crying in his
+sleep. &quot;Are you cold?&quot; He noticed that his feet, which were uncovered,
+projected beyond the mouth of the tent. He spread an extra fold of his
+own blankets over them. The guide had slipped down in his bed, and the
+branches seemed to have been dragged with him. He was afraid to pull the
+body back again, for fear of waking him.</p>
+
+<p>One or two tentative questions he ventured softly, but though he waited
+for several minutes there came no reply, nor any sign of movement.
+Presently he heard his regular and quiet breathing, and putting his hand
+again gently on the breast, felt the steady rise and fall beneath.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me know if anything's wrong,&quot; he whispered, &quot;or if I can do
+anything. Wake me at once if you feel&mdash;queer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He hardly knew what to say. He lay down again, thinking and wondering
+what it all meant. D&eacute;fago, of course, had been crying in his sleep. Some
+dream or other had afflicted him. Yet never in his life would he forget
+that pitiful sound of sobbing, and the feeling that the whole awful
+wilderness of woods listened....</p>
+
+<p>His own mind busied itself for a long time with the recent events, of
+which <i>this</i> took its mysterious place as one, and though his reason
+successfully argued away all unwelcome suggestions, a sensation of
+uneasiness remained, resisting ejection, very deep-seated&mdash;peculiar
+beyond ordinary.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="IV"></a><h2>IV</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>But sleep, in the long run, proves greater than all emotions. His
+thoughts soon wandered again; he lay there, warm as toast, exceedingly
+weary; the night soothed and comforted, blunting the edges of memory and
+alarm. Half an hour later he was oblivious of everything in the outer
+world about him.</p>
+
+<p>Yet sleep, in this case, was his great enemy, concealing all approaches,
+smothering the warning of his nerves.</p>
+
+<p>As, sometimes, in a nightmare events crowd upon each other's heels with
+a conviction of dreadfulest reality, yet some inconsistent detail
+accuses the whole display of incompleteness and disguise, so the events
+that now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the mind
+somehow that the detail which could explain them had been overlooked in
+the confusion, and that therefore they were but partly true, the rest
+delusion. At the back of the sleeper's mind something remains awake,
+ready to let slip the judgment. &quot;All this is not <i>quite</i> real; when you
+wake up you'll understand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And thus, in a way, it was with Simpson. The events, not wholly
+inexplicable or incredible in themselves, yet remain for the man who saw
+and heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold horror, because the
+little piece that might have made the puzzle clear lay concealed or
+overlooked.</p>
+
+<p>So far as he can recall, it was a violent movement, running downwards
+through the tent towards the door, that first woke him and made him
+aware that his companion was sitting bolt upright beside him&mdash;quivering.
+Hours must have passed, for it was the pale gleam of the dawn that
+revealed his outline against the canvas. This time the man was not
+crying; he was quaking like a leaf; the trembling he felt plainly
+through the blankets down the entire length of his own body. D&eacute;fago had
+huddled down against him for protection, shrinking away from something
+that apparently concealed itself near the door flaps of the little tent.</p>
+
+<p>Simpson thereupon called out in a loud voice some question or other&mdash;in
+the first bewilderment of waking he does not remember exactly what&mdash;and
+the man made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare lay
+horribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult. At first,
+indeed, he was not sure where he was&mdash;whether in one of the earlier
+camps, or at home in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense of confusion was
+very troubling.</p>
+
+<p>And next&mdash;almost simultaneous with his waking, it seemed&mdash;the profound
+stillness of the dawn outside was shattered by a most uncommon sound. It
+came without warning, or audible approach; and it was unspeakably
+dreadful. It was a voice, Simpson declares, possibly a human voice;
+hoarse yet plaintive&mdash;a soft, roaring voice close outside the tent,
+overhead rather than upon the ground, of immense volume, while in some
+strange way most penetratingly and seductively sweet. It rang out, too,
+in three separate and distinct notes, or cries, that bore in some odd
+fashion a resemblance, farfetched yet recognizable, to the name of the
+guide: &quot;<i>D&eacute;-fa-go!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The student admits he is unable to describe it quite intelligently, for
+it was unlike any sound he had ever heard in his life, and combined a
+blending of such contrary qualities. &quot;A sort of windy, crying voice,&quot; he
+calls it, &quot;as of something lonely and untamed, wild and of abominable
+power....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And, even before it ceased, dropping back into the great gulfs of
+silence, the guide beside him had sprung to his feet with an answering
+though unintelligible cry. He blundered against the tent pole with
+violence, shaking the whole structure, spreading his arms out
+frantically for more room, and kicking his legs impetuously free of the
+clinging blankets. For a second, perhaps two, he stood upright by the
+door, his outline dark against the pallor of the dawn; then, with a
+furious, rushing speed, before his companion could move a hand to stop
+him, he shot with a plunge through the flaps of canvas&mdash;and was gone.
+And as he went&mdash;so astonishingly fast that the voice could actually be
+heard dying in the distance&mdash;he called aloud in tones of anguished
+terror that at the same time held something strangely like the frenzied
+exultation of delight&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire! Oh! oh! This height
+and fiery speed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then the distance quickly buried it, and the deep silence of very
+early morning descended upon the forest as before.</p>
+
+<p>It had all come about with such rapidity that, but for the evidence of
+the empty bed beside him, Simpson could almost have believed it to have
+been the memory of a nightmare carried over from sleep. He still felt
+the warm pressure of that vanished body against his side; there lay the
+twisted blankets in a heap; the very tent yet trembled with the
+vehemence of the impetuous departure. The strange words rang in his
+ears, as though he still heard them in the distance&mdash;wild language of a
+suddenly stricken mind. Moreover, it was not only the senses of sight
+and hearing that reported uncommon things to his brain, for even while
+the man cried and ran, he had become aware that a strange perfume, faint
+yet pungent, pervaded the interior of the tent. And it was at this
+point, it seems, brought to himself by the consciousness that his
+nostrils were taking this distressing odor down into his throat, that he
+found his courage, sprang quickly to his feet&mdash;and went out.</p>
+
+<p>The grey light of dawn that dropped, cold and glimmering, between the
+trees revealed the scene tolerably well. There stood the tent behind
+him, soaked with dew; the dark ashes of the fire, still warm; the lake,
+white beneath a coating of mist, the islands rising darkly out of it
+like objects packed in wool; and patches of snow beyond among the
+clearer spaces of the Bush&mdash;everything cold, still, waiting for the sun.
+But nowhere a sign of the vanished guide&mdash;still, doubtless, flying at
+frantic speed through the frozen woods. There was not even the sound of
+disappearing footsteps, nor the echoes of the dying voice. He had
+gone&mdash;utterly.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing; nothing but the sense of his recent presence, so
+strongly left behind about the camp; <i>and</i>&mdash;this penetrating,
+all-pervading odor.</p>
+
+<p>And even this was now rapidly disappearing in its turn. In spite of his
+exceeding mental perturbation, Simpson struggled hard to detect its
+nature, and define it, but the ascertaining of an elusive scent, not
+recognized subconsciously and at once, is a very subtle operation of
+the mind. And he failed. It was gone before he could properly seize or
+name it. Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult,
+for it was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid rather, not unlike the odor
+of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not wholly unpleasing, with
+something almost sweet in it that reminded him of the scent of decaying
+garden leaves, earth, and the myriad, nameless perfumes that make up the
+odor of a big forest. Yet the &quot;odor of lions&quot; is the phrase with which
+he usually sums it all up.</p>
+
+<p>Then&mdash;it was wholly gone, and he found himself standing by the ashes of
+the fire in a state of amazement and stupid terror that left him the
+helpless prey of anything that chose to happen. Had a muskrat poked its
+pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled in that instant down
+the bark of a tree, he would most likely have collapsed without more ado
+and fainted. For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a
+great Outer Horror ... and his scattered powers had not as yet had time
+to collect themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-control.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing did happen, however. A great kiss of wind ran softly through the
+awakening forest, and a few maple leaves here and there rustled
+tremblingly to earth. The sky seemed to grow suddenly much lighter.
+Simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek and uncovered head; realized
+that he was shivering with the cold; and, making a great effort,
+realized next that he was alone in the Bush&mdash;<i>and</i> that he was called
+upon to take immediate steps to find and succor his vanished companion.</p>
+
+<p>Make an effort, accordingly, he did, though an ill-calculated and futile
+one. With that wilderness of trees about him, the sheet of water cutting
+him off behind, and the horror of that wild cry in his blood, he did
+what any other inexperienced man would have done in similar
+bewilderment: he ran about, without any sense of direction, like a
+frantic child, and called loudly without ceasing the name of the guide:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;D&eacute;fago! D&eacute;fago! D&eacute;fago!&quot; he yelled, and the trees gave him back the
+name as often as he shouted, only a little softened&mdash;&quot;D&eacute;fago! D&eacute;fago!
+D&eacute;fago!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He followed the trail that lay a short distance across the patches of
+snow, and then lost it again where the trees grew too thickly for snow
+to lie. He shouted till he was hoarse, and till the sound of his own
+voice in all that unanswering and listening world began to frighten him.
+His confusion increased in direct ratio to the violence of his efforts.
+His distress became formidably acute, till at length his exertions
+defeated their own object, and from sheer exhaustion he headed back to
+the camp again. It remains a wonder that he ever found his way. It was
+with great difficulty, and only after numberless false clues, that he at
+last saw the white tent between the trees, and so reached safety.</p>
+
+<p>Exhaustion then applied its own remedy, and he grew calmer. He made the
+fire and breakfasted. Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense and
+judgment into him again, and he realized that he had been behaving like
+a boy. He now made another, and more successful attempt to face the
+situation collectedly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to his
+assistance, he decided that he must first make as thorough a search as
+possible, failing success in which, he must find his way into the home
+camp as best he could and bring help.</p>
+
+<p>And this was what he did. Taking food, matches and rifle with him, and a
+small axe to blaze the trees against his return journey, he set forth.
+It was eight o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the tops of
+the trees in a sky without clouds. Pinned to a stake by the fire he left
+a note in case D&eacute;fago returned while he was away.</p>
+
+<p>This time, according to a careful plan, he took a new direction,
+intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or later cut into
+indications of the guide's trail; and, before he had gone a quarter of a
+mile he came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow, and beside
+it the light and smaller tracks of what were beyond question human
+feet&mdash;the feet of D&eacute;fago. The relief he at once experienced was natural,
+though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple
+explanation of the whole matter: these big marks had surely been left by
+a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, and
+uttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was
+apparent. D&eacute;fago, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the
+point of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the wind
+hours before. His excitement and disappearance were due, of course,
+to&mdash;to his&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Then the impossible explanation at which he grasped faded, as common
+sense showed him mercilessly that none of this was true. No guide, much
+less a guide like D&eacute;fago, could have acted in so irrational a way, going
+off even without his rifle ...! The whole affair demanded a far more
+complicated elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all&mdash;the
+cry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face of horror when his
+nostrils first caught the new odor; that muffled sobbing in the
+darkness, and&mdash;for this, too, now came back to him dimly&mdash;the man's
+original aversion for this particular bit of country....</p>
+
+<p>Besides, now that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks of
+a bull moose at all! Hank had explained to him the outline of a bull's
+hoofs, of a cow's or calf's, too, for that matter; he had drawn them
+clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were wholly different. They
+were big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs.
+He wondered for a moment whether bear tracks were like that. There was
+no other animal he could think of, for caribou did not come so far
+south at this season, and, even if they did, would leave hoof marks.</p>
+
+<p>They were ominous signs&mdash;these mysterious writings left in the snow by
+the unknown creature that had lured a human being away from safety&mdash;and
+when he coupled them in his imagination with that haunting sound that
+broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind,
+distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the <i>threatening</i> aspect of
+it all. And, stooping down to examine the marks more closely, he caught
+a faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odor that made him instantly
+straighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.</p>
+
+<p>Then his memory played him another evil trick. He suddenly recalled
+those uncovered feet projecting beyond the edge of the tent, and the
+body's appearance of having been dragged towards the opening; the man's
+shrinking from something by the door when he woke later. The details now
+beat against his trembling mind with concerted attack. They seemed to
+gather in those deep spaces of the silent forest about him, where the
+host of trees stood waiting, listening, watching to see what he would
+do. The woods were closing round him.</p>
+
+<p>With the persistence of true pluck, however, Simpson went forward,
+following the tracks as best he could, smothering these ugly emotions
+that sought to weaken his will. He blazed innumerable trees as he went,
+ever fearful of being unable to find the way back, and calling aloud at
+intervals of a few seconds the name of the guide. The dull tapping of
+the axe upon the massive trunks, and the unnatural accents of his own
+voice became at length sounds that he even dreaded to make, dreaded to
+hear. For they drew attention without ceasing to his presence and exact
+whereabouts, and if it were really the case that something was hunting
+himself down in the same way that he was hunting down another&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>With a strong effort, he crushed the thought out the instant it rose.
+It was the beginning, he realized, of a bewilderment utterly diabolical
+in kind that would speedily destroy him.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>Although the snow was not continuous, lying merely in shallow flurries
+over the more open spaces, he found no difficulty in following the
+tracks for the first few miles. They went straight as a ruled line
+wherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to increase in
+length, till it finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutely
+impossible for any ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps
+they became. One of these he measured, and though he knew that &quot;stretch&quot;
+of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was at a complete loss to
+understand why he found no signs on the snow between the extreme points.
+But what perplexed him even more, making him feel his vision had gone
+utterly awry, was that D&eacute;fago's stride increased in the same manner, and
+finally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as if the great
+beast had lifted him with it and carried him across these astonishing
+intervals. Simpson, who was much longer in the limb, found that he could
+not compass even half the stretch by taking a running jump.</p>
+
+<p>And the sight of these huge tracks, running side by side, silent
+evidence of a dreadful journey in which terror or madness had urged to
+impossible results, was profoundly moving. It shocked him in the secret
+depths of his soul. It was the most horrible thing his eyes had ever
+looked upon. He began to follow them mechanically, absentmindedly
+almost, ever peering over his shoulder to see if he, too, were being
+followed by something with a gigantic tread.... And soon it came about
+that he no longer quite realized what it was they signified&mdash;these
+impressions left upon the snow by something nameless and untamed, always
+accompanied by the footmarks of the little French Canadian, his guide,
+his comrade, the man who had shared his tent a few hours before,
+chatting, laughing, even singing by his side....</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="V"></a><h2>V</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>For a man of his years and inexperience, only a canny Scot, perhaps,
+grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have preserved
+even that measure of balance that this youth somehow or other did manage
+to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two things he
+presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him
+headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of only
+making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his
+heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way
+to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change,
+so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some
+undecipherable manner&mdash;appalling.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the bigger tracks he first noticed this, and for a long time
+he could not quite believe his eyes. Was it the blown leaves that
+produced odd effects of light and shade, or that the dry snow, drifting
+like finely ground rice about the edges, cast shadows and high lights?
+Or was it actually the fact that the great marks had become faintly
+colored? For round about the deep, plunging holes of the animal there
+now appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more like an effect of
+light than of anything that dyed the substance of the snow itself. Every
+mark had it, and had it increasingly&mdash;this indistinct fiery tinge that
+painted a new touch of ghastliness into the picture.</p>
+
+<p>But when, wholly unable to explain or to credit it, he turned his
+attention to the other tracks to discover if they, too, bore similar
+witness, he noticed that these had meanwhile undergone a change that was
+infinitely worse, and charged with far more horrible suggestion. For, in
+the last hundred yards or so, he saw that they had grown gradually into
+the semblance of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the change had come
+about, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see where the change first
+began. The result, however, was beyond question. Smaller, neater, more
+cleanly modeled, they formed now an exact and careful duplicate of the
+larger tracks beside them. The feet that produced them had, therefore,
+also changed. And something in his mind reared up with loathing and with
+terror as he saw it.</p>
+
+<p>Simpson, for the first time, hesitated; then, ashamed of his alarm and
+indecision, took a few hurried steps ahead; the next instant stopped
+dead in his tracks. Immediately in front of him all signs of the trail
+ceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for a hundred
+yards and more, he searched in vain for the least indication of their
+continuance. There was&mdash;nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The trees were very thick just there, big trees all of them, spruce,
+cedar, hemlock; there was no underbrush. He stood, looking about him,
+all distraught; bereft of any power of judgment. Then he set to work to
+search again, and again, and yet again, but always with the same result:
+<i>nothing</i>. The feet that printed the surface of the snow thus far had
+now, apparently, left the ground!</p>
+
+<p>And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip of
+terror laid its most nicely calculated lash about his heart. It dropped
+with deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving
+him. He had been secretly dreading all the time that it would come&mdash;and
+come it did.</p>
+
+<p>Far overhead, muted by great height and distance, strangely thinned and
+wailing, he heard the crying voice of D&eacute;fago, the guide.</p>
+
+<p>The sound dropped upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an effect
+of dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stood
+motionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, then
+staggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganized
+hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the
+most shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so that
+his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden
+draught.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! oh! This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire ...!&quot; ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this
+voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called&mdash;then silence through all
+the listening wilderness of trees.</p>
+
+<p>And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himself
+running wildly to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots and
+boulders, and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after
+the Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion with which
+experience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half-deranged,
+picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and
+heart and soul. For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him in
+that far voice&mdash;the Power of untamed Distance&mdash;the Enticement of the
+Desolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the pains of
+someone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust and
+travail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of D&eacute;fago, eternally
+hunted, driven and pursued across the skiey vastness of those ancient
+forests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his thoughts ...</p>
+
+<p>It seemed ages before he could find anything in the chaos of his
+disorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for a
+moment, and think ...</p>
+
+<p>The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling brought no response;
+the inscrutable forces of the Wild had summoned their victim beyond
+recall&mdash;and held him fast.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>Yet he searched and called, it seems, for hours afterwards, for it was
+late in the afternoon when at length he decided to abandon a useless
+pursuit and return to his camp on the shores of Fifty Island Water. Even
+then he went with reluctance, that crying voice still echoing in his
+ears. With difficulty he found his rifle and the homeward trail. The
+concentration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees, and a biting
+hunger that gnawed, helped to keep his mind steady. Otherwise, he
+admits, the temporary aberration he had suffered might have been
+prolonged to the point of positive disaster. Gradually the ballast
+shifted back again, and he regained something that approached his normal
+equilibrium.</p>
+
+<p>But for all that the journey through the gathering dusk was miserably
+haunted. He heard innumerable following footsteps; voices that laughed
+and whispered; and saw figures crouching behind trees and boulders,
+making signs to one another for a concerted attack the moment he had
+passed. The creeping murmur of the wind made him start and listen. He
+went stealthily, trying to hide where possible, and making as little
+sound as he could. The shadows of the woods, hitherto protective or
+covering merely, had now become menacing, challenging; and the pageantry
+in his frightened mind masked a host of possibilities that were all the
+more ominous for being obscure. The presentiment of a nameless doom
+lurked ill-concealed behind every detail of what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>It was really admirable how he emerged victor in the end; men of riper
+powers and experience might have come through the ordeal with less
+success. He had himself tolerably well in hand, all things considered,
+and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of the
+question and traveling an unknown trail in the darkness equally
+impracticable, he sat up the whole of that night, rifle in hand, before
+a fire he never for a single moment allowed to die down. The severity of
+the haunted vigil marked his soul for life; but it was successfully
+accomplished; and with the very first signs of dawn he set forth upon
+the long return journey to the home camp to get help. As before, he left
+a written note to explain his absence, and to indicate where he had left
+a plentiful <i>cache</i> of food and matches&mdash;though he had no expectation
+that any human hands would find them!</p>
+
+<p>How Simpson found his way alone by the lake and forest might well make a
+story in itself, for to hear him tell it is to <i>know</i> the passionate
+loneliness of soul that a man can feel when the Wilderness holds him in
+the hollow of its illimitable hand&mdash;and laughs. It is also to admire his
+indomitable pluck.</p>
+
+<p>He claims no skill, declaring that he followed the almost invisible
+trail mechanically, and without thinking. And this, doubtless, is the
+truth. He relied upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which is
+instinct. Perhaps, too, some sense of orientation, known to animals and
+primitive men, may have helped as well, for through all that tangled
+region he succeeded in reaching the exact spot where D&eacute;fago had hidden
+the canoe nearly three days before with the remark, &quot;Strike doo west
+across the lake into the sun to find the camp.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was not much sun left to guide him, but he used his compass to the
+best of his ability, embarking in the frail craft for the last twelve
+miles of his journey with a sensation of immense relief that the forest
+was at last behind him. And, fortunately, the water was calm; he took
+his line across the center of the lake instead of coasting round the
+shores for another twenty miles. Fortunately, too, the other hunters
+were back. The light of their fires furnished a steering point without
+which he might have searched all night long for the actual position of
+the camp.</p>
+
+<p>It was close upon midnight all the same when his canoe grated on the
+sandy cove, and Hank, Punk and his uncle, disturbed in their sleep by
+his cries, ran quickly down and helped a very exhausted and broken
+specimen of Scotch humanity over the rocks toward a dying fire.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="VI"></a><h2>VI</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The sudden entrance of his prosaic uncle into this world of wizardry
+and horror that had haunted him without interruption now for two days
+and two nights, had the immediate effect of giving to the affair an
+entirely new aspect. The sound of that crisp &quot;Hulloa, my boy! And what's
+up <i>now</i>?&quot; and the grasp of that dry and vigorous hand introduced
+another standard of judgment. A revulsion of feeling washed through him.
+He realized that he had let himself &quot;go&quot; rather badly. He even felt
+vaguely ashamed of himself. The native hard-headedness of his race
+reclaimed him.</p>
+
+<p>And this doubtless explains why he found it so hard to tell that group
+round the fire&mdash;everything. He told enough, however, for the immediate
+decision to be arrived at that a relief party must start at the earliest
+possible moment, and that Simpson, in order to guide it capably, must
+first have food and, above all, sleep. Dr. Cathcart observing the lad's
+condition more shrewdly than his patient knew, gave him a very slight
+injection of morphine. For six hours he slept like the dead.</p>
+
+<p>From the description carefully written out afterwards by this student of
+divinity, it appears that the account he gave to the astonished group
+omitted sundry vital and important details. He declares that, with his
+uncle's wholesome, matter-of-fact countenance staring him in the face,
+he simply had not the courage to mention them. Thus, all the search
+party gathered, it would seem, was that D&eacute;fago had suffered in the night
+an acute and inexplicable attack of mania, had imagined himself &quot;called&quot;
+by someone or something, and had plunged into the bush after it without
+food or rifle, where he must die a horrible and lingering death by cold
+and starvation unless he could be found and rescued in time. &quot;In time,&quot;
+moreover, meant <i>at once</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the following day, however&mdash;they were off by seven,
+leaving Punk in charge with instructions to have food and fire always
+ready&mdash;Simpson found it possible to tell his uncle a good deal more of
+the story's true inwardness, without divining that it was drawn out of
+him as a matter of fact by a very subtle form of cross examination. By
+the time they reached the beginning of the trail, where the canoe was
+laid up against the return journey, he had mentioned how D&eacute;fago spoke
+vaguely of &quot;something he called a 'Wendigo'&quot;; how he cried in his sleep;
+how he imagined an unusual scent about the camp; and had betrayed other
+symptoms of mental excitement. He also admitted the bewildering effect
+of &quot;that extraordinary odor&quot; upon himself, &quot;pungent and acrid like the
+odor of lions.&quot; And by the time they were within an easy hour of Fifty
+Island Water he had let slip the further fact&mdash;a foolish avowal of his
+own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards&mdash;that he had heard the
+vanished guide call &quot;for help.&quot; He omitted the singular phrases used,
+for he simply could not bring himself to repeat the preposterous
+language. Also, while describing how the man's footsteps in the snow had
+gradually assumed an exact miniature likeness of the animal's plunging
+tracks, he left out the fact that they measured a <i>wholly</i> incredible
+distance. It seemed a question, nicely balanced between individual pride
+and honesty, what he should reveal and what suppress. He mentioned the
+fiery tinge in the snow, for instance, yet shrank from telling that body
+and bed had been partly dragged out of the tent....</p>
+
+<p>With the net result that Dr. Cathcart, adroit psychologist that he
+fancied himself to be, had assured him clearly enough exactly where his
+mind, influenced by loneliness, bewilderment and terror, had yielded to
+the strain and invited delusion. While praising his conduct, he managed
+at the same time to point out where, when, and how his mind had gone
+astray. He made his nephew think himself finer than he was by judicious
+praise, yet more foolish than he was by minimizing the value of the
+evidence. Like many another materialist, that is, he lied cleverly on
+the basis of insufficient knowledge, <i>because</i> the knowledge supplied
+seemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The spell of these terrible solitudes,&quot; he said, &quot;cannot leave any mind
+untouched, any mind, that is, possessed of the higher imaginative
+qualities. It has worked upon yours exactly as it worked upon my own
+when I was your age. The animal that haunted your little camp was
+undoubtedly a moose, for the 'belling' of a moose may have, sometimes, a
+very peculiar quality of sound. The colored appearance of the big tracks
+was obviously a defect of vision in your own eyes produced by
+excitement. The size and stretch of the tracks we shall prove when we
+come to them. But the hallucination of an audible voice, of course, is
+one of the commonest forms of delusion due to mental excitement&mdash;an
+excitement, my dear boy, perfectly excusable, and, let me add,
+wonderfully controlled by you under the circumstances. For the rest, I
+am bound to say, you have acted with a splendid courage, for the terror
+of feeling oneself lost in this wilderness is nothing short of awful,
+and, had I been in your place, I don't for a moment believe I could have
+behaved with one quarter of your wisdom and decision. The only thing I
+find it uncommonly difficult to explain is&mdash;that&mdash;damned odor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It made me feel sick, I assure you,&quot; declared his nephew, &quot;positively
+dizzy!&quot; His uncle's attitude of calm omniscience, merely because he knew
+more psychological formulae, made him slightly defiant. It was so easy
+to be wise in the explanation of an experience one has not personally
+witnessed. &quot;A kind of desolate and terrible odor is the only way I can
+describe it,&quot; he concluded, glancing at the features of the quiet,
+unemotional man beside him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can only marvel,&quot; was the reply, &quot;that under the circumstances it did
+not seem to you even worse.&quot; The dry words, Simpson knew, hovered
+between the truth, and his uncle's interpretation of &quot;the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>And so at last they came to the little camp and found the tent still
+standing, the remains of the fire, and the piece of paper pinned to a
+stake beside it&mdash;untouched. The cache, poorly contrived by inexperienced
+hands, however, had been discovered and opened&mdash;by musk rats, mink and
+squirrel. The matches lay scattered about the opening, but the food had
+been taken to the last crumb.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, fellers, he ain't here,&quot; exclaimed Hank loudly after his fashion.
+&quot;And that's as sartain as the coal supply down below! But whar he's got
+to by this time is 'bout as unsartain as the trade in crowns in t'other
+place.&quot; The presence of a divinity student was no barrier to his
+language at such a time, though for the reader's sake it may be severely
+edited. &quot;I propose,&quot; he added, &quot;that we start out at once an' hunt for'm
+like hell!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The gloom of D&eacute;fago's probable fate oppressed the whole party with a
+sense of dreadful gravity the moment they saw the familiar signs of
+recent occupancy. Especially the tent, with the bed of balsam branches
+still smoothed and flattened by the pressure of his body, seemed to
+bring his presence near to them. Simpson, feeling vaguely as if his
+world were somehow at stake, went about explaining particulars in a
+hushed tone. He was much calmer now, though overwearied with the strain
+of his many journeys. His uncle's method of explaining&mdash;&quot;explaining
+away,&quot; rather&mdash;the details still fresh in his haunted memory helped,
+too, to put ice upon his emotions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And that's the direction he ran off in,&quot; he said to his two companions,
+pointing in the direction where the guide had vanished that morning in
+the grey dawn. &quot;Straight down there he ran like a deer, in between the
+birch and the hemlock....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hank and Dr. Cathcart exchanged glances.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And it was about two miles down there, in a straight line,&quot; continued
+the other, speaking with something of the former terror in his voice,
+&quot;that I followed his trail to the place where&mdash;it stopped&mdash;dead!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And where you heered him callin' an' caught the stench, an' all the
+rest of the wicked entertainment,&quot; cried Hank, with a volubility that
+betrayed his keen distress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And where your excitement overcame you to the point of producing
+illusions,&quot; added Dr. Cathcart under his breath, yet not so low that his
+nephew did not hear it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>It was early in the afternoon, for they had traveled quickly, and there
+were still a good two hours of daylight left. Dr. Cathcart and Hank lost
+no time in beginning the search, but Simpson was too exhausted to
+accompany them. They would follow the blazed marks on the trees, and
+where possible, his footsteps. Meanwhile the best thing he could do was
+to keep a good fire going, and rest.</p>
+
+<p>But after something like three hours' search, the darkness already down,
+the two men returned to camp with nothing to report. Fresh snow had
+covered all signs, and though they had followed the blazed trees to the
+spot where Simpson had turned back, they had not discovered the smallest
+indication of a human being&mdash;or for that matter, of an animal. There
+were no fresh tracks of any kind; the snow lay undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>It was difficult to know what was best to do, though in reality there
+was nothing more they <i>could</i> do. They might stay and search for weeks
+without much chance of success. The fresh snow destroyed their only
+hope, and they gathered round the fire for supper, a gloomy and
+despondent party. The facts, indeed, were sad enough, for D&eacute;fago had a
+wife at Rat Portage, and his earnings were the family's sole means of
+support.</p>
+
+<p>Now that the whole truth in all its ugliness was out, it seemed useless
+to deal in further disguise or pretense. They talked openly of the facts
+and probabilities. It was not the first time, even in the experience of
+Dr. Cathcart, that a man had yielded to the singular seduction of the
+Solitudes and gone out of his mind; D&eacute;fago, moreover, was predisposed to
+something of the sort, for he already had a touch of melancholia in his
+blood, and his fiber was weakened by bouts of drinking that often lasted
+for weeks at a time. Something on this trip&mdash;one might never know
+precisely what&mdash;had sufficed to push him over the line, that was all.
+And he had gone, gone off into the great wilderness of trees and lakes
+to die by starvation and exhaustion. The chances against his finding
+camp again were overwhelming; the delirium that was upon him would also
+doubtless have increased, and it was quite likely he might do violence
+to himself and so hasten his cruel fate. Even while they talked, indeed,
+the end had probably come. On the suggestion of Hank, his old pal,
+however, they proposed to wait a little longer and devote the whole of
+the following day, from dawn to darkness, to the most systematic search
+they could devise. They would divide the territory between them. They
+discussed their plan in great detail. All that men could do they would
+do. And, meanwhile, they talked about the particular form in which the
+singular Panic of the Wilderness had made its attack upon the mind of
+the unfortunate guide. Hank, though familiar with the legend in its
+general outline, obviously did not welcome the turn the conversation had
+taken. He contributed little, though that little was illuminating. For
+he admitted that a story ran over all this section of country to the
+effect that several Indians had &quot;seen the Wendigo&quot; along the shores of
+Fifty Island Water in the &quot;fall&quot; of last year, and that this was the
+true reason of D&eacute;fago's disinclination to hunt there. Hank doubtless
+felt that he had in a sense helped his old pal to death by
+overpersuading him. &quot;When an Indian goes crazy,&quot; he explained, talking
+to himself more than to the others, it seemed, &quot;it's always put that
+he's 'seen the Wendigo.' An' pore old D&eacute;faygo was superstitious down to
+he very heels ...!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then Simpson, feeling the atmosphere more sympathetic, told over
+again the full story of his astonishing tale; he left out no details
+this time; he mentioned his own sensations and gripping fears. He only
+omitted the strange language used.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But D&eacute;fago surely had already told you all these details of the Wendigo
+legend, my dear fellow,&quot; insisted the doctor. &quot;I mean, he had talked
+about it, and thus put into your mind the ideas which your own
+excitement afterwards developed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Simpson again repeated the facts. D&eacute;fago, he declared, had
+barely mentioned the beast. He, Simpson, knew nothing of the story, and,
+so far as he remembered, had never even read about it. Even the word was
+unfamiliar.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he was telling the truth, and Dr. Cathcart was reluctantly
+compelled to admit the singular character of the whole affair. He did
+not do this in words so much as in manner, however. He kept his back
+against a good, stout tree; he poked the fire into a blaze the moment it
+showed signs of dying down; he was quicker than any of them to notice
+the least sound in the night about them&mdash;a fish jumping in the lake, a
+twig snapping in the bush, the dropping of occasional fragments of
+frozen snow from the branches overhead where the heat loosened them. His
+voice, too, changed a little in quality, becoming a shade less
+confident, lower also in tone. Fear, to put it plainly, hovered close
+about that little camp, and though all three would have been glad to
+speak of other matters, the only thing they seemed able to discuss was
+this&mdash;the source of their fear. They tried other subjects in vain; there
+was nothing to say about them. Hank was the most honest of the group; he
+said next to nothing. He never once, however, turned his back to the
+darkness. His face was always to the forest, and when wood was needed he
+didn't go farther than was necessary to get it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="VII"></a><h2>VII</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>A wall of silence wrapped them in, for the snow, though not thick, was
+sufficient to deaden any noise, and the frost held things pretty tight
+besides. No sound but their voices and the soft roar of the flames made
+itself heard. Only, from time to time, something soft as the flutter of
+a pine moth's wings went past them through the air. No one seemed
+anxious to go to bed. The hours slipped towards midnight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The legend is picturesque enough,&quot; observed the doctor after one of the
+longer pauses, speaking to break it rather than because he had anything
+to say, &quot;for the Wendigo is simply the Call of the Wild personified,
+which some natures hear to their own destruction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's about it,&quot; Hank said presently. &quot;An' there's no misunderstandin'
+when you hear it. It calls you by name right 'nough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Another pause followed. Then Dr. Cathcart came back to the forbidden
+subject with a rush that made the others jump.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The allegory <i>is</i> significant,&quot; he remarked, looking about him into the
+darkness, &quot;for the Voice, they say, resembles all the minor sounds of
+the Bush&mdash;wind, falling water, cries of the animals, and so forth. And,
+once the victim hears <i>that</i>&mdash;he's off for good, of course! His most
+vulnerable points, moreover, are said to be the feet and the eyes; the
+feet, you see, for the lust of wandering, and the eyes for the lust of
+beauty. The poor beggar goes at such a dreadful speed that he bleeds
+beneath the eyes, and his feet burn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Cathcart, as he spoke, continued to peer uneasily into the
+surrounding gloom. His voice sank to a hushed tone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Wendigo,&quot; he added, &quot;is said to burn his feet&mdash;owing to the
+friction, apparently caused by its tremendous velocity&mdash;till they drop
+off, and new ones form exactly like its own.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Simpson listened in horrified amazement; but it was the pallor on Hank's
+face that fascinated him most. He would willingly have stopped his ears
+and closed his eyes, had he dared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It don't always keep to the ground neither,&quot; came in Hank's slow, heavy
+drawl, &quot;for it goes so high that he thinks the stars have set him all
+a-fire. An' it'll take great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an' run along the
+tops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an' then droppin' him
+jest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin'. An' its
+food, of all the muck in the whole Bush is&mdash;moss!&quot; And he laughed a
+short, unnatural laugh. &quot;It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo,&quot; he added,
+looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. &quot;Moss-eater,&quot; he
+repeated, with a string of the most outlandish oaths he could invent.</p>
+
+<p>But Simpson now understood the true purpose of all this talk. What
+these two men, each strong and &quot;experienced&quot; in his own way, dreaded
+more than anything else was&mdash;silence. They were talking against time.
+They were also talking against darkness, against the invasion of panic,
+against the admission reflection might bring that they were in an
+enemy's country&mdash;against anything, in fact, rather than allow their
+inmost thoughts to assume control. He himself, already initiated by the
+awful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He had
+reached the stage where he was immune. But these two, the scoffing,
+analytical doctor, and the honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sat
+trembling in the depths of his being.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the hours passed; and thus, with lowered voices and a kind of taut
+inner resistance of spirit, this little group of humanity sat in the
+jaws of the wilderness and talked foolishly of the terrible and haunting
+legend. It was an unequal contest, all things considered, for the
+wilderness had already the advantage of first attack&mdash;and of a hostage.
+The fate of their comrade hung over them with a steadily increasing
+weight of oppression that finally became insupportable.</p>
+
+<p>It was Hank, after a pause longer than the preceding ones that no one
+seemed able to break, who first let loose all this pent-up emotion in
+very unexpected fashion, by springing suddenly to his feet and letting
+out the most ear-shattering yell imaginable into the night. He could not
+contain himself any longer, it seemed. To make it carry even beyond an
+ordinary cry he interrupted its rhythm by shaking the palm of his hand
+before his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's for D&eacute;fago,&quot; he said, looking down at the other two with a
+queer, defiant laugh, &quot;for it's my belief&quot;&mdash;the sandwiched oaths may be
+omitted&mdash;&quot;that my ole partner's not far from us at this very minute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a vehemence and recklessness about his performance that made
+Simpson, too, start to his feet in amazement, and betrayed even the
+doctor into letting the pipe slip from between his lips. Hank's face was
+ghastly, but Cathcart's showed a sudden weakness&mdash;a loosening of all his
+faculties, as it were. Then a momentary anger blazed into his eyes, and
+he too, though with deliberation born of habitual self-control, got upon
+his feet and faced the excited guide. For this was unpermissible,
+foolish, dangerous, and he meant to stop it in the bud.</p>
+
+<p>What might have happened in the next minute or two one may speculate
+about, yet never definitely know, for in the instant of profound silence
+that followed Hank's roaring voice, and as though in answer to it,
+something went past through the darkness of the sky overhead at terrific
+speed&mdash;something of necessity very large, for it displaced much air,
+while down between the trees there fell a faint and windy cry of a human
+voice, calling in tones of indescribable anguish and appeal&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>White to the very edge of his shirt, Hank looked stupidly about him like
+a child. Dr. Cathcart uttered some kind of unintelligible cry, turning
+as he did so with an instinctive movement of blind terror towards the
+protection of the tent, then halting in the act as though frozen.
+Simpson, alone of the three, retained his presence of mind a little. His
+own horror was too deep to allow of any immediate reaction. He had heard
+that cry before.</p>
+
+<p>Turning to his stricken companions, he said almost calmly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's exactly the cry I heard&mdash;the very words he used!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then, lifting his face to the sky, he cried aloud, &quot;D&eacute;fago, D&eacute;fago! Come
+down here to us! Come down&mdash;!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And before there was time for anybody to take definite action one way or
+another, there came the sound of something dropping heavily between the
+trees, striking the branches on the way down, and landing with a
+dreadful thud upon the frozen earth below. The crash and thunder of it
+was really terrific.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's him, s'help me the good Gawd!&quot; came from Hank in a whispering
+cry half choked, his hand going automatically toward the hunting knife
+in his belt. &quot;And he's coming! He's coming!&quot; he added, with an
+irrational laugh of horror, as the sounds of heavy footsteps crunching
+over the snow became distinctly audible, approaching through the
+blackness towards the circle of light.</p>
+
+<p>And while the steps, with their stumbling motion, moved nearer and
+nearer upon them, the three men stood round that fire, motionless and
+dumb. Dr. Cathcart had the appearance of a man suddenly withered; even
+his eyes did not move. Hank, suffering shockingly, seemed on the verge
+again of violent action; yet did nothing. He, too, was hewn of stone.
+Like stricken children they seemed. The picture was hideous. And,
+meanwhile, their owner still invisible, the footsteps came closer,
+crunching the frozen snow. It was endless&mdash;too prolonged to be quite
+real&mdash;this measured and pitiless approach. It was accursed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="VIII"></a><h2>VIII</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Then at length the darkness, having thus laboriously conceived, brought
+forth&mdash;a figure. It drew forward into the zone of uncertain light where
+fire and shadows mingled, not ten feet away; then halted, staring at
+them fixedly. The same instant it started forward again with the
+spasmodic motion as of a thing moved by wires, and coming up closer to
+them, full into the glare of the fire, they perceived then that&mdash;it was
+a man; and apparently that this man was&mdash;D&eacute;fago.</p>
+
+<p>Something like a skin of horror almost perceptibly drew down in that
+moment over every face, and three pairs of eyes shone through it as
+though they saw across the frontiers of normal vision into the Unknown.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago advanced, his tread faltering and uncertain; he made his way
+straight up to them as a group first, then turned sharply and peered
+close into the face of Simpson. The sound of a voice issued from his
+lips&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here I am, Boss Simpson. I heered someone calling me.&quot; It was a faint,
+dried up voice, made wheezy and breathless as by immense exertion. &quot;I'm
+havin' a reg'lar hellfire kind of a trip, I am.&quot; And he laughed,
+thrusting his head forward into the other's face.</p>
+
+<p>But that laugh started the machinery of the group of waxwork figures
+with the wax-white skins. Hank immediately sprang forward with a stream
+of oaths so farfetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English at
+all, but thought he had lapsed into Indian or some other lingo. He only
+realized that Hank's presence, thrust thus between them, was
+welcome&mdash;uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly and
+leisurely, advanced behind him, heavily stumbling.</p>
+
+<p>Simpson seems hazy as to what was actually said and done in those next
+few seconds, for the eyes of that detestable and blasted visage peering
+at such close quarters into his own utterly bewildered his senses at
+first. He merely stood still. He said nothing. He had not the trained
+will of the older men that forced them into action in defiance of all
+emotional stress. He watched them moving as behind a glass that half
+destroyed their reality; it was dreamlike; perverted. Yet, through the
+torrent of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing his uncle's
+tone of authority&mdash;hard and forced&mdash;saying several things about food and
+warmth, blankets, whisky and the rest ... and, further, that whiffs of
+that penetrating, unaccustomed odor, vile yet sweetly bewildering,
+assailed his nostrils during all that followed.</p>
+
+<p>It was no less a person than himself, however&mdash;less experienced and
+adroit than the others though he was&mdash;who gave instinctive utterance to
+the sentence that brought a measure of relief into the ghastly situation
+by expressing the doubt and thought in each one's heart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It <i>is</i>&mdash;YOU, isn't it, D&eacute;fago?&quot; he asked under his breath, horror
+breaking his speech.</p>
+
+<p>And at once Cathcart burst out with the loud answer before the other had
+time to move his lips. &quot;Of course it is! Of course it is! Only&mdash;can't
+you see&mdash;he's nearly dead with exhaustion, cold and terror! Isn't <i>that</i>
+enough to change a man beyond all recognition?&quot; It was said in order to
+convince himself as much as to convince the others. The overemphasis
+alone proved that. And continually, while he spoke and acted, he held a
+handkerchief to his nose. That odor pervaded the whole camp.</p>
+
+<p>For the &quot;D&eacute;fago&quot; who sat huddled by the big fire, wrapped in blankets,
+drinking hot whisky and holding food in wasted hands, was no more like
+the guide they had last seen alive than the picture of a man of sixty is
+like a daguerreotype of his early youth in the costume of another
+generation. Nothing really can describe that ghastly caricature, that
+parody, masquerading there in the firelight as D&eacute;fago. From the ruins of
+the dark and awful memories he still retains, Simpson declares that the
+face was more animal than human, the features drawn about into wrong
+proportions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had been subjected
+to extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely of
+those bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that change
+their expression as they swell, and as they collapse emit a faint and
+wailing imitation of a voice. Both face and voice suggested some such
+abominable resemblance. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking to
+describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a face
+and body that had been in air so rarified that, the weight of atmosphere
+being removed, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder and
+become&mdash;<i>incoherent</i>....</p>
+
+<p>It was Hank, though all distraught and shaking with a tearing volume of
+emotion he could neither handle nor understand, who brought things to a
+head without much ado. He went off to a little distance from the fire,
+apparently so that the light should not dazzle him too much, and shading
+his eyes for a moment with both hands, shouted in a loud voice that held
+anger and affection dreadfully mingled:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ain't D&eacute;faygo! You ain't D&eacute;faygo at all! I don't give a&mdash;damn, but
+that ain't you, my ole pal of twenty years!&quot; He glared upon the huddled
+figure as though he would destroy him with his eyes. &quot;An' if it is I'll
+swab the floor of hell with a wad of cotton wool on a toothpick, s'help
+me the good Gawd!&quot; he added, with a violent fling of horror and disgust.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible to silence him. He stood there shouting like one
+possessed, horrible to see, horrible to hear&mdash;<i>because it was the
+truth</i>. He repeated himself in fifty different ways, each more
+outlandish than the last. The woods rang with echoes. At one time it
+looked as if he meant to fling himself upon &quot;the intruder,&quot; for his hand
+continually jerked towards the long hunting knife in his belt.</p>
+
+<p>But in the end he did nothing, and the whole tempest completed itself
+very shortly with tears. Hank's voice suddenly broke, he collapsed on
+the ground, and Cathcart somehow or other persuaded him at last to go
+into the tent and lie quiet. The remainder of the affair, indeed, was
+witnessed by him from behind the canvas, his white and terrified face
+peeping through the crack of the tent door flap.</p>
+
+<p>Then Dr. Cathcart, closely followed by his nephew who so far had kept
+his courage better than all of them, went up with a determined air and
+stood opposite to the figure of D&eacute;fago huddled over the fire. He looked
+him squarely in the face and spoke. At first his voice was firm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;D&eacute;fago, tell us what's happened&mdash;just a little, so that we can know
+how best to help you?&quot; he asked in a tone of authority, almost of
+command. And at that point, it <i>was</i> command. At once afterwards,
+however, it changed in quality, for the figure turned up to him a face
+so piteous, so terrible and so little like humanity, that the doctor
+shrank back from him as from something spiritually unclean. Simpson,
+watching close behind him, says he got the impression of a mask that was
+on the verge of dropping off, and that underneath they would discover
+something black and diabolical, revealed in utter nakedness. &quot;Out with
+it, man, out with it!&quot; Cathcart cried, terror running neck and neck with
+entreaty. &quot;None of us can stand this much longer ...!&quot; It was the cry of
+instinct over reason.</p>
+
+<p>And then &quot;D&eacute;fago,&quot; smiling <i>whitely</i>, answered in that thin and fading
+voice that already seemed passing over into a sound of quite another
+character&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I seen that great Wendigo thing,&quot; he whispered, sniffing the air about
+him exactly like an animal. &quot;I been with it too&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whether the poor devil would have said more, or whether Dr. Cathcart
+would have continued the impossible cross examination cannot be known,
+for at that moment the voice of Hank was heard yelling at the top of his
+voice from behind the canvas that concealed all but his terrified eyes.
+Such a howling was never heard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His feet! Oh, Gawd, his feet! Look at his great changed&mdash;feet!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago, shuffling where he sat, had moved in such a way that for the
+first time his legs were in full light and his feet were visible. Yet
+Simpson had no time, himself, to see properly what Hank had seen. And
+Hank has never seen fit to tell. That same instant, with a leap like
+that of a frightened tiger, Cathcart was upon him, bundling the folds of
+blanket about his legs with such speed that the young student caught
+little more than a passing glimpse of something dark and oddly massed
+where moccasined feet ought to have been, and saw even that but with
+uncertain vision.</p>
+
+<p>Then, before the doctor had time to do more, or Simpson time to even
+think a question, much less ask it, D&eacute;fago was standing upright in front
+of them, balancing with pain and difficulty, and upon his shapeless and
+twisted visage an expression so dark and so malicious that it was, in
+the true sense, monstrous.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now <i>you</i> seen it too,&quot; he wheezed, &quot;you seen my fiery, burning feet!
+And now&mdash;that is, unless you kin save me an' prevent&mdash;it's 'bout time
+for&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His piteous and beseeching voice was interrupted by a sound that was
+like the roar of wind coming across the lake. The trees overhead shook
+their tangled branches. The blazing fire bent its flames as before a
+blast. And something swept with a terrific, rushing noise about the
+little camp and seemed to surround it entirely in a single moment of
+time. D&eacute;fago shook the clinging blankets from his body, turned towards
+the woods behind, and with the same stumbling motion that had brought
+him&mdash;was gone: gone, before anyone could move muscle to prevent him,
+gone with an amazing, blundering swiftness that left no time to act. The
+darkness positively swallowed him; and less than a dozen seconds later,
+above the roar of the swaying trees and the shout of the sudden wind,
+all three men, watching and listening with stricken hearts, heard a cry
+that seemed to drop down upon them from a great height of sky and
+distance&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire ...!&quot; then died away, into untold space and silence.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Cathcart&mdash;suddenly master of himself, and therefore of the
+others&mdash;was just able to seize Hank violently by the arm as he tried to
+dash headlong into the Bush.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I want ter know,&mdash;you!&quot; shrieked the guide. &quot;I want ter see! That
+ain't him at all, but some&mdash;devil that's shunted into his place ...!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Somehow or other&mdash;he admits he never quite knew how he accomplished
+it&mdash;he managed to keep him in the tent and pacify him. The doctor,
+apparently, had reached the stage where reaction had set in and allowed
+his own innate force to conquer. Certainly he &quot;managed&quot; Hank admirably.
+It was his nephew, however, hitherto so wonderfully controlled, who gave
+him most cause for anxiety, for the cumulative strain had now produced a
+condition of lachrymose hysteria which made it necessary to isolate him
+upon a bed of boughs and blankets as far removed from Hank as was
+possible under the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>And there he lay, as the watches of that haunted night passed over the
+lonely camp, crying startled sentences, and fragments of sentences, into
+the folds of his blanket. A quantity of gibberish about speed and height
+and fire mingled oddly with biblical memories of the classroom. &quot;People
+with broken faces all on fire are coming at a most awful, awful, pace
+towards the camp!&quot; he would moan one minute; and the next would sit up
+and stare into the woods, intently listening, and whisper, &quot;How terrible
+in the wilderness are&mdash;are the feet of them that&mdash;&quot; until his uncle came
+across to change the direction of his thoughts and comfort him.</p>
+
+<p>The hysteria, fortunately, proved but temporary. Sleep cured him, just
+as it cured Hank.</p>
+
+<p>Till the first signs of daylight came, soon after five o'clock, Dr.
+Cathcart kept his vigil. His face was the color of chalk, and there were
+strange flushes beneath the eyes. An appalling terror of the soul
+battled with his will all through those silent hours. These were some of
+the outer signs ...</p>
+
+<p>At dawn he lit the fire himself, made breakfast, and woke the others,
+and by seven they were well on their way back to the home camp&mdash;three
+perplexed and afflicted men, but each in his own way having reduced his
+inner turmoil to a condition of more or less systematized order again.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="IX"></a><h2>IX</h2>
+<br>
+
+
+<p>They talked little, and then only of the most wholesome and common
+things, for their minds were charged with painful thoughts that
+clamoured for explanation, though no one dared refer to them. Hank,
+being nearest to primitive conditions, was the first to find himself,
+for he was also less complex. In Dr. Cathcart "civilization" championed
+his forces against an attack singular enough. To this day, perhaps, he
+is not <i>quite</i> sure of certain things. Anyhow, he took longer to "find
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions
+probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order.
+Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely
+witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that
+had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically,
+betraying a scale of life still monstrous and immature. He envisaged it
+rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic
+and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men; when the forces of nature
+were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe
+not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later
+in a sermon "savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of
+men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity
+as it exists."</p>
+
+<p>With his uncle he never discussed the matter in detail, for the barrier
+between the two types of mind made it difficult. Only once, years later,
+something led them to the frontier of the subject&mdash;of a single detail of
+the subject, rather&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you even tell me what&mdash;<i>they</i> were like?" he asked; and the reply,
+though conceived in wisdom, was not encouraging, "It is far better you
+should not try to know, or to find out."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;that odour...?" persisted the nephew. "What do you make of that?"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Cathcart looked at him and raised his eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"Odours," he replied, "are not so easy as sounds and sights of telepathic
+communication. I make as much, or as little, probably, as you do
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>He was not quite so glib as usual with his explanations. That was all.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>At the fall of day, cold, exhausted, famished, the party came to the
+end of the long portage and dragged themselves into a camp that at
+first glimpse seemed empty. Fire there was none, and no Punk came
+forward to welcome them. The emotional capacity of all three was too
+over-spent to recognize either surprise or annoyance; but the cry of
+spontaneous affection that burst from the lips of Hank, as he rushed
+ahead of them towards the fire-place, came probably as a warning that
+the end of the amazing affair was not quite yet. And both Cathcart and
+his nephew confessed afterwards that when they saw him kneel down in
+his excitement and embrace something that reclined, gently moving,
+beside the extinguished ashes, they felt in their very bones that this
+"something" would prove to be D&eacute;fago&mdash;the true D&eacute;fago, returned.</p>
+
+<p>And so, indeed, it was.</p>
+
+<p>It is soon told. Exhausted to the point of emaciation, the French
+Canadian&mdash;what was left of him, that is&mdash;fumbled among the ashes, trying
+to make a fire. His body crouched there, the weak fingers obeying feebly
+the instinctive habit of a lifetime with twigs and matches. But there
+was no longer any mind to direct the simple operation. The mind had
+fled beyond recall. And with it, too, had fled memory. Not only recent
+events, but all previous life was a blank.</p>
+
+<p>This time it was the real man, though incredibly and horribly shrunken.
+On his face was no expression of any kind whatever&mdash;fear, welcome, or
+recognition. He did not seem to know who it was that embraced him, or
+who it was that fed, warmed and spoke to him the words of comfort and
+relief. Forlorn and broken beyond all reach of human aid, the little man
+did meekly as he was bidden. The "something" that had constituted him
+"individual" had vanished for ever.</p>
+
+<p>In some ways it was more terribly moving than anything they had yet
+seen&mdash;that idiot smile as he drew wads of coarse moss from his swollen
+cheeks and told them that he was "a damned moss-eater"; the continued
+vomiting of even the simplest food; and, worst of all, the piteous
+and childish voice of complaint in which he told them that his feet
+pained him&mdash;"burn like fire"&mdash;which was natural enough when Dr. Cathcart
+examined them and found that both were dreadfully frozen. Beneath the
+eyes there were faint indications of recent bleeding.</p>
+
+<p>The details of how he survived the prolonged exposure, of where he had
+been, or of how he covered the great distance from one camp to the
+other, including an immense detour of the lake on foot since he had
+no canoe&mdash;all this remains unknown. His memory had vanished completely.
+And before the end of the winter whose beginning witnessed this strange
+occurrence, D&eacute;fago, bereft of mind, memory and soul, had gone with it.
+He lingered only a few weeks.</p>
+
+<p>And what Punk was able to contribute to the story throws no further
+light upon it. He was cleaning fish by the lake shore about five o'clock
+in the evening&mdash;an hour, that is, before the search party returned&mdash;when
+he saw this shadow of the guide picking its way weakly into camp. In
+advance of him, he declares, came the faint whiff of a certain singular
+odour.</p>
+
+<p>That same instant old Punk started for home. He covered the entire
+journey of three days as only Indian blood could have covered it. The
+terror of a whole race drove him. He knew what it all meant. D&eacute;fago
+had "seen the Wendigo."</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10897 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #10897 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10897)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wendigo
+
+Author: Algernon Blackwood
+
+Release Date: January 31, 2004 [EBook #10897]
+[Last updated: March 10, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WENDIGO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Dave Morgan and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WENDIGO
+
+Algernon Blackwood
+
+1910
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year without
+finding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, and
+the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective families
+with the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr.
+Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he brought
+instead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all the
+bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, was
+interested in other things besides moose--amongst them the vagaries of
+the human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in his
+book on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confided
+once to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a part
+in it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole....
+
+Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson, his
+nephew, a divinity student destined for the "Wee Kirk" (then on his
+first visit to Canadian backwoods), and the latter's guide, Défago.
+Joseph Défago was a French "Canuck," who had strayed from his native
+Province of Quebec years before, and had got caught in Rat Portage when
+the Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who, in addition to
+his unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore, could also sing
+the old _voyageur_ songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into the
+bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spell
+which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved the
+wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to
+an obsession. The life of the backwoods fascinated him--whence,
+doubtless, his surpassing efficiency in dealing with their mysteries.
+
+On this particular expedition he was Hank's choice. Hank knew him and
+swore by him. He also swore at him, "jest as a pal might," and since he
+had a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless, oaths, the
+conversation between the two stalwart and hardy woodsmen was often of a
+rather lively description. This river of expletives, however, Hank
+agreed to dam a little out of respect for his old "hunting boss," Dr.
+Cathcart, whom of course he addressed after the fashion of the country
+as "Doc," and also because he understood that young Simpson was already
+a "bit of a parson." He had, however, one objection to Défago, and one
+only--which was, that the French Canadian sometimes exhibited what Hank
+described as "the output of a cursed and dismal mind," meaning
+apparently that he sometimes was true to type, Latin type, and suffered
+fits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing could induce him to
+utter speech. Défago, that is to say, was imaginative and melancholy.
+And, as a rule, it was too long a spell of "civilization" that induced
+the attacks, for a few days of the wilderness invariably cured them.
+
+This, then, was the party of four that found themselves in camp the last
+week in October of that "shy moose year" 'way up in the wilderness north
+of Rat Portage--a forsaken and desolate country. There was also Punk, an
+Indian, who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their hunting trips
+in previous years, and who acted as cook. His duty was merely to stay in
+camp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks and coffee at a few
+minutes' notice. He dressed in the worn-out clothes bequeathed to him by
+former patrons, and, except for his coarse black hair and dark skin, he
+looked in these city garments no more like a real redskin than a stage
+Negro looks like a real African. For all that, however, Punk had in him
+still the instincts of his dying race; his taciturn silence and his
+endurance survived; also his superstition.
+
+The party round the blazing fire that night were despondent, for a week
+had passed without a single sign of recent moose discovering itself.
+Défago had sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank, in bad
+humor, reminded him so often that "he kep' mussing-up the fac's so, that
+it was 'most all nothin' but a petered-out lie," that the Frenchman had
+finally subsided into a sulky silence which nothing seemed likely to
+break. Dr. Cathcart and his nephew were fairly done after an exhausting
+day. Punk was washing up the dishes, grunting to himself under the
+lean-to of branches, where he later also slept. No one troubled to stir
+the slowly dying fire. Overhead the stars were brilliant in a sky quite
+wintry, and there was so little wind that ice was already forming
+stealthily along the shores of the still lake behind them. The silence
+of the vast listening forest stole forward and enveloped them.
+
+Hank broke in suddenly with his nasal voice.
+
+"I'm in favor of breaking new ground tomorrow, Doc," he observed with
+energy, looking across at his employer. "We don't stand a dead Dago's
+chance around here."
+
+"Agreed," said Cathcart, always a man of few words. "Think the idea's
+good."
+
+"Sure pop, it's good," Hank resumed with confidence. "S'pose, now, you
+and I strike west, up Garden Lake way for a change! None of us ain't
+touched that quiet bit o' land yet--"
+
+"I'm with you."
+
+"And you, Défago, take Mr. Simpson along in the small canoe, skip across
+the lake, portage over into Fifty Island Water, and take a good squint
+down that thar southern shore. The moose 'yarded' there like hell last
+year, and for all we know they may be doin' it agin this year jest to
+spite us."
+
+Défago, keeping his eyes on the fire, said nothing by way of reply. He
+was still offended, possibly, about his interrupted story.
+
+"No one's been up that way this year, an' I'll lay my bottom dollar on
+_that!_" Hank added with emphasis, as though he had a reason for
+knowing. He looked over at his partner sharply. "Better take the little
+silk tent and stay away a couple o' nights," he concluded, as though the
+matter were definitely settled. For Hank was recognized as general
+organizer of the hunt, and in charge of the party.
+
+It was obvious to anyone that Défago did not jump at the plan, but his
+silence seemed to convey something more than ordinary disapproval, and
+across his sensitive dark face there passed a curious expression like a
+flash of firelight--not so quickly, however, that the three men had not
+time to catch it.
+
+"He funked for some reason, _I_ thought," Simpson said afterwards in the
+tent he shared with his uncle. Dr. Cathcart made no immediate reply,
+although the look had interested him enough at the time for him to make
+a mental note of it. The expression had caused him a passing uneasiness
+he could not quite account for at the moment.
+
+But Hank, of course, had been the first to notice it, and the odd thing
+was that instead of becoming explosive or angry over the other's
+reluctance, he at once began to humor him a bit.
+
+"But there ain't no _speshul_ reason why no one's been up there this
+year," he said with a perceptible hush in his tone; "not the reason you
+mean, anyway! Las' year it was the fires that kep' folks out, and this
+year I guess--I guess it jest happened so, that's all!" His manner was
+clearly meant to be encouraging.
+
+Joseph Défago raised his eyes a moment, then dropped them again. A
+breath of wind stole out of the forest and stirred the embers into a
+passing blaze. Dr. Cathcart again noticed the expression in the guide's
+face, and again he did not like it. But this time the nature of the look
+betrayed itself. In those eyes, for an instant, he caught the gleam of a
+man scared in his very soul. It disquieted him more than he cared to
+admit.
+
+"Bad Indians up that way?" he asked, with a laugh to ease matters a
+little, while Simpson, too sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, moved
+off to bed with a prodigious yawn; "or--or anything wrong with the
+country?" he added, when his nephew was out of hearing.
+
+Hank met his eye with something less than his usual frankness.
+
+"He's jest skeered," he replied good-humouredly. "Skeered stiff about
+some ole feery tale! That's all, ain't it, ole pard?" And he gave Défago
+a friendly kick on the moccasined foot that lay nearest the fire.
+
+Défago looked up quickly, as from an interrupted reverie, a reverie,
+however, that had not prevented his seeing all that went on about him.
+
+"Skeered--_nuthin'!_" he answered, with a flush of defiance. "There's
+nuthin' in the Bush that can skeer Joseph Défago, and don't you forget
+it!" And the natural energy with which he spoke made it impossible to
+know whether he told the whole truth or only a part of it.
+
+Hank turned towards the doctor. He was just going to add something when
+he stopped abruptly and looked round. A sound close behind them in the
+darkness made all three start. It was old Punk, who had moved up from
+his lean-to while they talked and now stood there just beyond the circle
+of firelight--listening.
+
+"'Nother time, Doc!" Hank whispered, with a wink, "when the gallery
+ain't stepped down into the stalls!" And, springing to his feet, he
+slapped the Indian on the back and cried noisily, "Come up t' the fire
+an' warm yer dirty red skin a bit." He dragged him towards the blaze and
+threw more wood on. "That was a mighty good feed you give us an hour or
+two back," he continued heartily, as though to set the man's thoughts on
+another scent, "and it ain't Christian to let you stand out there
+freezin' yer ole soul to hell while we're gettin' all good an' toasted!"
+Punk moved in and warmed his feet, smiling darkly at the other's
+volubility which he only half understood, but saying nothing. And
+presently Dr. Cathcart, seeing that further conversation was impossible,
+followed his nephew's example and moved off to the tent, leaving the
+three men smoking over the now blazing fire.
+
+It is not easy to undress in a small tent without waking one's
+companion, and Cathcart, hardened and warm-blooded as he was in spite of
+his fifty odd years, did what Hank would have described as "considerable
+of his twilight" in the open. He noticed, during the process, that Punk
+had meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, and that Hank and Défago were
+at it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammer and anvil, the little French
+Canadian being the anvil. It was all very like the conventional stage
+picture of Western melodrama: the fire lighting up their faces with
+patches of alternate red and black; Défago, in slouch hat and moccasins
+in the part of the "badlands" villain; Hank, open-faced and hatless,
+with that reckless fling of his shoulders, the honest and deceived hero;
+and old Punk, eavesdropping in the background, supplying the atmosphere
+of mystery. The doctor smiled as he noticed the details; but at the same
+time something deep within him--he hardly knew what--shrank a little, as
+though an almost imperceptible breath of warning had touched the surface
+of his soul and was gone again before he could seize it. Probably it was
+traceable to that "scared expression" he had seen in the eyes of Défago;
+"probably"--for this hint of fugitive emotion otherwise escaped his
+usually so keen analysis. Défago, he was vaguely aware, might cause
+trouble somehow ...He was not as steady a guide as Hank, for
+instance ... Further than that he could not get ...
+
+He watched the men a moment longer before diving into the stuffy tent
+where Simpson already slept soundly. Hank, he saw, was swearing like a
+mad African in a New York nigger saloon; but it was the swearing of
+"affection." The ridiculous oaths flew freely now that the cause of
+their obstruction was asleep. Presently he put his arm almost tenderly
+upon his comrade's shoulder, and they moved off together into the
+shadows where their tent stood faintly glimmering. Punk, too, a moment
+later followed their example and disappeared between his odorous
+blankets in the opposite direction.
+
+Dr. Cathcart then likewise turned in, weariness and sleep still fighting
+in his mind with an obscure curiosity to know what it was that had
+scared Défago about the country up Fifty Island Water way,--wondering,
+too, why Punk's presence had prevented the completion of what Hank had
+to say. Then sleep overtook him. He would know tomorrow. Hank would tell
+him the story while they trudged after the elusive moose.
+
+Deep silence fell about the little camp, planted there so audaciously in
+the jaws of the wilderness. The lake gleamed like a sheet of black glass
+beneath the stars. The cold air pricked. In the draughts of night that
+poured their silent tide from the depths of the forest, with messages
+from distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze, there lay
+already the faint, bleak odors of coming winter. White men, with their
+dull scent, might never have divined them; the fragrance of the wood
+fire would have concealed from them these almost electrical hints of
+moss and bark and hardening swamp a hundred miles away. Even Hank and
+Défago, subtly in league with the soul of the woods as they were, would
+probably have spread their delicate nostrils in vain....
+
+But an hour later, when all slept like the dead, old Punk crept from his
+blankets and went down to the shore of the lake like a shadow--silently,
+as only Indian blood can move. He raised his head and looked about him.
+The thick darkness rendered sight of small avail, but, like the animals,
+he possessed other senses that darkness could not mute. He
+listened--then sniffed the air. Motionless as a hemlock stem he stood
+there. After five minutes again he lifted his head and sniffed, and yet
+once again. A tingling of the wonderful nerves that betrayed itself by
+no outer sign, ran through him as he tasted the keen air. Then, merging
+his figure into the surrounding blackness in a way that only wild men
+and animals understand, he turned, still moving like a shadow, and went
+stealthily back to his lean-to and his bed.
+
+And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirred
+gently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising among the far
+ridges of the country beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from the
+direction in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleeping camp
+with a faint and sighing murmur through the tops of the big trees that
+was almost too delicate to be audible. With it, down the desert paths of
+night, though too faint, too high even for the Indian's hair-like
+nerves, there passed a curious, thin odor, strangely disquieting, an
+odor of something that seemed unfamiliar--utterly unknown.
+
+The French Canadian and the man of Indian blood each stirred uneasily in
+his sleep just about this time, though neither of them woke. Then the
+ghost of that unforgettably strange odor passed away and was lost among
+the leagues of tenantless forest beyond.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+In the morning the camp was astir before the sun. There had been a
+light fall of snow during the night and the air was sharp. Punk had done
+his duty betimes, for the odors of coffee and fried bacon reached every
+tent. All were in good spirits.
+
+"Wind's shifted!" cried Hank vigorously, watching Simpson and his guide
+already loading the small canoe. "It's across the lake--dead right for
+you fellers. And the snow'll make bully trails! If there's any moose
+mussing around up thar, they'll not get so much as a tail-end scent of
+you with the wind as it is. Good luck, Monsieur Défago!" he added,
+facetiously giving the name its French pronunciation for once, "_bonne
+chance!_"
+
+Défago returned the good wishes, apparently in the best of spirits, the
+silent mood gone. Before eight o'clock old Punk had the camp to
+himself, Cathcart and Hank were far along the trail that led westwards,
+while the canoe that carried Défago and Simpson, with silk tent and grub
+for two days, was already a dark speck bobbing on the bosom of the lake,
+going due east.
+
+The wintry sharpness of the air was tempered now by a sun that topped
+the wooded ridges and blazed with a luxurious warmth upon the world of
+lake and forest below; loons flew skimming through the sparkling spray
+that the wind lifted; divers shook their dripping heads to the sun and
+popped smartly out of sight again; and as far as eye could reach rose
+the leagues of endless, crowding Bush, desolate in its lonely sweep and
+grandeur, untrodden by foot of man, and stretching its mighty and
+unbroken carpet right up to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay.
+
+Simpson, who saw it all for the first time as he paddled hard in the
+bows of the dancing canoe, was enchanted by its austere beauty. His
+heart drank in the sense of freedom and great spaces just as his lungs
+drank in the cool and perfumed wind. Behind him in the stern seat,
+singing fragments of his native chanties, Défago steered the craft of
+birch bark like a thing of life, answering cheerfully all his
+companion's questions. Both were gay and light-hearted. On such
+occasions men lose the superficial, worldly distinctions; they become
+human beings working together for a common end. Simpson, the employer,
+and Défago the employed, among these primitive forces, were simply--two
+men, the "guider" and the "guided." Superior knowledge, of course,
+assumed control, and the younger man fell without a second thought into
+the quasi-subordinate position. He never dreamed of objecting when
+Défago dropped the "Mr.," and addressed him as "Say, Simpson," or
+"Simpson, boss," which was invariably the case before they reached the
+farther shore after a stiff paddle of twelve miles against a head wind.
+He only laughed, and liked it; then ceased to notice it at all.
+
+For this "divinity student" was a young man of parts and character,
+though as yet, of course, untraveled; and on this trip--the first time
+he had seen any country but his own and little Switzerland--the huge
+scale of things somewhat bewildered him. It was one thing, he realized,
+to hear about primeval forests, but quite another to see them. While to
+dwell in them and seek acquaintance with their wild life was, again, an
+initiation that no intelligent man could undergo without a certain
+shifting of personal values hitherto held for permanent and sacred.
+
+Simpson knew the first faint indication of this emotion when he held the
+new. 303 rifle in his hands and looked along its pair of faultless,
+gleaming barrels. The three days' journey to their headquarters, by lake
+and portage, had carried the process a stage farther. And now that he
+was about to plunge beyond even the fringe of wilderness where they were
+camped into the virgin heart of uninhabited regions as vast as Europe
+itself, the true nature of the situation stole upon him with an effect
+of delight and awe that his imagination was fully capable of
+appreciating. It was himself and Défago against a multitude--at least,
+against a Titan!
+
+The bleak splendors of these remote and lonely forests rather
+overwhelmed him with the sense of his own littleness. That stern quality
+of the tangled backwoods which can only be described as merciless and
+terrible, rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon,
+and revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized his
+own utter helplessness. Only Défago, as a symbol of a distant
+civilization where man was master, stood between him and a pitiless
+death by exhaustion and starvation.
+
+It was thrilling to him, therefore, to watch Défago turn over the canoe
+upon the shore, pack the paddles carefully underneath, and then proceed
+to "blaze" the spruce stems for some distance on either side of an
+almost invisible trail, with the careless remark thrown in, "Say,
+Simpson, if anything happens to me, you'll find the canoe all correc' by
+these marks;--then strike doo west into the sun to hit the home camp
+agin, see?"
+
+It was the most natural thing in the world to say, and he said it
+without any noticeable inflexion of the voice, only it happened to
+express the youth's emotions at the moment with an utterance that was
+symbolic of the situation and of his own helplessness as a factor in it.
+He was alone with Défago in a primitive world: that was all. The canoe,
+another symbol of man's ascendancy, was now to be left behind. Those
+small yellow patches, made on the trees by the axe, were the only
+indications of its hiding place.
+
+Meanwhile, shouldering the packs between them, each man carrying his own
+rifle, they followed the slender trail over rocks and fallen trunks and
+across half-frozen swamps; skirting numerous lakes that fairly gemmed
+the forest, their borders fringed with mist; and towards five o'clock
+found themselves suddenly on the edge of the woods, looking out across a
+large sheet of water in front of them, dotted with pine-clad islands of
+all describable shapes and sizes.
+
+"Fifty Island Water," announced Défago wearily, "and the sun jest goin'
+to dip his bald old head into it!" he added, with unconscious poetry;
+and immediately they set about pitching camp for the night.
+
+In a very few minutes, under those skilful hands that never made a
+movement too much or a movement too little, the silk tent stood taut and
+cozy, the beds of balsam boughs ready laid, and a brisk cooking fire
+burned with the minimum of smoke. While the young Scotchman cleaned the
+fish they had caught trolling behind the canoe, Défago "guessed" he
+would "jest as soon" take a turn through the Bush for indications of
+moose. "_May_ come across a trunk where they bin and rubbed horns," he
+said, as he moved off, "or feedin' on the last of the maple leaves"--and
+he was gone.
+
+His small figure melted away like a shadow in the dusk, while Simpson
+noted with a kind of admiration how easily the forest absorbed him into
+herself. A few steps, it seemed, and he was no longer visible.
+
+Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts; the trees stood somewhat
+apart, well spaced; and in the clearings grew silver birch and maple,
+spearlike and slender, against the immense stems of spruce and hemlock.
+But for occasional prostrate monsters, and the boulders of grey rock
+that thrust uncouth shoulders here and there out of the ground, it might
+well have been a bit of park in the Old Country. Almost, one might have
+seen in it the hand of man. A little to the right, however, began the
+great burnt section, miles in extent, proclaiming its real
+character--_brulé_, as it is called, where the fires of the previous
+year had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps now rose gaunt and
+ugly, bereft of branches, like gigantic match heads stuck into the
+ground, savage and desolate beyond words. The perfume of charcoal and
+rain-soaked ashes still hung faintly about it.
+
+The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the
+fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the
+only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that
+vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the
+woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might
+stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees. In front,
+through doorways pillared by huge straight stems, lay the stretch of
+Fifty Island Water, a crescent-shaped lake some fifteen miles from tip
+to tip, and perhaps five miles across where they were camped. A sky of
+rose and saffron, more clear than any atmosphere Simpson had ever
+known, still dropped its pale streaming fires across the waves, where
+the islands--a hundred, surely, rather than fifty--floated like the
+fairy barques of some enchanted fleet. Fringed with pines, whose crests
+fingered most delicately the sky, they almost seemed to move upwards as
+the light faded--about to weigh anchor and navigate the pathways of the
+heavens instead of the currents of their native and desolate lake.
+
+And strips of colored cloud, like flaunting pennons, signaled their
+departure to the stars....
+
+The beauty of the scene was strangely uplifting. Simpson smoked the fish
+and burnt his fingers into the bargain in his efforts to enjoy it and at
+the same time tend the frying pan and the fire. Yet, ever at the back of
+his thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness: the indifference
+to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of
+man. The sense of his utter loneliness, now that even Défago had gone,
+came close as he looked about him and listened for the sound of his
+companion's returning footsteps.
+
+There was pleasure in the sensation, yet with it a perfectly
+comprehensible alarm. And instinctively the thought stirred in him:
+"What should I--_could_ I, do--if anything happened and he did not come
+back--?"
+
+They enjoyed their well-earned supper, eating untold quantities of fish,
+and drinking unmilked tea strong enough to kill men who had not covered
+thirty miles of hard "going," eating little on the way. And when it was
+over, they smoked and told stories round the blazing fire, laughing,
+stretching weary limbs, and discussing plans for the morrow. Défago was
+in excellent spirits, though disappointed at having no signs of moose to
+report. But it was dark and he had not gone far. The _brulé_, too, was
+bad. His clothes and hands were smeared with charcoal. Simpson, watching
+him, realized with renewed vividness their position--alone together in
+the wilderness.
+
+"Défago," he said presently, "these woods, you know, are a bit too big
+to feel quite at home in--to feel comfortable in, I mean!... Eh?" He
+merely gave expression to the mood of the moment; he was hardly prepared
+for the earnestness, the solemnity even, with which the guide took him
+up.
+
+"You've hit it right, Simpson, boss," he replied, fixing his searching
+brown eyes on his face, "and that's the truth, sure. There's no end to
+'em--no end at all." Then he added in a lowered tone as if to himself,
+"There's lots found out _that_, and gone plumb to pieces!"
+
+But the man's gravity of manner was not quite to the other's liking; it
+was a little too suggestive for this scenery and setting; he was sorry
+he had broached the subject. He remembered suddenly how his uncle had
+told him that men were sometimes stricken with a strange fever of the
+wilderness, when the seduction of the uninhabited wastes caught them so
+fiercely that they went forth, half fascinated, half deluded, to their
+death. And he had a shrewd idea that his companion held something in
+sympathy with that queer type. He led the conversation on to other
+topics, on to Hank and the doctor, for instance, and the natural rivalry
+as to who should get the first sight of moose.
+
+"If they went doo west," observed Défago carelessly, "there's sixty
+miles between us now--with ole Punk at halfway house eatin' himself full
+to bustin' with fish and coffee." They laughed together over the
+picture. But the casual mention of those sixty miles again made Simpson
+realize the prodigious scale of this land where they hunted; sixty miles
+was a mere step; two hundred little more than a step. Stories of lost
+hunters rose persistently before his memory. The passion and mystery of
+homeless and wandering men, seduced by the beauty of great forests,
+swept his soul in a way too vivid to be quite pleasant. He wondered
+vaguely whether it was the mood of his companion that invited the
+unwelcome suggestion with such persistence.
+
+"Sing us a song, Défago, if you're not too tired," he asked; "one of
+those old _voyageur_ songs you sang the other night." He handed his
+tobacco pouch to the guide and then filled his own pipe, while the
+Canadian, nothing loth, sent his light voice across the lake in one of
+those plaintive, almost melancholy chanties with which lumbermen and
+trappers lessen the burden of their labor. There was an appealing and
+romantic flavor about it, something that recalled the atmosphere of the
+old pioneer days when Indians and wilderness were leagued together,
+battles frequent, and the Old Country farther off than it is today. The
+sound traveled pleasantly over the water, but the forest at their backs
+seemed to swallow it down with a single gulp that permitted neither echo
+nor resonance.
+
+It was in the middle of the third verse that Simpson noticed something
+unusual--something that brought his thoughts back with a rush from
+faraway scenes. A curious change had come into the man's voice. Even
+before he knew what it was, uneasiness caught him, and looking up
+quickly, he saw that Défago, though still singing, was peering about him
+into the Bush, as though he heard or saw something. His voice grew
+fainter--dropped to a hush--then ceased altogether. The same instant,
+with a movement amazingly alert, he started to his feet and stood
+upright--_sniffing the air_. Like a dog scenting game, he drew the air
+into his nostrils in short, sharp breaths, turning quickly as he did so
+in all directions, and finally "pointing" down the lake shore,
+eastwards. It was a performance unpleasantly suggestive and at the same
+time singularly dramatic. Simpson's heart fluttered disagreeably as he
+watched it.
+
+"Lord, man! How you made me jump!" he exclaimed, on his feet beside him
+the same instant, and peering over his shoulder into the sea of
+darkness. "What's up? Are you frightened--?"
+
+Even before the question was out of his mouth he knew it was foolish,
+for any man with a pair of eyes in his head could see that the Canadian
+had turned white down to his very gills. Not even sunburn and the glare
+of the fire could hide that.
+
+The student felt himself trembling a little, weakish in the knees.
+"What's up?" he repeated quickly. "D'you smell moose? Or anything queer,
+anything--wrong?" He lowered his voice instinctively.
+
+The forest pressed round them with its encircling wall; the nearer tree
+stems gleamed like bronze in the firelight; beyond that--blackness, and,
+so far as he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them a passing
+puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softly
+down again without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as if a
+million invisible causes had combined just to produce that single
+visible effect. _Other_ life pulsed about them--and was gone.
+
+Défago turned abruptly; the livid hue of his face had turned to a dirty
+grey.
+
+"I never said I heered--or smelt--nuthin'," he said slowly and
+emphatically, in an oddly altered voice that conveyed somehow a touch of
+defiance. "I was only--takin' a look round--so to speak. It's always a
+mistake to be too previous with yer questions." Then he added suddenly
+with obvious effort, in his more natural voice, "Have you got the
+matches, Boss Simpson?" and proceeded to light the pipe he had half
+filled just before he began to sing.
+
+Without speaking another word they sat down again by the fire. Défago
+changing his side so that he could face the direction the wind came
+from. For even a tenderfoot could tell that. Défago changed his position
+in order to hear and smell--all there was to be heard and smelt. And,
+since he now faced the lake with his back to the trees it was evidently
+nothing in the forest that had sent so strange and sudden a warning to
+his marvelously trained nerves.
+
+"Guess now I don't feel like singing any," he explained presently of his
+own accord. "That song kinder brings back memories that's troublesome to
+me; I never oughter've begun it. It sets me on t' imagining things,
+see?"
+
+Clearly the man was still fighting with some profoundly moving emotion.
+He wished to excuse himself in the eyes of the other. But the
+explanation, in that it was only a part of the truth, was a lie, and he
+knew perfectly well that Simpson was not deceived by it. For nothing
+could explain away the livid terror that had dropped over his face while
+he stood there sniffing the air. And nothing--no amount of blazing fire,
+or chatting on ordinary subjects--could make that camp exactly as it had
+been before. The shadow of an unknown horror, naked if unguessed, that
+had flashed for an instant in the face and gestures of the guide, had
+also communicated itself, vaguely and therefore more potently, to his
+companion. The guide's visible efforts to dissemble the truth only made
+things worse. Moreover, to add to the younger man's uneasiness, was the
+difficulty, nay, the impossibility he felt of asking questions, and also
+his complete ignorance as to the cause ...Indians, wild animals, forest
+fires--all these, he knew, were wholly out of the question. His
+imagination searched vigorously, but in vain....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet, somehow or other, after another long spell of smoking, talking and
+roasting themselves before the great fire, the shadow that had so
+suddenly invaded their peaceful camp began to shift. Perhaps Défago's
+efforts, or the return of his quiet and normal attitude accomplished
+this; perhaps Simpson himself had exaggerated the affair out of all
+proportion to the truth; or possibly the vigorous air of the wilderness
+brought its own powers of healing. Whatever the cause, the feeling of
+immediate horror seemed to have passed away as mysteriously as it had
+come, for nothing occurred to feed it. Simpson began to feel that he had
+permitted himself the unreasoning terror of a child. He put it down
+partly to a certain subconscious excitement that this wild and immense
+scenery generated in his blood, partly to the spell of solitude, and
+partly to overfatigue. That pallor in the guide's face was, of course,
+uncommonly hard to explain, yet it _might_ have been due in some way to
+an effect of firelight, or his own imagination ...He gave it the benefit
+of the doubt; he was Scotch.
+
+When a somewhat unordinary emotion has disappeared, the mind always
+finds a dozen ways of explaining away its causes ...Simpson lit a last
+pipe and tried to laugh to himself. On getting home to Scotland it would
+make quite a good story. He did not realize that this laughter was a
+sign that terror still lurked in the recesses of his soul--that, in
+fact, it was merely one of the conventional signs by which a man,
+seriously alarmed, tries to persuade himself that he is _not_ so.
+
+Défago, however, heard that low laughter and looked up with surprise on
+his face. The two men stood, side by side, kicking the embers about
+before going to bed. It was ten o'clock--a late hour for hunters to be
+still awake.
+
+"What's ticklin' yer?" he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely.
+
+"I--I was thinking of our little toy woods at home, just at that
+moment," stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated his
+mind, and startled by the question, "and comparing them to--to all
+this," and he swept his arm round to indicate the Bush.
+
+A pause followed in which neither of them said anything.
+
+"All the same I wouldn't laugh about it, if I was you," Défago added,
+looking over Simpson's shoulder into the shadows. "There's places in
+there nobody won't never see into--nobody knows what lives in there
+either."
+
+"Too big--too far off?" The suggestion in the guide's manner was immense
+and horrible.
+
+Défago nodded. The expression on his face was dark. He, too, felt
+uneasy. The younger man understood that in a _hinterland_ of this size
+there might well be depths of wood that would never in the life of the
+world be known or trodden. The thought was not exactly the sort he
+welcomed. In a loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time for
+bed. But the guide lingered, tinkering with the fire, arranging the
+stones needlessly, doing a dozen things that did not really need doing.
+Evidently there was something he wanted to say, yet found it difficult
+to "get at."
+
+"Say, you, Boss Simpson," he began suddenly, as the last shower of
+sparks went up into the air, "you don't--smell nothing, do you--nothing
+pertickler, I mean?" The commonplace question, Simpson realized, veiled
+a dreadfully serious thought in his mind. A shiver ran down his back.
+
+"Nothing but burning wood," he replied firmly, kicking again at the
+embers. The sound of his own foot made him start.
+
+"And all the evenin' you ain't smelt--nothing?" persisted the guide,
+peering at him through the gloom; "nothing extrordiny, and different to
+anything else you ever smelt before?"
+
+"No, no, man; nothing at all!" he replied aggressively, half angrily.
+
+Défago's face cleared. "That's good!" he exclaimed with evident relief.
+"That's good to hear."
+
+"Have _you?_" asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted the
+question.
+
+The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He shook his head. "I guess
+not," he said, though without overwhelming conviction. "It must've been
+just that song of mine that did it. It's the song they sing in lumber
+camps and godforsaken places like that, when they're skeered the
+Wendigo's somewhere around, doin' a bit of swift traveling.--"
+
+"And what's the Wendigo, pray?" Simpson asked quickly, irritated because
+again he could not prevent that sudden shiver of the nerves. He knew
+that he was close upon the man's terror and the cause of it. Yet a
+rushing passionate curiosity overcame his better judgment, and his fear.
+
+Défago turned swiftly and looked at him as though he were suddenly about
+to shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open. Yet all he said,
+or whispered rather, for his voice sank very low, was: "It's
+nuthin'--nuthin' but what those lousy fellers believe when they've bin
+hittin' the bottle too long--a sort of great animal that lives up
+yonder," he jerked his head northwards, "quick as lightning in its
+tracks, an' bigger'n anything else in the Bush, an' ain't supposed to be
+very good to look at--that's all!"
+
+"A backwoods superstition--" began Simpson, moving hastily toward the
+tent in order to shake off the hand of the guide that clutched his arm.
+"Come, come, hurry up for God's sake, and get the lantern going! It's
+time we were in bed and asleep if we're going to be up with the sun
+tomorrow...."
+
+The guide was close on his heels. "I'm coming," he answered out of the
+darkness, "I'm coming." And after a slight delay he appeared with the
+lantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. The
+shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so,
+and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole
+tent trembled as though a gust of wind struck it.
+
+The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft balsam
+boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside, all was warm and cozy, but outside
+the world of crowding trees pressed close about them, marshalling their
+million shadows, and smothering the little tent that stood there like a
+wee white shell facing the ocean of tremendous forest.
+
+Between the two lonely figures within, however, there pressed another
+shadow that was _not_ a shadow from the night. It was the Shadow cast by
+the strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped suddenly upon
+Défago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson, as he lay there,
+watching the darkness through the open flap of the tent, ready to plunge
+into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that unique and profound
+stillness of a primeval forest when no wind stirs ... and when the night
+has weight and substance that enters into the soul to bind a veil about
+it.... Then sleep took him....
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Thus, it seemed to him, at least. Yet it was true that the lap of the
+water, just beyond the tent door, still beat time with his lessening
+pulses when he realized that he was lying with his eyes open and that
+another sound had recently introduced itself with cunning softness
+between the splash and murmur of the little waves.
+
+And, long before he understood what this sound was, it had stirred in
+him the centers of pity and alarm. He listened intently, though at first
+in vain, for the running blood beat all its drums too noisily in his
+ears. Did it come, he wondered, from the lake, or from the woods?...
+
+Then, suddenly, with a rush and a flutter of the heart, he knew that it
+was close beside him in the tent; and, when he turned over for a better
+hearing, it focused itself unmistakably not two feet away. It was a
+sound of weeping; Défago upon his bed of branches was sobbing in the
+darkness as though his heart would break, the blankets evidently stuffed
+against his mouth to stifle it.
+
+And his first feeling, before he could think or reflect, was the rush of
+a poignant and searching tenderness. This intimate, human sound, heard
+amid the desolation about them, woke pity. It was so incongruous, so
+pitifully incongruous--and so vain! Tears--in this vast and cruel
+wilderness: of what avail? He thought of a little child crying in
+mid-Atlantic.... Then, of course, with fuller realization, and the
+memory of what had gone before, came the descent of the terror upon him,
+and his blood ran cold.
+
+"Défago," he whispered quickly, "what's the matter?" He tried to make
+his voice very gentle. "Are you in pain--unhappy--?" There was no reply,
+but the sounds ceased abruptly. He stretched his hand out and touched
+him. The body did not stir.
+
+"Are you awake?" for it occurred to him that the man was crying in his
+sleep. "Are you cold?" He noticed that his feet, which were uncovered,
+projected beyond the mouth of the tent. He spread an extra fold of his
+own blankets over them. The guide had slipped down in his bed, and the
+branches seemed to have been dragged with him. He was afraid to pull the
+body back again, for fear of waking him.
+
+One or two tentative questions he ventured softly, but though he waited
+for several minutes there came no reply, nor any sign of movement.
+Presently he heard his regular and quiet breathing, and putting his hand
+again gently on the breast, felt the steady rise and fall beneath.
+
+"Let me know if anything's wrong," he whispered, "or if I can do
+anything. Wake me at once if you feel--queer."
+
+He hardly knew what to say. He lay down again, thinking and wondering
+what it all meant. Défago, of course, had been crying in his sleep. Some
+dream or other had afflicted him. Yet never in his life would he forget
+that pitiful sound of sobbing, and the feeling that the whole awful
+wilderness of woods listened....
+
+His own mind busied itself for a long time with the recent events, of
+which _this_ took its mysterious place as one, and though his reason
+successfully argued away all unwelcome suggestions, a sensation of
+uneasiness remained, resisting ejection, very deep-seated--peculiar
+beyond ordinary.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+But sleep, in the long run, proves greater than all emotions. His
+thoughts soon wandered again; he lay there, warm as toast, exceedingly
+weary; the night soothed and comforted, blunting the edges of memory and
+alarm. Half an hour later he was oblivious of everything in the outer
+world about him.
+
+Yet sleep, in this case, was his great enemy, concealing all approaches,
+smothering the warning of his nerves.
+
+As, sometimes, in a nightmare events crowd upon each other's heels with
+a conviction of dreadfulest reality, yet some inconsistent detail
+accuses the whole display of incompleteness and disguise, so the events
+that now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the mind
+somehow that the detail which could explain them had been overlooked in
+the confusion, and that therefore they were but partly true, the rest
+delusion. At the back of the sleeper's mind something remains awake,
+ready to let slip the judgment. "All this is not _quite_ real; when you
+wake up you'll understand."
+
+And thus, in a way, it was with Simpson. The events, not wholly
+inexplicable or incredible in themselves, yet remain for the man who saw
+and heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold horror, because the
+little piece that might have made the puzzle clear lay concealed or
+overlooked.
+
+So far as he can recall, it was a violent movement, running downwards
+through the tent towards the door, that first woke him and made him
+aware that his companion was sitting bolt upright beside him--quivering.
+Hours must have passed, for it was the pale gleam of the dawn that
+revealed his outline against the canvas. This time the man was not
+crying; he was quaking like a leaf; the trembling he felt plainly
+through the blankets down the entire length of his own body. Défago had
+huddled down against him for protection, shrinking away from something
+that apparently concealed itself near the door flaps of the little tent.
+
+Simpson thereupon called out in a loud voice some question or other--in
+the first bewilderment of waking he does not remember exactly what--and
+the man made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare lay
+horribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult. At first,
+indeed, he was not sure where he was--whether in one of the earlier
+camps, or at home in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense of confusion was
+very troubling.
+
+And next--almost simultaneous with his waking, it seemed--the profound
+stillness of the dawn outside was shattered by a most uncommon sound. It
+came without warning, or audible approach; and it was unspeakably
+dreadful. It was a voice, Simpson declares, possibly a human voice;
+hoarse yet plaintive--a soft, roaring voice close outside the tent,
+overhead rather than upon the ground, of immense volume, while in some
+strange way most penetratingly and seductively sweet. It rang out, too,
+in three separate and distinct notes, or cries, that bore in some odd
+fashion a resemblance, farfetched yet recognizable, to the name of the
+guide: "_Dé-fa-go!_"
+
+The student admits he is unable to describe it quite intelligently, for
+it was unlike any sound he had ever heard in his life, and combined a
+blending of such contrary qualities. "A sort of windy, crying voice," he
+calls it, "as of something lonely and untamed, wild and of abominable
+power...."
+
+And, even before it ceased, dropping back into the great gulfs of
+silence, the guide beside him had sprung to his feet with an answering
+though unintelligible cry. He blundered against the tent pole with
+violence, shaking the whole structure, spreading his arms out
+frantically for more room, and kicking his legs impetuously free of the
+clinging blankets. For a second, perhaps two, he stood upright by the
+door, his outline dark against the pallor of the dawn; then, with a
+furious, rushing speed, before his companion could move a hand to stop
+him, he shot with a plunge through the flaps of canvas--and was gone.
+And as he went--so astonishingly fast that the voice could actually be
+heard dying in the distance--he called aloud in tones of anguished
+terror that at the same time held something strangely like the frenzied
+exultation of delight--
+
+"Oh! oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire! Oh! oh! This height
+and fiery speed!"
+
+And then the distance quickly buried it, and the deep silence of very
+early morning descended upon the forest as before.
+
+It had all come about with such rapidity that, but for the evidence of
+the empty bed beside him, Simpson could almost have believed it to have
+been the memory of a nightmare carried over from sleep. He still felt
+the warm pressure of that vanished body against his side; there lay the
+twisted blankets in a heap; the very tent yet trembled with the
+vehemence of the impetuous departure. The strange words rang in his
+ears, as though he still heard them in the distance--wild language of a
+suddenly stricken mind. Moreover, it was not only the senses of sight
+and hearing that reported uncommon things to his brain, for even while
+the man cried and ran, he had become aware that a strange perfume, faint
+yet pungent, pervaded the interior of the tent. And it was at this
+point, it seems, brought to himself by the consciousness that his
+nostrils were taking this distressing odor down into his throat, that he
+found his courage, sprang quickly to his feet--and went out.
+
+The grey light of dawn that dropped, cold and glimmering, between the
+trees revealed the scene tolerably well. There stood the tent behind
+him, soaked with dew; the dark ashes of the fire, still warm; the lake,
+white beneath a coating of mist, the islands rising darkly out of it
+like objects packed in wool; and patches of snow beyond among the
+clearer spaces of the Bush--everything cold, still, waiting for the sun.
+But nowhere a sign of the vanished guide--still, doubtless, flying at
+frantic speed through the frozen woods. There was not even the sound of
+disappearing footsteps, nor the echoes of the dying voice. He had
+gone--utterly.
+
+There was nothing; nothing but the sense of his recent presence, so
+strongly left behind about the camp; _and_--this penetrating,
+all-pervading odor.
+
+And even this was now rapidly disappearing in its turn. In spite of his
+exceeding mental perturbation, Simpson struggled hard to detect its
+nature, and define it, but the ascertaining of an elusive scent, not
+recognized subconsciously and at once, is a very subtle operation of
+the mind. And he failed. It was gone before he could properly seize or
+name it. Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult,
+for it was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid rather, not unlike the odor
+of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not wholly unpleasing, with
+something almost sweet in it that reminded him of the scent of decaying
+garden leaves, earth, and the myriad, nameless perfumes that make up the
+odor of a big forest. Yet the "odor of lions" is the phrase with which
+he usually sums it all up.
+
+Then--it was wholly gone, and he found himself standing by the ashes of
+the fire in a state of amazement and stupid terror that left him the
+helpless prey of anything that chose to happen. Had a muskrat poked its
+pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled in that instant down
+the bark of a tree, he would most likely have collapsed without more ado
+and fainted. For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a
+great Outer Horror ... and his scattered powers had not as yet had time
+to collect themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-control.
+
+Nothing did happen, however. A great kiss of wind ran softly through the
+awakening forest, and a few maple leaves here and there rustled
+tremblingly to earth. The sky seemed to grow suddenly much lighter.
+Simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek and uncovered head; realized
+that he was shivering with the cold; and, making a great effort,
+realized next that he was alone in the Bush--_and_ that he was called
+upon to take immediate steps to find and succor his vanished companion.
+
+Make an effort, accordingly, he did, though an ill-calculated and futile
+one. With that wilderness of trees about him, the sheet of water cutting
+him off behind, and the horror of that wild cry in his blood, he did
+what any other inexperienced man would have done in similar
+bewilderment: he ran about, without any sense of direction, like a
+frantic child, and called loudly without ceasing the name of the guide:
+
+"Défago! Défago! Défago!" he yelled, and the trees gave him back the
+name as often as he shouted, only a little softened--"Défago! Défago!
+Défago!"
+
+He followed the trail that lay a short distance across the patches of
+snow, and then lost it again where the trees grew too thickly for snow
+to lie. He shouted till he was hoarse, and till the sound of his own
+voice in all that unanswering and listening world began to frighten him.
+His confusion increased in direct ratio to the violence of his efforts.
+His distress became formidably acute, till at length his exertions
+defeated their own object, and from sheer exhaustion he headed back to
+the camp again. It remains a wonder that he ever found his way. It was
+with great difficulty, and only after numberless false clues, that he at
+last saw the white tent between the trees, and so reached safety.
+
+Exhaustion then applied its own remedy, and he grew calmer. He made the
+fire and breakfasted. Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense and
+judgment into him again, and he realized that he had been behaving like
+a boy. He now made another, and more successful attempt to face the
+situation collectedly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to his
+assistance, he decided that he must first make as thorough a search as
+possible, failing success in which, he must find his way into the home
+camp as best he could and bring help.
+
+And this was what he did. Taking food, matches and rifle with him, and a
+small axe to blaze the trees against his return journey, he set forth.
+It was eight o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the tops of
+the trees in a sky without clouds. Pinned to a stake by the fire he left
+a note in case Défago returned while he was away.
+
+This time, according to a careful plan, he took a new direction,
+intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or later cut into
+indications of the guide's trail; and, before he had gone a quarter of a
+mile he came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow, and beside
+it the light and smaller tracks of what were beyond question human
+feet--the feet of Défago. The relief he at once experienced was natural,
+though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple
+explanation of the whole matter: these big marks had surely been left by
+a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, and
+uttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was
+apparent. Défago, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the
+point of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the wind
+hours before. His excitement and disappearance were due, of course,
+to--to his--
+
+Then the impossible explanation at which he grasped faded, as common
+sense showed him mercilessly that none of this was true. No guide, much
+less a guide like Défago, could have acted in so irrational a way, going
+off even without his rifle ...! The whole affair demanded a far more
+complicated elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all--the
+cry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face of horror when his
+nostrils first caught the new odor; that muffled sobbing in the
+darkness, and--for this, too, now came back to him dimly--the man's
+original aversion for this particular bit of country....
+
+Besides, now that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks of
+a bull moose at all! Hank had explained to him the outline of a bull's
+hoofs, of a cow's or calf's, too, for that matter; he had drawn them
+clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were wholly different. They
+were big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs.
+He wondered for a moment whether bear tracks were like that. There was
+no other animal he could think of, for caribou did not come so far
+south at this season, and, even if they did, would leave hoof marks.
+
+They were ominous signs--these mysterious writings left in the snow by
+the unknown creature that had lured a human being away from safety--and
+when he coupled them in his imagination with that haunting sound that
+broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind,
+distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the _threatening_ aspect of
+it all. And, stooping down to examine the marks more closely, he caught
+a faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odor that made him instantly
+straighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.
+
+Then his memory played him another evil trick. He suddenly recalled
+those uncovered feet projecting beyond the edge of the tent, and the
+body's appearance of having been dragged towards the opening; the man's
+shrinking from something by the door when he woke later. The details now
+beat against his trembling mind with concerted attack. They seemed to
+gather in those deep spaces of the silent forest about him, where the
+host of trees stood waiting, listening, watching to see what he would
+do. The woods were closing round him.
+
+With the persistence of true pluck, however, Simpson went forward,
+following the tracks as best he could, smothering these ugly emotions
+that sought to weaken his will. He blazed innumerable trees as he went,
+ever fearful of being unable to find the way back, and calling aloud at
+intervals of a few seconds the name of the guide. The dull tapping of
+the axe upon the massive trunks, and the unnatural accents of his own
+voice became at length sounds that he even dreaded to make, dreaded to
+hear. For they drew attention without ceasing to his presence and exact
+whereabouts, and if it were really the case that something was hunting
+himself down in the same way that he was hunting down another--
+
+With a strong effort, he crushed the thought out the instant it rose.
+It was the beginning, he realized, of a bewilderment utterly diabolical
+in kind that would speedily destroy him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Although the snow was not continuous, lying merely in shallow flurries
+over the more open spaces, he found no difficulty in following the
+tracks for the first few miles. They went straight as a ruled line
+wherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to increase in
+length, till it finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutely
+impossible for any ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps
+they became. One of these he measured, and though he knew that "stretch"
+of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was at a complete loss to
+understand why he found no signs on the snow between the extreme points.
+But what perplexed him even more, making him feel his vision had gone
+utterly awry, was that Défago's stride increased in the same manner, and
+finally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as if the great
+beast had lifted him with it and carried him across these astonishing
+intervals. Simpson, who was much longer in the limb, found that he could
+not compass even half the stretch by taking a running jump.
+
+And the sight of these huge tracks, running side by side, silent
+evidence of a dreadful journey in which terror or madness had urged to
+impossible results, was profoundly moving. It shocked him in the secret
+depths of his soul. It was the most horrible thing his eyes had ever
+looked upon. He began to follow them mechanically, absentmindedly
+almost, ever peering over his shoulder to see if he, too, were being
+followed by something with a gigantic tread.... And soon it came about
+that he no longer quite realized what it was they signified--these
+impressions left upon the snow by something nameless and untamed, always
+accompanied by the footmarks of the little French Canadian, his guide,
+his comrade, the man who had shared his tent a few hours before,
+chatting, laughing, even singing by his side....
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+For a man of his years and inexperience, only a canny Scot, perhaps,
+grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have preserved
+even that measure of balance that this youth somehow or other did manage
+to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two things he
+presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him
+headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of only
+making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his
+heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way
+to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change,
+so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some
+undecipherable manner--appalling.
+
+It was in the bigger tracks he first noticed this, and for a long time
+he could not quite believe his eyes. Was it the blown leaves that
+produced odd effects of light and shade, or that the dry snow, drifting
+like finely ground rice about the edges, cast shadows and high lights?
+Or was it actually the fact that the great marks had become faintly
+colored? For round about the deep, plunging holes of the animal there
+now appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more like an effect of
+light than of anything that dyed the substance of the snow itself. Every
+mark had it, and had it increasingly--this indistinct fiery tinge that
+painted a new touch of ghastliness into the picture.
+
+But when, wholly unable to explain or to credit it, he turned his
+attention to the other tracks to discover if they, too, bore similar
+witness, he noticed that these had meanwhile undergone a change that was
+infinitely worse, and charged with far more horrible suggestion. For, in
+the last hundred yards or so, he saw that they had grown gradually into
+the semblance of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the change had come
+about, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see where the change first
+began. The result, however, was beyond question. Smaller, neater, more
+cleanly modeled, they formed now an exact and careful duplicate of the
+larger tracks beside them. The feet that produced them had, therefore,
+also changed. And something in his mind reared up with loathing and with
+terror as he saw it.
+
+Simpson, for the first time, hesitated; then, ashamed of his alarm and
+indecision, took a few hurried steps ahead; the next instant stopped
+dead in his tracks. Immediately in front of him all signs of the trail
+ceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for a hundred
+yards and more, he searched in vain for the least indication of their
+continuance. There was--nothing.
+
+The trees were very thick just there, big trees all of them, spruce,
+cedar, hemlock; there was no underbrush. He stood, looking about him,
+all distraught; bereft of any power of judgment. Then he set to work to
+search again, and again, and yet again, but always with the same result:
+_nothing_. The feet that printed the surface of the snow thus far had
+now, apparently, left the ground!
+
+And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip of
+terror laid its most nicely calculated lash about his heart. It dropped
+with deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving
+him. He had been secretly dreading all the time that it would come--and
+come it did.
+
+Far overhead, muted by great height and distance, strangely thinned and
+wailing, he heard the crying voice of Défago, the guide.
+
+The sound dropped upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an effect
+of dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stood
+motionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, then
+staggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganized
+hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the
+most shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so that
+his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden
+draught.
+
+"Oh! oh! This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire ...!" ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this
+voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called--then silence through all
+the listening wilderness of trees.
+
+And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himself
+running wildly to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots and
+boulders, and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after
+the Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion with which
+experience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half-deranged,
+picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and
+heart and soul. For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him in
+that far voice--the Power of untamed Distance--the Enticement of the
+Desolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the pains of
+someone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust and
+travail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of Défago, eternally
+hunted, driven and pursued across the skiey vastness of those ancient
+forests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his thoughts ...
+
+It seemed ages before he could find anything in the chaos of his
+disorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for a
+moment, and think ...
+
+The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling brought no response;
+the inscrutable forces of the Wild had summoned their victim beyond
+recall--and held him fast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet he searched and called, it seems, for hours afterwards, for it was
+late in the afternoon when at length he decided to abandon a useless
+pursuit and return to his camp on the shores of Fifty Island Water. Even
+then he went with reluctance, that crying voice still echoing in his
+ears. With difficulty he found his rifle and the homeward trail. The
+concentration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees, and a biting
+hunger that gnawed, helped to keep his mind steady. Otherwise, he
+admits, the temporary aberration he had suffered might have been
+prolonged to the point of positive disaster. Gradually the ballast
+shifted back again, and he regained something that approached his normal
+equilibrium.
+
+But for all that the journey through the gathering dusk was miserably
+haunted. He heard innumerable following footsteps; voices that laughed
+and whispered; and saw figures crouching behind trees and boulders,
+making signs to one another for a concerted attack the moment he had
+passed. The creeping murmur of the wind made him start and listen. He
+went stealthily, trying to hide where possible, and making as little
+sound as he could. The shadows of the woods, hitherto protective or
+covering merely, had now become menacing, challenging; and the pageantry
+in his frightened mind masked a host of possibilities that were all the
+more ominous for being obscure. The presentiment of a nameless doom
+lurked ill-concealed behind every detail of what had happened.
+
+It was really admirable how he emerged victor in the end; men of riper
+powers and experience might have come through the ordeal with less
+success. He had himself tolerably well in hand, all things considered,
+and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of the
+question and traveling an unknown trail in the darkness equally
+impracticable, he sat up the whole of that night, rifle in hand, before
+a fire he never for a single moment allowed to die down. The severity of
+the haunted vigil marked his soul for life; but it was successfully
+accomplished; and with the very first signs of dawn he set forth upon
+the long return journey to the home camp to get help. As before, he left
+a written note to explain his absence, and to indicate where he had left
+a plentiful _cache_ of food and matches--though he had no expectation
+that any human hands would find them!
+
+How Simpson found his way alone by the lake and forest might well make a
+story in itself, for to hear him tell it is to _know_ the passionate
+loneliness of soul that a man can feel when the Wilderness holds him in
+the hollow of its illimitable hand--and laughs. It is also to admire his
+indomitable pluck.
+
+He claims no skill, declaring that he followed the almost invisible
+trail mechanically, and without thinking. And this, doubtless, is the
+truth. He relied upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which is
+instinct. Perhaps, too, some sense of orientation, known to animals and
+primitive men, may have helped as well, for through all that tangled
+region he succeeded in reaching the exact spot where Défago had hidden
+the canoe nearly three days before with the remark, "Strike doo west
+across the lake into the sun to find the camp."
+
+There was not much sun left to guide him, but he used his compass to the
+best of his ability, embarking in the frail craft for the last twelve
+miles of his journey with a sensation of immense relief that the forest
+was at last behind him. And, fortunately, the water was calm; he took
+his line across the center of the lake instead of coasting round the
+shores for another twenty miles. Fortunately, too, the other hunters
+were back. The light of their fires furnished a steering point without
+which he might have searched all night long for the actual position of
+the camp.
+
+It was close upon midnight all the same when his canoe grated on the
+sandy cove, and Hank, Punk and his uncle, disturbed in their sleep by
+his cries, ran quickly down and helped a very exhausted and broken
+specimen of Scotch humanity over the rocks toward a dying fire.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The sudden entrance of his prosaic uncle into this world of wizardry
+and horror that had haunted him without interruption now for two days
+and two nights, had the immediate effect of giving to the affair an
+entirely new aspect. The sound of that crisp "Hulloa, my boy! And what's
+up _now_?" and the grasp of that dry and vigorous hand introduced
+another standard of judgment. A revulsion of feeling washed through him.
+He realized that he had let himself "go" rather badly. He even felt
+vaguely ashamed of himself. The native hard-headedness of his race
+reclaimed him.
+
+And this doubtless explains why he found it so hard to tell that group
+round the fire--everything. He told enough, however, for the immediate
+decision to be arrived at that a relief party must start at the earliest
+possible moment, and that Simpson, in order to guide it capably, must
+first have food and, above all, sleep. Dr. Cathcart observing the lad's
+condition more shrewdly than his patient knew, gave him a very slight
+injection of morphine. For six hours he slept like the dead.
+
+From the description carefully written out afterwards by this student of
+divinity, it appears that the account he gave to the astonished group
+omitted sundry vital and important details. He declares that, with his
+uncle's wholesome, matter-of-fact countenance staring him in the face,
+he simply had not the courage to mention them. Thus, all the search
+party gathered, it would seem, was that Défago had suffered in the night
+an acute and inexplicable attack of mania, had imagined himself "called"
+by someone or something, and had plunged into the bush after it without
+food or rifle, where he must die a horrible and lingering death by cold
+and starvation unless he could be found and rescued in time. "In time,"
+moreover, meant _at once_.
+
+In the course of the following day, however--they were off by seven,
+leaving Punk in charge with instructions to have food and fire always
+ready--Simpson found it possible to tell his uncle a good deal more of
+the story's true inwardness, without divining that it was drawn out of
+him as a matter of fact by a very subtle form of cross examination. By
+the time they reached the beginning of the trail, where the canoe was
+laid up against the return journey, he had mentioned how Défago spoke
+vaguely of "something he called a 'Wendigo'"; how he cried in his sleep;
+how he imagined an unusual scent about the camp; and had betrayed other
+symptoms of mental excitement. He also admitted the bewildering effect
+of "that extraordinary odor" upon himself, "pungent and acrid like the
+odor of lions." And by the time they were within an easy hour of Fifty
+Island Water he had let slip the further fact--a foolish avowal of his
+own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards--that he had heard the
+vanished guide call "for help." He omitted the singular phrases used,
+for he simply could not bring himself to repeat the preposterous
+language. Also, while describing how the man's footsteps in the snow had
+gradually assumed an exact miniature likeness of the animal's plunging
+tracks, he left out the fact that they measured a _wholly_ incredible
+distance. It seemed a question, nicely balanced between individual pride
+and honesty, what he should reveal and what suppress. He mentioned the
+fiery tinge in the snow, for instance, yet shrank from telling that body
+and bed had been partly dragged out of the tent....
+
+With the net result that Dr. Cathcart, adroit psychologist that he
+fancied himself to be, had assured him clearly enough exactly where his
+mind, influenced by loneliness, bewilderment and terror, had yielded to
+the strain and invited delusion. While praising his conduct, he managed
+at the same time to point out where, when, and how his mind had gone
+astray. He made his nephew think himself finer than he was by judicious
+praise, yet more foolish than he was by minimizing the value of the
+evidence. Like many another materialist, that is, he lied cleverly on
+the basis of insufficient knowledge, _because_ the knowledge supplied
+seemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible.
+
+"The spell of these terrible solitudes," he said, "cannot leave any mind
+untouched, any mind, that is, possessed of the higher imaginative
+qualities. It has worked upon yours exactly as it worked upon my own
+when I was your age. The animal that haunted your little camp was
+undoubtedly a moose, for the 'belling' of a moose may have, sometimes, a
+very peculiar quality of sound. The colored appearance of the big tracks
+was obviously a defect of vision in your own eyes produced by
+excitement. The size and stretch of the tracks we shall prove when we
+come to them. But the hallucination of an audible voice, of course, is
+one of the commonest forms of delusion due to mental excitement--an
+excitement, my dear boy, perfectly excusable, and, let me add,
+wonderfully controlled by you under the circumstances. For the rest, I
+am bound to say, you have acted with a splendid courage, for the terror
+of feeling oneself lost in this wilderness is nothing short of awful,
+and, had I been in your place, I don't for a moment believe I could have
+behaved with one quarter of your wisdom and decision. The only thing I
+find it uncommonly difficult to explain is--that--damned odor."
+
+"It made me feel sick, I assure you," declared his nephew, "positively
+dizzy!" His uncle's attitude of calm omniscience, merely because he knew
+more psychological formulae, made him slightly defiant. It was so easy
+to be wise in the explanation of an experience one has not personally
+witnessed. "A kind of desolate and terrible odor is the only way I can
+describe it," he concluded, glancing at the features of the quiet,
+unemotional man beside him.
+
+"I can only marvel," was the reply, "that under the circumstances it did
+not seem to you even worse." The dry words, Simpson knew, hovered
+between the truth, and his uncle's interpretation of "the truth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so at last they came to the little camp and found the tent still
+standing, the remains of the fire, and the piece of paper pinned to a
+stake beside it--untouched. The cache, poorly contrived by inexperienced
+hands, however, had been discovered and opened--by musk rats, mink and
+squirrel. The matches lay scattered about the opening, but the food had
+been taken to the last crumb.
+
+"Well, fellers, he ain't here," exclaimed Hank loudly after his fashion.
+"And that's as sartain as the coal supply down below! But whar he's got
+to by this time is 'bout as unsartain as the trade in crowns in t'other
+place." The presence of a divinity student was no barrier to his
+language at such a time, though for the reader's sake it may be severely
+edited. "I propose," he added, "that we start out at once an' hunt for'm
+like hell!"
+
+The gloom of Défago's probable fate oppressed the whole party with a
+sense of dreadful gravity the moment they saw the familiar signs of
+recent occupancy. Especially the tent, with the bed of balsam branches
+still smoothed and flattened by the pressure of his body, seemed to
+bring his presence near to them. Simpson, feeling vaguely as if his
+world were somehow at stake, went about explaining particulars in a
+hushed tone. He was much calmer now, though overwearied with the strain
+of his many journeys. His uncle's method of explaining--"explaining
+away," rather--the details still fresh in his haunted memory helped,
+too, to put ice upon his emotions.
+
+"And that's the direction he ran off in," he said to his two companions,
+pointing in the direction where the guide had vanished that morning in
+the grey dawn. "Straight down there he ran like a deer, in between the
+birch and the hemlock...."
+
+Hank and Dr. Cathcart exchanged glances.
+
+"And it was about two miles down there, in a straight line," continued
+the other, speaking with something of the former terror in his voice,
+"that I followed his trail to the place where--it stopped--dead!"
+
+"And where you heered him callin' an' caught the stench, an' all the
+rest of the wicked entertainment," cried Hank, with a volubility that
+betrayed his keen distress.
+
+"And where your excitement overcame you to the point of producing
+illusions," added Dr. Cathcart under his breath, yet not so low that his
+nephew did not hear it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was early in the afternoon, for they had traveled quickly, and there
+were still a good two hours of daylight left. Dr. Cathcart and Hank lost
+no time in beginning the search, but Simpson was too exhausted to
+accompany them. They would follow the blazed marks on the trees, and
+where possible, his footsteps. Meanwhile the best thing he could do was
+to keep a good fire going, and rest.
+
+But after something like three hours' search, the darkness already down,
+the two men returned to camp with nothing to report. Fresh snow had
+covered all signs, and though they had followed the blazed trees to the
+spot where Simpson had turned back, they had not discovered the smallest
+indication of a human being--or for that matter, of an animal. There
+were no fresh tracks of any kind; the snow lay undisturbed.
+
+It was difficult to know what was best to do, though in reality there
+was nothing more they _could_ do. They might stay and search for weeks
+without much chance of success. The fresh snow destroyed their only
+hope, and they gathered round the fire for supper, a gloomy and
+despondent party. The facts, indeed, were sad enough, for Défago had a
+wife at Rat Portage, and his earnings were the family's sole means of
+support.
+
+Now that the whole truth in all its ugliness was out, it seemed useless
+to deal in further disguise or pretense. They talked openly of the facts
+and probabilities. It was not the first time, even in the experience of
+Dr. Cathcart, that a man had yielded to the singular seduction of the
+Solitudes and gone out of his mind; Défago, moreover, was predisposed to
+something of the sort, for he already had a touch of melancholia in his
+blood, and his fiber was weakened by bouts of drinking that often lasted
+for weeks at a time. Something on this trip--one might never know
+precisely what--had sufficed to push him over the line, that was all.
+And he had gone, gone off into the great wilderness of trees and lakes
+to die by starvation and exhaustion. The chances against his finding
+camp again were overwhelming; the delirium that was upon him would also
+doubtless have increased, and it was quite likely he might do violence
+to himself and so hasten his cruel fate. Even while they talked, indeed,
+the end had probably come. On the suggestion of Hank, his old pal,
+however, they proposed to wait a little longer and devote the whole of
+the following day, from dawn to darkness, to the most systematic search
+they could devise. They would divide the territory between them. They
+discussed their plan in great detail. All that men could do they would
+do. And, meanwhile, they talked about the particular form in which the
+singular Panic of the Wilderness had made its attack upon the mind of
+the unfortunate guide. Hank, though familiar with the legend in its
+general outline, obviously did not welcome the turn the conversation had
+taken. He contributed little, though that little was illuminating. For
+he admitted that a story ran over all this section of country to the
+effect that several Indians had "seen the Wendigo" along the shores of
+Fifty Island Water in the "fall" of last year, and that this was the
+true reason of Défago's disinclination to hunt there. Hank doubtless
+felt that he had in a sense helped his old pal to death by
+overpersuading him. "When an Indian goes crazy," he explained, talking
+to himself more than to the others, it seemed, "it's always put that
+he's 'seen the Wendigo.' An' pore old Défaygo was superstitious down to
+he very heels ...!"
+
+And then Simpson, feeling the atmosphere more sympathetic, told over
+again the full story of his astonishing tale; he left out no details
+this time; he mentioned his own sensations and gripping fears. He only
+omitted the strange language used.
+
+"But Défago surely had already told you all these details of the Wendigo
+legend, my dear fellow," insisted the doctor. "I mean, he had talked
+about it, and thus put into your mind the ideas which your own
+excitement afterwards developed?"
+
+Whereupon Simpson again repeated the facts. Défago, he declared, had
+barely mentioned the beast. He, Simpson, knew nothing of the story, and,
+so far as he remembered, had never even read about it. Even the word was
+unfamiliar.
+
+Of course he was telling the truth, and Dr. Cathcart was reluctantly
+compelled to admit the singular character of the whole affair. He did
+not do this in words so much as in manner, however. He kept his back
+against a good, stout tree; he poked the fire into a blaze the moment it
+showed signs of dying down; he was quicker than any of them to notice
+the least sound in the night about them--a fish jumping in the lake, a
+twig snapping in the bush, the dropping of occasional fragments of
+frozen snow from the branches overhead where the heat loosened them. His
+voice, too, changed a little in quality, becoming a shade less
+confident, lower also in tone. Fear, to put it plainly, hovered close
+about that little camp, and though all three would have been glad to
+speak of other matters, the only thing they seemed able to discuss was
+this--the source of their fear. They tried other subjects in vain; there
+was nothing to say about them. Hank was the most honest of the group; he
+said next to nothing. He never once, however, turned his back to the
+darkness. His face was always to the forest, and when wood was needed he
+didn't go farther than was necessary to get it.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+A wall of silence wrapped them in, for the snow, though not thick, was
+sufficient to deaden any noise, and the frost held things pretty tight
+besides. No sound but their voices and the soft roar of the flames made
+itself heard. Only, from time to time, something soft as the flutter of
+a pine moth's wings went past them through the air. No one seemed
+anxious to go to bed. The hours slipped towards midnight.
+
+"The legend is picturesque enough," observed the doctor after one of the
+longer pauses, speaking to break it rather than because he had anything
+to say, "for the Wendigo is simply the Call of the Wild personified,
+which some natures hear to their own destruction."
+
+"That's about it," Hank said presently. "An' there's no misunderstandin'
+when you hear it. It calls you by name right 'nough."
+
+Another pause followed. Then Dr. Cathcart came back to the forbidden
+subject with a rush that made the others jump.
+
+"The allegory _is_ significant," he remarked, looking about him into the
+darkness, "for the Voice, they say, resembles all the minor sounds of
+the Bush--wind, falling water, cries of the animals, and so forth. And,
+once the victim hears _that_--he's off for good, of course! His most
+vulnerable points, moreover, are said to be the feet and the eyes; the
+feet, you see, for the lust of wandering, and the eyes for the lust of
+beauty. The poor beggar goes at such a dreadful speed that he bleeds
+beneath the eyes, and his feet burn."
+
+Dr. Cathcart, as he spoke, continued to peer uneasily into the
+surrounding gloom. His voice sank to a hushed tone.
+
+"The Wendigo," he added, "is said to burn his feet--owing to the
+friction, apparently caused by its tremendous velocity--till they drop
+off, and new ones form exactly like its own."
+
+Simpson listened in horrified amazement; but it was the pallor on Hank's
+face that fascinated him most. He would willingly have stopped his ears
+and closed his eyes, had he dared.
+
+"It don't always keep to the ground neither," came in Hank's slow, heavy
+drawl, "for it goes so high that he thinks the stars have set him all
+a-fire. An' it'll take great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an' run along the
+tops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an' then droppin' him
+jest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin'. An' its
+food, of all the muck in the whole Bush is--moss!" And he laughed a
+short, unnatural laugh. "It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo," he added,
+looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. "Moss-eater," he
+repeated, with a string of the most outlandish oaths he could invent.
+
+But Simpson now understood the true purpose of all this talk. What
+these two men, each strong and "experienced" in his own way, dreaded
+more than anything else was--silence. They were talking against time.
+They were also talking against darkness, against the invasion of panic,
+against the admission reflection might bring that they were in an
+enemy's country--against anything, in fact, rather than allow their
+inmost thoughts to assume control. He himself, already initiated by the
+awful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He had
+reached the stage where he was immune. But these two, the scoffing,
+analytical doctor, and the honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sat
+trembling in the depths of his being.
+
+Thus the hours passed; and thus, with lowered voices and a kind of taut
+inner resistance of spirit, this little group of humanity sat in the
+jaws of the wilderness and talked foolishly of the terrible and haunting
+legend. It was an unequal contest, all things considered, for the
+wilderness had already the advantage of first attack--and of a hostage.
+The fate of their comrade hung over them with a steadily increasing
+weight of oppression that finally became insupportable.
+
+It was Hank, after a pause longer than the preceding ones that no one
+seemed able to break, who first let loose all this pent-up emotion in
+very unexpected fashion, by springing suddenly to his feet and letting
+out the most ear-shattering yell imaginable into the night. He could not
+contain himself any longer, it seemed. To make it carry even beyond an
+ordinary cry he interrupted its rhythm by shaking the palm of his hand
+before his mouth.
+
+"That's for Défago," he said, looking down at the other two with a
+queer, defiant laugh, "for it's my belief"--the sandwiched oaths may be
+omitted--"that my ole partner's not far from us at this very minute."
+
+There was a vehemence and recklessness about his performance that made
+Simpson, too, start to his feet in amazement, and betrayed even the
+doctor into letting the pipe slip from between his lips. Hank's face was
+ghastly, but Cathcart's showed a sudden weakness--a loosening of all his
+faculties, as it were. Then a momentary anger blazed into his eyes, and
+he too, though with deliberation born of habitual self-control, got upon
+his feet and faced the excited guide. For this was unpermissible,
+foolish, dangerous, and he meant to stop it in the bud.
+
+What might have happened in the next minute or two one may speculate
+about, yet never definitely know, for in the instant of profound silence
+that followed Hank's roaring voice, and as though in answer to it,
+something went past through the darkness of the sky overhead at terrific
+speed--something of necessity very large, for it displaced much air,
+while down between the trees there fell a faint and windy cry of a human
+voice, calling in tones of indescribable anguish and appeal--
+
+"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire!"
+
+White to the very edge of his shirt, Hank looked stupidly about him like
+a child. Dr. Cathcart uttered some kind of unintelligible cry, turning
+as he did so with an instinctive movement of blind terror towards the
+protection of the tent, then halting in the act as though frozen.
+Simpson, alone of the three, retained his presence of mind a little. His
+own horror was too deep to allow of any immediate reaction. He had heard
+that cry before.
+
+Turning to his stricken companions, he said almost calmly--
+
+"That's exactly the cry I heard--the very words he used!"
+
+Then, lifting his face to the sky, he cried aloud, "Défago, Défago! Come
+down here to us! Come down--!"
+
+And before there was time for anybody to take definite action one way or
+another, there came the sound of something dropping heavily between the
+trees, striking the branches on the way down, and landing with a
+dreadful thud upon the frozen earth below. The crash and thunder of it
+was really terrific.
+
+"That's him, s'help me the good Gawd!" came from Hank in a whispering
+cry half choked, his hand going automatically toward the hunting knife
+in his belt. "And he's coming! He's coming!" he added, with an
+irrational laugh of horror, as the sounds of heavy footsteps crunching
+over the snow became distinctly audible, approaching through the
+blackness towards the circle of light.
+
+And while the steps, with their stumbling motion, moved nearer and
+nearer upon them, the three men stood round that fire, motionless and
+dumb. Dr. Cathcart had the appearance of a man suddenly withered; even
+his eyes did not move. Hank, suffering shockingly, seemed on the verge
+again of violent action; yet did nothing. He, too, was hewn of stone.
+Like stricken children they seemed. The picture was hideous. And,
+meanwhile, their owner still invisible, the footsteps came closer,
+crunching the frozen snow. It was endless--too prolonged to be quite
+real--this measured and pitiless approach. It was accursed.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Then at length the darkness, having thus laboriously conceived, brought
+forth--a figure. It drew forward into the zone of uncertain light where
+fire and shadows mingled, not ten feet away; then halted, staring at
+them fixedly. The same instant it started forward again with the
+spasmodic motion as of a thing moved by wires, and coming up closer to
+them, full into the glare of the fire, they perceived then that--it was
+a man; and apparently that this man was--Défago.
+
+Something like a skin of horror almost perceptibly drew down in that
+moment over every face, and three pairs of eyes shone through it as
+though they saw across the frontiers of normal vision into the Unknown.
+
+Défago advanced, his tread faltering and uncertain; he made his way
+straight up to them as a group first, then turned sharply and peered
+close into the face of Simpson. The sound of a voice issued from his
+lips--
+
+"Here I am, Boss Simpson. I heered someone calling me." It was a faint,
+dried up voice, made wheezy and breathless as by immense exertion. "I'm
+havin' a reg'lar hellfire kind of a trip, I am." And he laughed,
+thrusting his head forward into the other's face.
+
+But that laugh started the machinery of the group of waxwork figures
+with the wax-white skins. Hank immediately sprang forward with a stream
+of oaths so farfetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English at
+all, but thought he had lapsed into Indian or some other lingo. He only
+realized that Hank's presence, thrust thus between them, was
+welcome--uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly and
+leisurely, advanced behind him, heavily stumbling.
+
+Simpson seems hazy as to what was actually said and done in those next
+few seconds, for the eyes of that detestable and blasted visage peering
+at such close quarters into his own utterly bewildered his senses at
+first. He merely stood still. He said nothing. He had not the trained
+will of the older men that forced them into action in defiance of all
+emotional stress. He watched them moving as behind a glass that half
+destroyed their reality; it was dreamlike; perverted. Yet, through the
+torrent of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing his uncle's
+tone of authority--hard and forced--saying several things about food and
+warmth, blankets, whisky and the rest ... and, further, that whiffs of
+that penetrating, unaccustomed odor, vile yet sweetly bewildering,
+assailed his nostrils during all that followed.
+
+It was no less a person than himself, however--less experienced and
+adroit than the others though he was--who gave instinctive utterance to
+the sentence that brought a measure of relief into the ghastly situation
+by expressing the doubt and thought in each one's heart.
+
+"It _is_--YOU, isn't it, Défago?" he asked under his breath, horror
+breaking his speech.
+
+And at once Cathcart burst out with the loud answer before the other had
+time to move his lips. "Of course it is! Of course it is! Only--can't
+you see--he's nearly dead with exhaustion, cold and terror! Isn't _that_
+enough to change a man beyond all recognition?" It was said in order to
+convince himself as much as to convince the others. The overemphasis
+alone proved that. And continually, while he spoke and acted, he held a
+handkerchief to his nose. That odor pervaded the whole camp.
+
+For the "Défago" who sat huddled by the big fire, wrapped in blankets,
+drinking hot whisky and holding food in wasted hands, was no more like
+the guide they had last seen alive than the picture of a man of sixty is
+like a daguerreotype of his early youth in the costume of another
+generation. Nothing really can describe that ghastly caricature, that
+parody, masquerading there in the firelight as Défago. From the ruins of
+the dark and awful memories he still retains, Simpson declares that the
+face was more animal than human, the features drawn about into wrong
+proportions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had been subjected
+to extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely of
+those bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that change
+their expression as they swell, and as they collapse emit a faint and
+wailing imitation of a voice. Both face and voice suggested some such
+abominable resemblance. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking to
+describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a face
+and body that had been in air so rarified that, the weight of atmosphere
+being removed, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder and
+become--_incoherent_....
+
+It was Hank, though all distraught and shaking with a tearing volume of
+emotion he could neither handle nor understand, who brought things to a
+head without much ado. He went off to a little distance from the fire,
+apparently so that the light should not dazzle him too much, and shading
+his eyes for a moment with both hands, shouted in a loud voice that held
+anger and affection dreadfully mingled:
+
+"You ain't Défaygo! You ain't Défaygo at all! I don't give a--damn, but
+that ain't you, my ole pal of twenty years!" He glared upon the huddled
+figure as though he would destroy him with his eyes. "An' if it is I'll
+swab the floor of hell with a wad of cotton wool on a toothpick, s'help
+me the good Gawd!" he added, with a violent fling of horror and disgust.
+
+It was impossible to silence him. He stood there shouting like one
+possessed, horrible to see, horrible to hear--_because it was the
+truth_. He repeated himself in fifty different ways, each more
+outlandish than the last. The woods rang with echoes. At one time it
+looked as if he meant to fling himself upon "the intruder," for his hand
+continually jerked towards the long hunting knife in his belt.
+
+But in the end he did nothing, and the whole tempest completed itself
+very shortly with tears. Hank's voice suddenly broke, he collapsed on
+the ground, and Cathcart somehow or other persuaded him at last to go
+into the tent and lie quiet. The remainder of the affair, indeed, was
+witnessed by him from behind the canvas, his white and terrified face
+peeping through the crack of the tent door flap.
+
+Then Dr. Cathcart, closely followed by his nephew who so far had kept
+his courage better than all of them, went up with a determined air and
+stood opposite to the figure of Défago huddled over the fire. He looked
+him squarely in the face and spoke. At first his voice was firm.
+
+"Défago, tell us what's happened--just a little, so that we can know
+how best to help you?" he asked in a tone of authority, almost of
+command. And at that point, it _was_ command. At once afterwards,
+however, it changed in quality, for the figure turned up to him a face
+so piteous, so terrible and so little like humanity, that the doctor
+shrank back from him as from something spiritually unclean. Simpson,
+watching close behind him, says he got the impression of a mask that was
+on the verge of dropping off, and that underneath they would discover
+something black and diabolical, revealed in utter nakedness. "Out with
+it, man, out with it!" Cathcart cried, terror running neck and neck with
+entreaty. "None of us can stand this much longer ...!" It was the cry of
+instinct over reason.
+
+And then "Défago," smiling _whitely_, answered in that thin and fading
+voice that already seemed passing over into a sound of quite another
+character--
+
+"I seen that great Wendigo thing," he whispered, sniffing the air about
+him exactly like an animal. "I been with it too--"
+
+Whether the poor devil would have said more, or whether Dr. Cathcart
+would have continued the impossible cross examination cannot be known,
+for at that moment the voice of Hank was heard yelling at the top of his
+voice from behind the canvas that concealed all but his terrified eyes.
+Such a howling was never heard.
+
+"His feet! Oh, Gawd, his feet! Look at his great changed--feet!"
+
+Défago, shuffling where he sat, had moved in such a way that for the
+first time his legs were in full light and his feet were visible. Yet
+Simpson had no time, himself, to see properly what Hank had seen. And
+Hank has never seen fit to tell. That same instant, with a leap like
+that of a frightened tiger, Cathcart was upon him, bundling the folds of
+blanket about his legs with such speed that the young student caught
+little more than a passing glimpse of something dark and oddly massed
+where moccasined feet ought to have been, and saw even that but with
+uncertain vision.
+
+Then, before the doctor had time to do more, or Simpson time to even
+think a question, much less ask it, Défago was standing upright in front
+of them, balancing with pain and difficulty, and upon his shapeless and
+twisted visage an expression so dark and so malicious that it was, in
+the true sense, monstrous.
+
+"Now _you_ seen it too," he wheezed, "you seen my fiery, burning feet!
+And now--that is, unless you kin save me an' prevent--it's 'bout time
+for--"
+
+His piteous and beseeching voice was interrupted by a sound that was
+like the roar of wind coming across the lake. The trees overhead shook
+their tangled branches. The blazing fire bent its flames as before a
+blast. And something swept with a terrific, rushing noise about the
+little camp and seemed to surround it entirely in a single moment of
+time. Défago shook the clinging blankets from his body, turned towards
+the woods behind, and with the same stumbling motion that had brought
+him--was gone: gone, before anyone could move muscle to prevent him,
+gone with an amazing, blundering swiftness that left no time to act. The
+darkness positively swallowed him; and less than a dozen seconds later,
+above the roar of the swaying trees and the shout of the sudden wind,
+all three men, watching and listening with stricken hearts, heard a cry
+that seemed to drop down upon them from a great height of sky and
+distance--
+
+"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire ...!" then died away, into untold space and silence.
+
+Dr. Cathcart--suddenly master of himself, and therefore of the
+others--was just able to seize Hank violently by the arm as he tried to
+dash headlong into the Bush.
+
+"But I want ter know,--you!" shrieked the guide. "I want ter see! That
+ain't him at all, but some--devil that's shunted into his place ...!"
+
+Somehow or other--he admits he never quite knew how he accomplished
+it--he managed to keep him in the tent and pacify him. The doctor,
+apparently, had reached the stage where reaction had set in and allowed
+his own innate force to conquer. Certainly he "managed" Hank admirably.
+It was his nephew, however, hitherto so wonderfully controlled, who gave
+him most cause for anxiety, for the cumulative strain had now produced a
+condition of lachrymose hysteria which made it necessary to isolate him
+upon a bed of boughs and blankets as far removed from Hank as was
+possible under the circumstances.
+
+And there he lay, as the watches of that haunted night passed over the
+lonely camp, crying startled sentences, and fragments of sentences, into
+the folds of his blanket. A quantity of gibberish about speed and height
+and fire mingled oddly with biblical memories of the classroom. "People
+with broken faces all on fire are coming at a most awful, awful, pace
+towards the camp!" he would moan one minute; and the next would sit up
+and stare into the woods, intently listening, and whisper, "How terrible
+in the wilderness are--are the feet of them that--" until his uncle came
+across to change the direction of his thoughts and comfort him.
+
+The hysteria, fortunately, proved but temporary. Sleep cured him, just
+as it cured Hank.
+
+Till the first signs of daylight came, soon after five o'clock, Dr.
+Cathcart kept his vigil. His face was the color of chalk, and there were
+strange flushes beneath the eyes. An appalling terror of the soul
+battled with his will all through those silent hours. These were some of
+the outer signs ...
+
+At dawn he lit the fire himself, made breakfast, and woke the others,
+and by seven they were well on their way back to the home camp--three
+perplexed and afflicted men, but each in his own way having reduced his
+inner turmoil to a condition of more or less systematized order again.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+They talked little, and then only of the most wholesome and common
+things, for their minds were charged with painful thoughts that
+clamoured for explanation, though no one dared refer to them. Hank,
+being nearest to primitive conditions, was the first to find himself,
+for he was also less complex. In Dr. Cathcart "civilization" championed
+his forces against an attack singular enough. To this day, perhaps, he
+is not _quite_ sure of certain things. Anyhow, he took longer to "find
+himself."
+
+Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions
+probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order.
+Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely
+witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that
+had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically,
+betraying a scale of life still monstrous and immature. He envisaged it
+rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic
+and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men; when the forces of nature
+were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe
+not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later
+in a sermon "savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of
+men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity
+as it exists."
+
+With his uncle he never discussed the matter in detail, for the barrier
+between the two types of mind made it difficult. Only once, years later,
+something led them to the frontier of the subject--of a single detail of
+the subject, rather--
+
+"Can't you even tell me what--_they_ were like?" he asked; and the reply,
+though conceived in wisdom, was not encouraging, "It is far better you
+should not try to know, or to find out."
+
+"Well--that odour...?" persisted the nephew. "What do you make of that?"
+
+Dr. Cathcart looked at him and raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Odours," he replied, "are not so easy as sounds and sights of telepathic
+communication. I make as much, or as little, probably, as you do
+yourself."
+
+He was not quite so glib as usual with his explanations. That was all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the fall of day, cold, exhausted, famished, the party came to the
+end of the long portage and dragged themselves into a camp that at
+first glimpse seemed empty. Fire there was none, and no Punk came
+forward to welcome them. The emotional capacity of all three was too
+over-spent to recognize either surprise or annoyance; but the cry of
+spontaneous affection that burst from the lips of Hank, as he rushed
+ahead of them towards the fire-place, came probably as a warning that
+the end of the amazing affair was not quite yet. And both Cathcart and
+his nephew confessed afterwards that when they saw him kneel down in
+his excitement and embrace something that reclined, gently moving,
+beside the extinguished ashes, they felt in their very bones that this
+"something" would prove to be Défago--the true Défago, returned.
+
+And so, indeed, it was.
+
+It is soon told. Exhausted to the point of emaciation, the French
+Canadian--what was left of him, that is--fumbled among the ashes, trying
+to make a fire. His body crouched there, the weak fingers obeying feebly
+the instinctive habit of a lifetime with twigs and matches. But there
+was no longer any mind to direct the simple operation. The mind had
+fled beyond recall. And with it, too, had fled memory. Not only recent
+events, but all previous life was a blank.
+
+This time it was the real man, though incredibly and horribly shrunken.
+On his face was no expression of any kind whatever--fear, welcome, or
+recognition. He did not seem to know who it was that embraced him, or
+who it was that fed, warmed and spoke to him the words of comfort and
+relief. Forlorn and broken beyond all reach of human aid, the little man
+did meekly as he was bidden. The "something" that had constituted him
+"individual" had vanished for ever.
+
+In some ways it was more terribly moving than anything they had yet
+seen--that idiot smile as he drew wads of coarse moss from his swollen
+cheeks and told them that he was "a damned moss-eater"; the continued
+vomiting of even the simplest food; and, worst of all, the piteous
+and childish voice of complaint in which he told them that his feet
+pained him--"burn like fire"--which was natural enough when Dr. Cathcart
+examined them and found that both were dreadfully frozen. Beneath the
+eyes there were faint indications of recent bleeding.
+
+The details of how he survived the prolonged exposure, of where he had
+been, or of how he covered the great distance from one camp to the
+other, including an immense detour of the lake on foot since he had
+no canoe--all this remains unknown. His memory had vanished completely.
+And before the end of the winter whose beginning witnessed this strange
+occurrence, Défago, bereft of mind, memory and soul, had gone with it.
+He lingered only a few weeks.
+
+And what Punk was able to contribute to the story throws no further
+light upon it. He was cleaning fish by the lake shore about five o'clock
+in the evening--an hour, that is, before the search party returned--when
+he saw this shadow of the guide picking its way weakly into camp. In
+advance of him, he declares, came the faint whiff of a certain singular
+odour.
+
+That same instant old Punk started for home. He covered the entire
+journey of three days as only Indian blood could have covered it. The
+terror of a whole race drove him. He knew what it all meant. Défago
+had "seen the Wendigo."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wendigo
+
+Author: Algernon Blackwood
+
+Release Date: January 31, 2004 [EBook #10897]
+[Last updated: March 10, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WENDIGO ***
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+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Dave Morgan and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
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+
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+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>The Wendigo</h1>
+
+<h3>Algernon Blackwood</h3>
+
+<h5>1910</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="I"></a><h2>I</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year without
+finding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, and
+the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective families
+with the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr.
+Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he brought
+instead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all the
+bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, was
+interested in other things besides moose&mdash;amongst them the vagaries of
+the human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in his
+book on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confided
+once to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a part
+in it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole....</p>
+
+<p>Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson, his
+nephew, a divinity student destined for the &quot;Wee Kirk&quot; (then on his
+first visit to Canadian backwoods), and the latter's guide, D&eacute;fago.
+Joseph D&eacute;fago was a French &quot;Canuck,&quot; who had strayed from his native
+Province of Quebec years before, and had got caught in Rat Portage when
+the Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who, in addition to
+his unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore, could also sing
+the old <i>voyageur</i> songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into the
+bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spell
+which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved the
+wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to
+an obsession. The life of the backwoods fascinated him&mdash;whence,
+doubtless, his surpassing efficiency in dealing with their mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>On this particular expedition he was Hank's choice. Hank knew him and
+swore by him. He also swore at him, &quot;jest as a pal might,&quot; and since he
+had a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless, oaths, the
+conversation between the two stalwart and hardy woodsmen was often of a
+rather lively description. This river of expletives, however, Hank
+agreed to dam a little out of respect for his old &quot;hunting boss,&quot; Dr.
+Cathcart, whom of course he addressed after the fashion of the country
+as &quot;Doc,&quot; and also because he understood that young Simpson was already
+a &quot;bit of a parson.&quot; He had, however, one objection to D&eacute;fago, and one
+only&mdash;which was, that the French Canadian sometimes exhibited what Hank
+described as &quot;the output of a cursed and dismal mind,&quot; meaning
+apparently that he sometimes was true to type, Latin type, and suffered
+fits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing could induce him to
+utter speech. D&eacute;fago, that is to say, was imaginative and melancholy.
+And, as a rule, it was too long a spell of &quot;civilization&quot; that induced
+the attacks, for a few days of the wilderness invariably cured them.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, was the party of four that found themselves in camp the last
+week in October of that &quot;shy moose year&quot; 'way up in the wilderness north
+of Rat Portage&mdash;a forsaken and desolate country. There was also Punk, an
+Indian, who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their hunting trips
+in previous years, and who acted as cook. His duty was merely to stay in
+camp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks and coffee at a few
+minutes' notice. He dressed in the worn-out clothes bequeathed to him by
+former patrons, and, except for his coarse black hair and dark skin, he
+looked in these city garments no more like a real redskin than a stage
+Negro looks like a real African. For all that, however, Punk had in him
+still the instincts of his dying race; his taciturn silence and his
+endurance survived; also his superstition.</p>
+
+<p>The party round the blazing fire that night were despondent, for a week
+had passed without a single sign of recent moose discovering itself.
+D&eacute;fago had sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank, in bad
+humor, reminded him so often that &quot;he kep' mussing-up the fac's so, that
+it was 'most all nothin' but a petered-out lie,&quot; that the Frenchman had
+finally subsided into a sulky silence which nothing seemed likely to
+break. Dr. Cathcart and his nephew were fairly done after an exhausting
+day. Punk was washing up the dishes, grunting to himself under the
+lean-to of branches, where he later also slept. No one troubled to stir
+the slowly dying fire. Overhead the stars were brilliant in a sky quite
+wintry, and there was so little wind that ice was already forming
+stealthily along the shores of the still lake behind them. The silence
+of the vast listening forest stole forward and enveloped them.</p>
+
+<p>Hank broke in suddenly with his nasal voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm in favor of breaking new ground tomorrow, Doc,&quot; he observed with
+energy, looking across at his employer. &quot;We don't stand a dead Dago's
+chance around here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Agreed,&quot; said Cathcart, always a man of few words. &quot;Think the idea's
+good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure pop, it's good,&quot; Hank resumed with confidence. &quot;S'pose, now, you
+and I strike west, up Garden Lake way for a change! None of us ain't
+touched that quiet bit o' land yet&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you, D&eacute;fago, take Mr. Simpson along in the small canoe, skip across
+the lake, portage over into Fifty Island Water, and take a good squint
+down that thar southern shore. The moose 'yarded' there like hell last
+year, and for all we know they may be doin' it agin this year jest to
+spite us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago, keeping his eyes on the fire, said nothing by way of reply. He
+was still offended, possibly, about his interrupted story.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No one's been up that way this year, an' I'll lay my bottom dollar on
+<i>that!</i>&quot; Hank added with emphasis, as though he had a reason for
+knowing. He looked over at his partner sharply. &quot;Better take the little
+silk tent and stay away a couple o' nights,&quot; he concluded, as though the
+matter were definitely settled. For Hank was recognized as general
+organizer of the hunt, and in charge of the party.</p>
+
+<p>It was obvious to anyone that D&eacute;fago did not jump at the plan, but his
+silence seemed to convey something more than ordinary disapproval, and
+across his sensitive dark face there passed a curious expression like a
+flash of firelight&mdash;not so quickly, however, that the three men had not
+time to catch it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He funked for some reason, <i>I</i> thought,&quot; Simpson said afterwards in the
+tent he shared with his uncle. Dr. Cathcart made no immediate reply,
+although the look had interested him enough at the time for him to make
+a mental note of it. The expression had caused him a passing uneasiness
+he could not quite account for at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>But Hank, of course, had been the first to notice it, and the odd thing
+was that instead of becoming explosive or angry over the other's
+reluctance, he at once began to humor him a bit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But there ain't no <i>speshul</i> reason why no one's been up there this
+year,&quot; he said with a perceptible hush in his tone; &quot;not the reason you
+mean, anyway! Las' year it was the fires that kep' folks out, and this
+year I guess&mdash;I guess it jest happened so, that's all!&quot; His manner was
+clearly meant to be encouraging.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph D&eacute;fago raised his eyes a moment, then dropped them again. A
+breath of wind stole out of the forest and stirred the embers into a
+passing blaze. Dr. Cathcart again noticed the expression in the guide's
+face, and again he did not like it. But this time the nature of the look
+betrayed itself. In those eyes, for an instant, he caught the gleam of a
+man scared in his very soul. It disquieted him more than he cared to
+admit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bad Indians up that way?&quot; he asked, with a laugh to ease matters a
+little, while Simpson, too sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, moved
+off to bed with a prodigious yawn; &quot;or&mdash;or anything wrong with the
+country?&quot; he added, when his nephew was out of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>Hank met his eye with something less than his usual frankness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's jest skeered,&quot; he replied good-humouredly. &quot;Skeered stiff about
+some ole feery tale! That's all, ain't it, ole pard?&quot; And he gave D&eacute;fago
+a friendly kick on the moccasined foot that lay nearest the fire.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago looked up quickly, as from an interrupted reverie, a reverie,
+however, that had not prevented his seeing all that went on about him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Skeered&mdash;<i>nuthin'!</i>&quot; he answered, with a flush of defiance. &quot;There's
+nuthin' in the Bush that can skeer Joseph D&eacute;fago, and don't you forget
+it!&quot; And the natural energy with which he spoke made it impossible to
+know whether he told the whole truth or only a part of it.</p>
+
+<p>Hank turned towards the doctor. He was just going to add something when
+he stopped abruptly and looked round. A sound close behind them in the
+darkness made all three start. It was old Punk, who had moved up from
+his lean-to while they talked and now stood there just beyond the circle
+of firelight&mdash;listening.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Nother time, Doc!&quot; Hank whispered, with a wink, &quot;when the gallery
+ain't stepped down into the stalls!&quot; And, springing to his feet, he
+slapped the Indian on the back and cried noisily, &quot;Come up t' the fire
+an' warm yer dirty red skin a bit.&quot; He dragged him towards the blaze and
+threw more wood on. &quot;That was a mighty good feed you give us an hour or
+two back,&quot; he continued heartily, as though to set the man's thoughts on
+another scent, &quot;and it ain't Christian to let you stand out there
+freezin' yer ole soul to hell while we're gettin' all good an' toasted!&quot;
+Punk moved in and warmed his feet, smiling darkly at the other's
+volubility which he only half understood, but saying nothing. And
+presently Dr. Cathcart, seeing that further conversation was impossible,
+followed his nephew's example and moved off to the tent, leaving the
+three men smoking over the now blazing fire.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to undress in a small tent without waking one's
+companion, and Cathcart, hardened and warm-blooded as he was in spite of
+his fifty odd years, did what Hank would have described as &quot;considerable
+of his twilight&quot; in the open. He noticed, during the process, that Punk
+had meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, and that Hank and D&eacute;fago were
+at it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammer and anvil, the little French
+Canadian being the anvil. It was all very like the conventional stage
+picture of Western melodrama: the fire lighting up their faces with
+patches of alternate red and black; D&eacute;fago, in slouch hat and moccasins
+in the part of the &quot;badlands&quot; villain; Hank, open-faced and hatless,
+with that reckless fling of his shoulders, the honest and deceived hero;
+and old Punk, eavesdropping in the background, supplying the atmosphere
+of mystery. The doctor smiled as he noticed the details; but at the same
+time something deep within him&mdash;he hardly knew what&mdash;shrank a little, as
+though an almost imperceptible breath of warning had touched the surface
+of his soul and was gone again before he could seize it. Probably it was
+traceable to that &quot;scared expression&quot; he had seen in the eyes of D&eacute;fago;
+&quot;probably&quot;&mdash;for this hint of fugitive emotion otherwise escaped his
+usually so keen analysis. D&eacute;fago, he was vaguely aware, might cause
+trouble somehow ...He was not as steady a guide as Hank, for
+instance ... Further than that he could not get ...</p>
+
+<p>He watched the men a moment longer before diving into the stuffy tent
+where Simpson already slept soundly. Hank, he saw, was swearing like a
+mad African in a New York nigger saloon; but it was the swearing of
+&quot;affection.&quot; The ridiculous oaths flew freely now that the cause of
+their obstruction was asleep. Presently he put his arm almost tenderly
+upon his comrade's shoulder, and they moved off together into the
+shadows where their tent stood faintly glimmering. Punk, too, a moment
+later followed their example and disappeared between his odorous
+blankets in the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Cathcart then likewise turned in, weariness and sleep still fighting
+in his mind with an obscure curiosity to know what it was that had
+scared D&eacute;fago about the country up Fifty Island Water way,&mdash;wondering,
+too, why Punk's presence had prevented the completion of what Hank had
+to say. Then sleep overtook him. He would know tomorrow. Hank would tell
+him the story while they trudged after the elusive moose.</p>
+
+<p>Deep silence fell about the little camp, planted there so audaciously in
+the jaws of the wilderness. The lake gleamed like a sheet of black glass
+beneath the stars. The cold air pricked. In the draughts of night that
+poured their silent tide from the depths of the forest, with messages
+from distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze, there lay
+already the faint, bleak odors of coming winter. White men, with their
+dull scent, might never have divined them; the fragrance of the wood
+fire would have concealed from them these almost electrical hints of
+moss and bark and hardening swamp a hundred miles away. Even Hank and
+D&eacute;fago, subtly in league with the soul of the woods as they were, would
+probably have spread their delicate nostrils in vain....</p>
+
+<p>But an hour later, when all slept like the dead, old Punk crept from his
+blankets and went down to the shore of the lake like a shadow&mdash;silently,
+as only Indian blood can move. He raised his head and looked about him.
+The thick darkness rendered sight of small avail, but, like the animals,
+he possessed other senses that darkness could not mute. He
+listened&mdash;then sniffed the air. Motionless as a hemlock stem he stood
+there. After five minutes again he lifted his head and sniffed, and yet
+once again. A tingling of the wonderful nerves that betrayed itself by
+no outer sign, ran through him as he tasted the keen air. Then, merging
+his figure into the surrounding blackness in a way that only wild men
+and animals understand, he turned, still moving like a shadow, and went
+stealthily back to his lean-to and his bed.</p>
+
+<p>And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirred
+gently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising among the far
+ridges of the country beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from the
+direction in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleeping camp
+with a faint and sighing murmur through the tops of the big trees that
+was almost too delicate to be audible. With it, down the desert paths of
+night, though too faint, too high even for the Indian's hair-like
+nerves, there passed a curious, thin odor, strangely disquieting, an
+odor of something that seemed unfamiliar&mdash;utterly unknown.</p>
+
+<p>The French Canadian and the man of Indian blood each stirred uneasily in
+his sleep just about this time, though neither of them woke. Then the
+ghost of that unforgettably strange odor passed away and was lost among
+the leagues of tenantless forest beyond.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="II"></a><h2>II</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>In the morning the camp was astir before the sun. There had been a
+light fall of snow during the night and the air was sharp. Punk had done
+his duty betimes, for the odors of coffee and fried bacon reached every
+tent. All were in good spirits.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wind's shifted!&quot; cried Hank vigorously, watching Simpson and his guide
+already loading the small canoe. &quot;It's across the lake&mdash;dead right for
+you fellers. And the snow'll make bully trails! If there's any moose
+mussing around up thar, they'll not get so much as a tail-end scent of
+you with the wind as it is. Good luck, Monsieur D&eacute;fago!&quot; he added,
+facetiously giving the name its French pronunciation for once, &quot;<i>bonne
+chance!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago returned the good wishes, apparently in the best of spirits, the
+silent mood gone. Before eight o'clock old Punk had the camp to
+himself, Cathcart and Hank were far along the trail that led westwards,
+while the canoe that carried D&eacute;fago and Simpson, with silk tent and grub
+for two days, was already a dark speck bobbing on the bosom of the lake,
+going due east.</p>
+
+<p>The wintry sharpness of the air was tempered now by a sun that topped
+the wooded ridges and blazed with a luxurious warmth upon the world of
+lake and forest below; loons flew skimming through the sparkling spray
+that the wind lifted; divers shook their dripping heads to the sun and
+popped smartly out of sight again; and as far as eye could reach rose
+the leagues of endless, crowding Bush, desolate in its lonely sweep and
+grandeur, untrodden by foot of man, and stretching its mighty and
+unbroken carpet right up to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay.</p>
+
+<p>Simpson, who saw it all for the first time as he paddled hard in the
+bows of the dancing canoe, was enchanted by its austere beauty. His
+heart drank in the sense of freedom and great spaces just as his lungs
+drank in the cool and perfumed wind. Behind him in the stern seat,
+singing fragments of his native chanties, D&eacute;fago steered the craft of
+birch bark like a thing of life, answering cheerfully all his
+companion's questions. Both were gay and light-hearted. On such
+occasions men lose the superficial, worldly distinctions; they become
+human beings working together for a common end. Simpson, the employer,
+and D&eacute;fago the employed, among these primitive forces, were simply&mdash;two
+men, the &quot;guider&quot; and the &quot;guided.&quot; Superior knowledge, of course,
+assumed control, and the younger man fell without a second thought into
+the quasi-subordinate position. He never dreamed of objecting when
+D&eacute;fago dropped the &quot;Mr.,&quot; and addressed him as &quot;Say, Simpson,&quot; or
+&quot;Simpson, boss,&quot; which was invariably the case before they reached the
+farther shore after a stiff paddle of twelve miles against a head wind.
+He only laughed, and liked it; then ceased to notice it at all.</p>
+
+<p>For this &quot;divinity student&quot; was a young man of parts and character,
+though as yet, of course, untraveled; and on this trip&mdash;the first time
+he had seen any country but his own and little Switzerland&mdash;the huge
+scale of things somewhat bewildered him. It was one thing, he realized,
+to hear about primeval forests, but quite another to see them. While to
+dwell in them and seek acquaintance with their wild life was, again, an
+initiation that no intelligent man could undergo without a certain
+shifting of personal values hitherto held for permanent and sacred.</p>
+
+<p>Simpson knew the first faint indication of this emotion when he held the
+new .303 rifle in his hands and looked along its pair of faultless,
+gleaming barrels. The three days' journey to their headquarters, by lake
+and portage, had carried the process a stage farther. And now that he
+was about to plunge beyond even the fringe of wilderness where they were
+camped into the virgin heart of uninhabited regions as vast as Europe
+itself, the true nature of the situation stole upon him with an effect
+of delight and awe that his imagination was fully capable of
+appreciating. It was himself and D&eacute;fago against a multitude&mdash;at least,
+against a Titan!</p>
+
+<p>The bleak splendors of these remote and lonely forests rather
+overwhelmed him with the sense of his own littleness. That stern quality
+of the tangled backwoods which can only be described as merciless and
+terrible, rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon,
+and revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized his
+own utter helplessness. Only D&eacute;fago, as a symbol of a distant
+civilization where man was master, stood between him and a pitiless
+death by exhaustion and starvation.</p>
+
+<p>It was thrilling to him, therefore, to watch D&eacute;fago turn over the canoe
+upon the shore, pack the paddles carefully underneath, and then proceed
+to &quot;blaze&quot; the spruce stems for some distance on either side of an
+almost invisible trail, with the careless remark thrown in, &quot;Say,
+Simpson, if anything happens to me, you'll find the canoe all correc' by
+these marks;&mdash;then strike doo west into the sun to hit the home camp
+agin, see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was the most natural thing in the world to say, and he said it
+without any noticeable inflexion of the voice, only it happened to
+express the youth's emotions at the moment with an utterance that was
+symbolic of the situation and of his own helplessness as a factor in it.
+He was alone with D&eacute;fago in a primitive world: that was all. The canoe,
+another symbol of man's ascendancy, was now to be left behind. Those
+small yellow patches, made on the trees by the axe, were the only
+indications of its hiding place.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, shouldering the packs between them, each man carrying his own
+rifle, they followed the slender trail over rocks and fallen trunks and
+across half-frozen swamps; skirting numerous lakes that fairly gemmed
+the forest, their borders fringed with mist; and towards five o'clock
+found themselves suddenly on the edge of the woods, looking out across a
+large sheet of water in front of them, dotted with pine-clad islands of
+all describable shapes and sizes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fifty Island Water,&quot; announced D&eacute;fago wearily, &quot;and the sun jest goin'
+to dip his bald old head into it!&quot; he added, with unconscious poetry;
+and immediately they set about pitching camp for the night.</p>
+
+<p>In a very few minutes, under those skilful hands that never made a
+movement too much or a movement too little, the silk tent stood taut and
+cozy, the beds of balsam boughs ready laid, and a brisk cooking fire
+burned with the minimum of smoke. While the young Scotchman cleaned the
+fish they had caught trolling behind the canoe, D&eacute;fago &quot;guessed&quot; he
+would &quot;jest as soon&quot; take a turn through the Bush for indications of
+moose. &quot;<i>May</i> come across a trunk where they bin and rubbed horns,&quot; he
+said, as he moved off, &quot;or feedin' on the last of the maple leaves&quot;&mdash;and
+he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>His small figure melted away like a shadow in the dusk, while Simpson
+noted with a kind of admiration how easily the forest absorbed him into
+herself. A few steps, it seemed, and he was no longer visible.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts; the trees stood somewhat
+apart, well spaced; and in the clearings grew silver birch and maple,
+spearlike and slender, against the immense stems of spruce and hemlock.
+But for occasional prostrate monsters, and the boulders of grey rock
+that thrust uncouth shoulders here and there out of the ground, it might
+well have been a bit of park in the Old Country. Almost, one might have
+seen in it the hand of man. A little to the right, however, began the
+great burnt section, miles in extent, proclaiming its real
+character&mdash;<i>brul&eacute;</i>, as it is called, where the fires of the previous
+year had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps now rose gaunt and
+ugly, bereft of branches, like gigantic match heads stuck into the
+ground, savage and desolate beyond words. The perfume of charcoal and
+rain-soaked ashes still hung faintly about it.</p>
+
+<p>The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the
+fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the
+only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that
+vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the
+woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might
+stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees. In front,
+through doorways pillared by huge straight stems, lay the stretch of
+Fifty Island Water, a crescent-shaped lake some fifteen miles from tip
+to tip, and perhaps five miles across where they were camped. A sky of
+rose and saffron, more clear than any atmosphere Simpson had ever
+known, still dropped its pale streaming fires across the waves, where
+the islands&mdash;a hundred, surely, rather than fifty&mdash;floated like the
+fairy barques of some enchanted fleet. Fringed with pines, whose crests
+fingered most delicately the sky, they almost seemed to move upwards as
+the light faded&mdash;about to weigh anchor and navigate the pathways of the
+heavens instead of the currents of their native and desolate lake.</p>
+
+<p>And strips of colored cloud, like flaunting pennons, signaled their
+departure to the stars....</p>
+
+<p>The beauty of the scene was strangely uplifting. Simpson smoked the fish
+and burnt his fingers into the bargain in his efforts to enjoy it and at
+the same time tend the frying pan and the fire. Yet, ever at the back of
+his thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness: the indifference
+to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of
+man. The sense of his utter loneliness, now that even D&eacute;fago had gone,
+came close as he looked about him and listened for the sound of his
+companion's returning footsteps.</p>
+
+<p>There was pleasure in the sensation, yet with it a perfectly
+comprehensible alarm. And instinctively the thought stirred in him:
+&quot;What should I&mdash;<i>could</i> I, do&mdash;if anything happened and he did not come
+back&mdash;?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They enjoyed their well-earned supper, eating untold quantities of fish,
+and drinking unmilked tea strong enough to kill men who had not covered
+thirty miles of hard &quot;going,&quot; eating little on the way. And when it was
+over, they smoked and told stories round the blazing fire, laughing,
+stretching weary limbs, and discussing plans for the morrow. D&eacute;fago was
+in excellent spirits, though disappointed at having no signs of moose to
+report. But it was dark and he had not gone far. The <i>brul&eacute;</i>, too, was
+bad. His clothes and hands were smeared with charcoal. Simpson, watching
+him, realized with renewed vividness their position&mdash;alone together in
+the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;D&eacute;fago,&quot; he said presently, &quot;these woods, you know, are a bit too big
+to feel quite at home in&mdash;to feel comfortable in, I mean!... Eh?&quot; He
+merely gave expression to the mood of the moment; he was hardly prepared
+for the earnestness, the solemnity even, with which the guide took him
+up.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've hit it right, Simpson, boss,&quot; he replied, fixing his searching
+brown eyes on his face, &quot;and that's the truth, sure. There's no end to
+'em&mdash;no end at all.&quot; Then he added in a lowered tone as if to himself,
+&quot;There's lots found out <i>that</i>, and gone plumb to pieces!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the man's gravity of manner was not quite to the other's liking; it
+was a little too suggestive for this scenery and setting; he was sorry
+he had broached the subject. He remembered suddenly how his uncle had
+told him that men were sometimes stricken with a strange fever of the
+wilderness, when the seduction of the uninhabited wastes caught them so
+fiercely that they went forth, half fascinated, half deluded, to their
+death. And he had a shrewd idea that his companion held something in
+sympathy with that queer type. He led the conversation on to other
+topics, on to Hank and the doctor, for instance, and the natural rivalry
+as to who should get the first sight of moose.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If they went doo west,&quot; observed D&eacute;fago carelessly, &quot;there's sixty
+miles between us now&mdash;with ole Punk at halfway house eatin' himself full
+to bustin' with fish and coffee.&quot; They laughed together over the
+picture. But the casual mention of those sixty miles again made Simpson
+realize the prodigious scale of this land where they hunted; sixty miles
+was a mere step; two hundred little more than a step. Stories of lost
+hunters rose persistently before his memory. The passion and mystery of
+homeless and wandering men, seduced by the beauty of great forests,
+swept his soul in a way too vivid to be quite pleasant. He wondered
+vaguely whether it was the mood of his companion that invited the
+unwelcome suggestion with such persistence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sing us a song, D&eacute;fago, if you're not too tired,&quot; he asked; &quot;one of
+those old <i>voyageur</i> songs you sang the other night.&quot; He handed his
+tobacco pouch to the guide and then filled his own pipe, while the
+Canadian, nothing loth, sent his light voice across the lake in one of
+those plaintive, almost melancholy chanties with which lumbermen and
+trappers lessen the burden of their labor. There was an appealing and
+romantic flavor about it, something that recalled the atmosphere of the
+old pioneer days when Indians and wilderness were leagued together,
+battles frequent, and the Old Country farther off than it is today. The
+sound traveled pleasantly over the water, but the forest at their backs
+seemed to swallow it down with a single gulp that permitted neither echo
+nor resonance.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the middle of the third verse that Simpson noticed something
+unusual&mdash;something that brought his thoughts back with a rush from
+faraway scenes. A curious change had come into the man's voice. Even
+before he knew what it was, uneasiness caught him, and looking up
+quickly, he saw that D&eacute;fago, though still singing, was peering about him
+into the Bush, as though he heard or saw something. His voice grew
+fainter&mdash;dropped to a hush&mdash;then ceased altogether. The same instant,
+with a movement amazingly alert, he started to his feet and stood
+upright&mdash;<i>sniffing the air</i>. Like a dog scenting game, he drew the air
+into his nostrils in short, sharp breaths, turning quickly as he did so
+in all directions, and finally &quot;pointing&quot; down the lake shore,
+eastwards. It was a performance unpleasantly suggestive and at the same
+time singularly dramatic. Simpson's heart fluttered disagreeably as he
+watched it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord, man! How you made me jump!&quot; he exclaimed, on his feet beside him
+the same instant, and peering over his shoulder into the sea of
+darkness. &quot;What's up? Are you frightened&mdash;?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Even before the question was out of his mouth he knew it was foolish,
+for any man with a pair of eyes in his head could see that the Canadian
+had turned white down to his very gills. Not even sunburn and the glare
+of the fire could hide that.</p>
+
+<p>The student felt himself trembling a little, weakish in the knees.
+&quot;What's up?&quot; he repeated quickly. &quot;D'you smell moose? Or anything queer,
+anything&mdash;wrong?&quot; He lowered his voice instinctively.</p>
+
+<p>The forest pressed round them with its encircling wall; the nearer tree
+stems gleamed like bronze in the firelight; beyond that&mdash;blackness, and,
+so far as he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them a passing
+puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softly
+down again without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as if a
+million invisible causes had combined just to produce that single
+visible effect. <i>Other</i> life pulsed about them&mdash;and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago turned abruptly; the livid hue of his face had turned to a dirty
+grey.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never said I heered&mdash;or smelt&mdash;nuthin',&quot; he said slowly and
+emphatically, in an oddly altered voice that conveyed somehow a touch of
+defiance. &quot;I was only&mdash;takin' a look round&mdash;so to speak. It's always a
+mistake to be too previous with yer questions.&quot; Then he added suddenly
+with obvious effort, in his more natural voice, &quot;Have you got the
+matches, Boss Simpson?&quot; and proceeded to light the pipe he had half
+filled just before he began to sing.</p>
+
+<p>Without speaking another word they sat down again by the fire. D&eacute;fago
+changing his side so that he could face the direction the wind came
+from. For even a tenderfoot could tell that. D&eacute;fago changed his position
+in order to hear and smell&mdash;all there was to be heard and smelt. And,
+since he now faced the lake with his back to the trees it was evidently
+nothing in the forest that had sent so strange and sudden a warning to
+his marvelously trained nerves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Guess now I don't feel like singing any,&quot; he explained presently of his
+own accord. &quot;That song kinder brings back memories that's troublesome to
+me; I never oughter've begun it. It sets me on t' imagining things,
+see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Clearly the man was still fighting with some profoundly moving emotion.
+He wished to excuse himself in the eyes of the other. But the
+explanation, in that it was only a part of the truth, was a lie, and he
+knew perfectly well that Simpson was not deceived by it. For nothing
+could explain away the livid terror that had dropped over his face while
+he stood there sniffing the air. And nothing&mdash;no amount of blazing fire,
+or chatting on ordinary subjects&mdash;could make that camp exactly as it had
+been before. The shadow of an unknown horror, naked if unguessed, that
+had flashed for an instant in the face and gestures of the guide, had
+also communicated itself, vaguely and therefore more potently, to his
+companion. The guide's visible efforts to dissemble the truth only made
+things worse. Moreover, to add to the younger man's uneasiness, was the
+difficulty, nay, the impossibility he felt of asking questions, and also
+his complete ignorance as to the cause ...Indians, wild animals, forest
+fires&mdash;all these, he knew, were wholly out of the question. His
+imagination searched vigorously, but in vain....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>Yet, somehow or other, after another long spell of smoking, talking and
+roasting themselves before the great fire, the shadow that had so
+suddenly invaded their peaceful camp began to shift. Perhaps D&eacute;fago's
+efforts, or the return of his quiet and normal attitude accomplished
+this; perhaps Simpson himself had exaggerated the affair out of all
+proportion to the truth; or possibly the vigorous air of the wilderness
+brought its own powers of healing. Whatever the cause, the feeling of
+immediate horror seemed to have passed away as mysteriously as it had
+come, for nothing occurred to feed it. Simpson began to feel that he had
+permitted himself the unreasoning terror of a child. He put it down
+partly to a certain subconscious excitement that this wild and immense
+scenery generated in his blood, partly to the spell of solitude, and
+partly to overfatigue. That pallor in the guide's face was, of course,
+uncommonly hard to explain, yet it <i>might</i> have been due in some way to
+an effect of firelight, or his own imagination ...He gave it the benefit
+of the doubt; he was Scotch.</p>
+
+<p>When a somewhat unordinary emotion has disappeared, the mind always
+finds a dozen ways of explaining away its causes ...Simpson lit a last
+pipe and tried to laugh to himself. On getting home to Scotland it would
+make quite a good story. He did not realize that this laughter was a
+sign that terror still lurked in the recesses of his soul&mdash;that, in
+fact, it was merely one of the conventional signs by which a man,
+seriously alarmed, tries to persuade himself that he is <i>not</i> so.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago, however, heard that low laughter and looked up with surprise on
+his face. The two men stood, side by side, kicking the embers about
+before going to bed. It was ten o'clock&mdash;a late hour for hunters to be
+still awake.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's ticklin' yer?&quot; he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I&mdash;I was thinking of our little toy woods at home, just at that
+moment,&quot; stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated his
+mind, and startled by the question, &quot;and comparing them to&mdash;to all
+this,&quot; and he swept his arm round to indicate the Bush.</p>
+
+<p>A pause followed in which neither of them said anything.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All the same I wouldn't laugh about it, if I was you,&quot; D&eacute;fago added,
+looking over Simpson's shoulder into the shadows. &quot;There's places in
+there nobody won't never see into&mdash;nobody knows what lives in there
+either.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Too big&mdash;too far off?&quot; The suggestion in the guide's manner was immense
+and horrible.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago nodded. The expression on his face was dark. He, too, felt
+uneasy. The younger man understood that in a <i>hinterland</i> of this size
+there might well be depths of wood that would never in the life of the
+world be known or trodden. The thought was not exactly the sort he
+welcomed. In a loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time for
+bed. But the guide lingered, tinkering with the fire, arranging the
+stones needlessly, doing a dozen things that did not really need doing.
+Evidently there was something he wanted to say, yet found it difficult
+to &quot;get at.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, you, Boss Simpson,&quot; he began suddenly, as the last shower of
+sparks went up into the air, &quot;you don't&mdash;smell nothing, do you&mdash;nothing
+pertickler, I mean?&quot; The commonplace question, Simpson realized, veiled
+a dreadfully serious thought in his mind. A shiver ran down his back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing but burning wood,&quot; he replied firmly, kicking again at the
+embers. The sound of his own foot made him start.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And all the evenin' you ain't smelt&mdash;nothing?&quot; persisted the guide,
+peering at him through the gloom; &quot;nothing extrordiny, and different to
+anything else you ever smelt before?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no, man; nothing at all!&quot; he replied aggressively, half angrily.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago's face cleared. &quot;That's good!&quot; he exclaimed with evident relief.
+&quot;That's good to hear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have <i>you?</i>&quot; asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted the
+question.</p>
+
+<p>The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He shook his head. &quot;I guess
+not,&quot; he said, though without overwhelming conviction. &quot;It must've been
+just that song of mine that did it. It's the song they sing in lumber
+camps and godforsaken places like that, when they're skeered the
+Wendigo's somewhere around, doin' a bit of swift traveling.&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what's the Wendigo, pray?&quot; Simpson asked quickly, irritated because
+again he could not prevent that sudden shiver of the nerves. He knew
+that he was close upon the man's terror and the cause of it. Yet a
+rushing passionate curiosity overcame his better judgment, and his fear.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago turned swiftly and looked at him as though he were suddenly about
+to shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open. Yet all he said,
+or whispered rather, for his voice sank very low, was: &quot;It's
+nuthin'&mdash;nuthin' but what those lousy fellers believe when they've bin
+hittin' the bottle too long&mdash;a sort of great animal that lives up
+yonder,&quot; he jerked his head northwards, &quot;quick as lightning in its
+tracks, an' bigger'n anything else in the Bush, an' ain't supposed to be
+very good to look at&mdash;that's all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A backwoods superstition&mdash;&quot; began Simpson, moving hastily toward the
+tent in order to shake off the hand of the guide that clutched his arm.
+&quot;Come, come, hurry up for God's sake, and get the lantern going! It's
+time we were in bed and asleep if we're going to be up with the sun
+tomorrow....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The guide was close on his heels. &quot;I'm coming,&quot; he answered out of the
+darkness, &quot;I'm coming.&quot; And after a slight delay he appeared with the
+lantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. The
+shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so,
+and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole
+tent trembled as though a gust of wind struck it.</p>
+
+<p>The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft balsam
+boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside, all was warm and cozy, but outside
+the world of crowding trees pressed close about them, marshalling their
+million shadows, and smothering the little tent that stood there like a
+wee white shell facing the ocean of tremendous forest.</p>
+
+<p>Between the two lonely figures within, however, there pressed another
+shadow that was <i>not</i> a shadow from the night. It was the Shadow cast by
+the strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped suddenly upon
+D&eacute;fago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson, as he lay there,
+watching the darkness through the open flap of the tent, ready to plunge
+into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that unique and profound
+stillness of a primeval forest when no wind stirs ... and when the night
+has weight and substance that enters into the soul to bind a veil about
+it.... Then sleep took him....</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="III"></a><h2>III</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Thus, it seemed to him, at least. Yet it was true that the lap of the
+water, just beyond the tent door, still beat time with his lessening
+pulses when he realized that he was lying with his eyes open and that
+another sound had recently introduced itself with cunning softness
+between the splash and murmur of the little waves.</p>
+
+<p>And, long before he understood what this sound was, it had stirred in
+him the centers of pity and alarm. He listened intently, though at first
+in vain, for the running blood beat all its drums too noisily in his
+ears. Did it come, he wondered, from the lake, or from the woods?...</p>
+
+<p>Then, suddenly, with a rush and a flutter of the heart, he knew that it
+was close beside him in the tent; and, when he turned over for a better
+hearing, it focused itself unmistakably not two feet away. It was a
+sound of weeping; D&eacute;fago upon his bed of branches was sobbing in the
+darkness as though his heart would break, the blankets evidently stuffed
+against his mouth to stifle it.</p>
+
+<p>And his first feeling, before he could think or reflect, was the rush of
+a poignant and searching tenderness. This intimate, human sound, heard
+amid the desolation about them, woke pity. It was so incongruous, so
+pitifully incongruous&mdash;and so vain! Tears&mdash;in this vast and cruel
+wilderness: of what avail? He thought of a little child crying in
+mid-Atlantic.... Then, of course, with fuller realization, and the
+memory of what had gone before, came the descent of the terror upon him,
+and his blood ran cold.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;D&eacute;fago,&quot; he whispered quickly, &quot;what's the matter?&quot; He tried to make
+his voice very gentle. &quot;Are you in pain&mdash;unhappy&mdash;?&quot; There was no reply,
+but the sounds ceased abruptly. He stretched his hand out and touched
+him. The body did not stir.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you awake?&quot; for it occurred to him that the man was crying in his
+sleep. &quot;Are you cold?&quot; He noticed that his feet, which were uncovered,
+projected beyond the mouth of the tent. He spread an extra fold of his
+own blankets over them. The guide had slipped down in his bed, and the
+branches seemed to have been dragged with him. He was afraid to pull the
+body back again, for fear of waking him.</p>
+
+<p>One or two tentative questions he ventured softly, but though he waited
+for several minutes there came no reply, nor any sign of movement.
+Presently he heard his regular and quiet breathing, and putting his hand
+again gently on the breast, felt the steady rise and fall beneath.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me know if anything's wrong,&quot; he whispered, &quot;or if I can do
+anything. Wake me at once if you feel&mdash;queer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He hardly knew what to say. He lay down again, thinking and wondering
+what it all meant. D&eacute;fago, of course, had been crying in his sleep. Some
+dream or other had afflicted him. Yet never in his life would he forget
+that pitiful sound of sobbing, and the feeling that the whole awful
+wilderness of woods listened....</p>
+
+<p>His own mind busied itself for a long time with the recent events, of
+which <i>this</i> took its mysterious place as one, and though his reason
+successfully argued away all unwelcome suggestions, a sensation of
+uneasiness remained, resisting ejection, very deep-seated&mdash;peculiar
+beyond ordinary.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="IV"></a><h2>IV</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>But sleep, in the long run, proves greater than all emotions. His
+thoughts soon wandered again; he lay there, warm as toast, exceedingly
+weary; the night soothed and comforted, blunting the edges of memory and
+alarm. Half an hour later he was oblivious of everything in the outer
+world about him.</p>
+
+<p>Yet sleep, in this case, was his great enemy, concealing all approaches,
+smothering the warning of his nerves.</p>
+
+<p>As, sometimes, in a nightmare events crowd upon each other's heels with
+a conviction of dreadfulest reality, yet some inconsistent detail
+accuses the whole display of incompleteness and disguise, so the events
+that now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the mind
+somehow that the detail which could explain them had been overlooked in
+the confusion, and that therefore they were but partly true, the rest
+delusion. At the back of the sleeper's mind something remains awake,
+ready to let slip the judgment. &quot;All this is not <i>quite</i> real; when you
+wake up you'll understand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And thus, in a way, it was with Simpson. The events, not wholly
+inexplicable or incredible in themselves, yet remain for the man who saw
+and heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold horror, because the
+little piece that might have made the puzzle clear lay concealed or
+overlooked.</p>
+
+<p>So far as he can recall, it was a violent movement, running downwards
+through the tent towards the door, that first woke him and made him
+aware that his companion was sitting bolt upright beside him&mdash;quivering.
+Hours must have passed, for it was the pale gleam of the dawn that
+revealed his outline against the canvas. This time the man was not
+crying; he was quaking like a leaf; the trembling he felt plainly
+through the blankets down the entire length of his own body. D&eacute;fago had
+huddled down against him for protection, shrinking away from something
+that apparently concealed itself near the door flaps of the little tent.</p>
+
+<p>Simpson thereupon called out in a loud voice some question or other&mdash;in
+the first bewilderment of waking he does not remember exactly what&mdash;and
+the man made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare lay
+horribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult. At first,
+indeed, he was not sure where he was&mdash;whether in one of the earlier
+camps, or at home in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense of confusion was
+very troubling.</p>
+
+<p>And next&mdash;almost simultaneous with his waking, it seemed&mdash;the profound
+stillness of the dawn outside was shattered by a most uncommon sound. It
+came without warning, or audible approach; and it was unspeakably
+dreadful. It was a voice, Simpson declares, possibly a human voice;
+hoarse yet plaintive&mdash;a soft, roaring voice close outside the tent,
+overhead rather than upon the ground, of immense volume, while in some
+strange way most penetratingly and seductively sweet. It rang out, too,
+in three separate and distinct notes, or cries, that bore in some odd
+fashion a resemblance, farfetched yet recognizable, to the name of the
+guide: &quot;<i>D&eacute;-fa-go!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The student admits he is unable to describe it quite intelligently, for
+it was unlike any sound he had ever heard in his life, and combined a
+blending of such contrary qualities. &quot;A sort of windy, crying voice,&quot; he
+calls it, &quot;as of something lonely and untamed, wild and of abominable
+power....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And, even before it ceased, dropping back into the great gulfs of
+silence, the guide beside him had sprung to his feet with an answering
+though unintelligible cry. He blundered against the tent pole with
+violence, shaking the whole structure, spreading his arms out
+frantically for more room, and kicking his legs impetuously free of the
+clinging blankets. For a second, perhaps two, he stood upright by the
+door, his outline dark against the pallor of the dawn; then, with a
+furious, rushing speed, before his companion could move a hand to stop
+him, he shot with a plunge through the flaps of canvas&mdash;and was gone.
+And as he went&mdash;so astonishingly fast that the voice could actually be
+heard dying in the distance&mdash;he called aloud in tones of anguished
+terror that at the same time held something strangely like the frenzied
+exultation of delight&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire! Oh! oh! This height
+and fiery speed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then the distance quickly buried it, and the deep silence of very
+early morning descended upon the forest as before.</p>
+
+<p>It had all come about with such rapidity that, but for the evidence of
+the empty bed beside him, Simpson could almost have believed it to have
+been the memory of a nightmare carried over from sleep. He still felt
+the warm pressure of that vanished body against his side; there lay the
+twisted blankets in a heap; the very tent yet trembled with the
+vehemence of the impetuous departure. The strange words rang in his
+ears, as though he still heard them in the distance&mdash;wild language of a
+suddenly stricken mind. Moreover, it was not only the senses of sight
+and hearing that reported uncommon things to his brain, for even while
+the man cried and ran, he had become aware that a strange perfume, faint
+yet pungent, pervaded the interior of the tent. And it was at this
+point, it seems, brought to himself by the consciousness that his
+nostrils were taking this distressing odor down into his throat, that he
+found his courage, sprang quickly to his feet&mdash;and went out.</p>
+
+<p>The grey light of dawn that dropped, cold and glimmering, between the
+trees revealed the scene tolerably well. There stood the tent behind
+him, soaked with dew; the dark ashes of the fire, still warm; the lake,
+white beneath a coating of mist, the islands rising darkly out of it
+like objects packed in wool; and patches of snow beyond among the
+clearer spaces of the Bush&mdash;everything cold, still, waiting for the sun.
+But nowhere a sign of the vanished guide&mdash;still, doubtless, flying at
+frantic speed through the frozen woods. There was not even the sound of
+disappearing footsteps, nor the echoes of the dying voice. He had
+gone&mdash;utterly.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing; nothing but the sense of his recent presence, so
+strongly left behind about the camp; <i>and</i>&mdash;this penetrating,
+all-pervading odor.</p>
+
+<p>And even this was now rapidly disappearing in its turn. In spite of his
+exceeding mental perturbation, Simpson struggled hard to detect its
+nature, and define it, but the ascertaining of an elusive scent, not
+recognized subconsciously and at once, is a very subtle operation of
+the mind. And he failed. It was gone before he could properly seize or
+name it. Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult,
+for it was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid rather, not unlike the odor
+of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not wholly unpleasing, with
+something almost sweet in it that reminded him of the scent of decaying
+garden leaves, earth, and the myriad, nameless perfumes that make up the
+odor of a big forest. Yet the &quot;odor of lions&quot; is the phrase with which
+he usually sums it all up.</p>
+
+<p>Then&mdash;it was wholly gone, and he found himself standing by the ashes of
+the fire in a state of amazement and stupid terror that left him the
+helpless prey of anything that chose to happen. Had a muskrat poked its
+pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled in that instant down
+the bark of a tree, he would most likely have collapsed without more ado
+and fainted. For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a
+great Outer Horror ... and his scattered powers had not as yet had time
+to collect themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-control.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing did happen, however. A great kiss of wind ran softly through the
+awakening forest, and a few maple leaves here and there rustled
+tremblingly to earth. The sky seemed to grow suddenly much lighter.
+Simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek and uncovered head; realized
+that he was shivering with the cold; and, making a great effort,
+realized next that he was alone in the Bush&mdash;<i>and</i> that he was called
+upon to take immediate steps to find and succor his vanished companion.</p>
+
+<p>Make an effort, accordingly, he did, though an ill-calculated and futile
+one. With that wilderness of trees about him, the sheet of water cutting
+him off behind, and the horror of that wild cry in his blood, he did
+what any other inexperienced man would have done in similar
+bewilderment: he ran about, without any sense of direction, like a
+frantic child, and called loudly without ceasing the name of the guide:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;D&eacute;fago! D&eacute;fago! D&eacute;fago!&quot; he yelled, and the trees gave him back the
+name as often as he shouted, only a little softened&mdash;&quot;D&eacute;fago! D&eacute;fago!
+D&eacute;fago!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He followed the trail that lay a short distance across the patches of
+snow, and then lost it again where the trees grew too thickly for snow
+to lie. He shouted till he was hoarse, and till the sound of his own
+voice in all that unanswering and listening world began to frighten him.
+His confusion increased in direct ratio to the violence of his efforts.
+His distress became formidably acute, till at length his exertions
+defeated their own object, and from sheer exhaustion he headed back to
+the camp again. It remains a wonder that he ever found his way. It was
+with great difficulty, and only after numberless false clues, that he at
+last saw the white tent between the trees, and so reached safety.</p>
+
+<p>Exhaustion then applied its own remedy, and he grew calmer. He made the
+fire and breakfasted. Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense and
+judgment into him again, and he realized that he had been behaving like
+a boy. He now made another, and more successful attempt to face the
+situation collectedly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to his
+assistance, he decided that he must first make as thorough a search as
+possible, failing success in which, he must find his way into the home
+camp as best he could and bring help.</p>
+
+<p>And this was what he did. Taking food, matches and rifle with him, and a
+small axe to blaze the trees against his return journey, he set forth.
+It was eight o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the tops of
+the trees in a sky without clouds. Pinned to a stake by the fire he left
+a note in case D&eacute;fago returned while he was away.</p>
+
+<p>This time, according to a careful plan, he took a new direction,
+intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or later cut into
+indications of the guide's trail; and, before he had gone a quarter of a
+mile he came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow, and beside
+it the light and smaller tracks of what were beyond question human
+feet&mdash;the feet of D&eacute;fago. The relief he at once experienced was natural,
+though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple
+explanation of the whole matter: these big marks had surely been left by
+a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, and
+uttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was
+apparent. D&eacute;fago, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the
+point of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the wind
+hours before. His excitement and disappearance were due, of course,
+to&mdash;to his&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Then the impossible explanation at which he grasped faded, as common
+sense showed him mercilessly that none of this was true. No guide, much
+less a guide like D&eacute;fago, could have acted in so irrational a way, going
+off even without his rifle ...! The whole affair demanded a far more
+complicated elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all&mdash;the
+cry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face of horror when his
+nostrils first caught the new odor; that muffled sobbing in the
+darkness, and&mdash;for this, too, now came back to him dimly&mdash;the man's
+original aversion for this particular bit of country....</p>
+
+<p>Besides, now that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks of
+a bull moose at all! Hank had explained to him the outline of a bull's
+hoofs, of a cow's or calf's, too, for that matter; he had drawn them
+clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were wholly different. They
+were big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs.
+He wondered for a moment whether bear tracks were like that. There was
+no other animal he could think of, for caribou did not come so far
+south at this season, and, even if they did, would leave hoof marks.</p>
+
+<p>They were ominous signs&mdash;these mysterious writings left in the snow by
+the unknown creature that had lured a human being away from safety&mdash;and
+when he coupled them in his imagination with that haunting sound that
+broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind,
+distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the <i>threatening</i> aspect of
+it all. And, stooping down to examine the marks more closely, he caught
+a faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odor that made him instantly
+straighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.</p>
+
+<p>Then his memory played him another evil trick. He suddenly recalled
+those uncovered feet projecting beyond the edge of the tent, and the
+body's appearance of having been dragged towards the opening; the man's
+shrinking from something by the door when he woke later. The details now
+beat against his trembling mind with concerted attack. They seemed to
+gather in those deep spaces of the silent forest about him, where the
+host of trees stood waiting, listening, watching to see what he would
+do. The woods were closing round him.</p>
+
+<p>With the persistence of true pluck, however, Simpson went forward,
+following the tracks as best he could, smothering these ugly emotions
+that sought to weaken his will. He blazed innumerable trees as he went,
+ever fearful of being unable to find the way back, and calling aloud at
+intervals of a few seconds the name of the guide. The dull tapping of
+the axe upon the massive trunks, and the unnatural accents of his own
+voice became at length sounds that he even dreaded to make, dreaded to
+hear. For they drew attention without ceasing to his presence and exact
+whereabouts, and if it were really the case that something was hunting
+himself down in the same way that he was hunting down another&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>With a strong effort, he crushed the thought out the instant it rose.
+It was the beginning, he realized, of a bewilderment utterly diabolical
+in kind that would speedily destroy him.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>Although the snow was not continuous, lying merely in shallow flurries
+over the more open spaces, he found no difficulty in following the
+tracks for the first few miles. They went straight as a ruled line
+wherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to increase in
+length, till it finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutely
+impossible for any ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps
+they became. One of these he measured, and though he knew that &quot;stretch&quot;
+of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was at a complete loss to
+understand why he found no signs on the snow between the extreme points.
+But what perplexed him even more, making him feel his vision had gone
+utterly awry, was that D&eacute;fago's stride increased in the same manner, and
+finally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as if the great
+beast had lifted him with it and carried him across these astonishing
+intervals. Simpson, who was much longer in the limb, found that he could
+not compass even half the stretch by taking a running jump.</p>
+
+<p>And the sight of these huge tracks, running side by side, silent
+evidence of a dreadful journey in which terror or madness had urged to
+impossible results, was profoundly moving. It shocked him in the secret
+depths of his soul. It was the most horrible thing his eyes had ever
+looked upon. He began to follow them mechanically, absentmindedly
+almost, ever peering over his shoulder to see if he, too, were being
+followed by something with a gigantic tread.... And soon it came about
+that he no longer quite realized what it was they signified&mdash;these
+impressions left upon the snow by something nameless and untamed, always
+accompanied by the footmarks of the little French Canadian, his guide,
+his comrade, the man who had shared his tent a few hours before,
+chatting, laughing, even singing by his side....</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="V"></a><h2>V</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>For a man of his years and inexperience, only a canny Scot, perhaps,
+grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have preserved
+even that measure of balance that this youth somehow or other did manage
+to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two things he
+presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him
+headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of only
+making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his
+heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way
+to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change,
+so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some
+undecipherable manner&mdash;appalling.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the bigger tracks he first noticed this, and for a long time
+he could not quite believe his eyes. Was it the blown leaves that
+produced odd effects of light and shade, or that the dry snow, drifting
+like finely ground rice about the edges, cast shadows and high lights?
+Or was it actually the fact that the great marks had become faintly
+colored? For round about the deep, plunging holes of the animal there
+now appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more like an effect of
+light than of anything that dyed the substance of the snow itself. Every
+mark had it, and had it increasingly&mdash;this indistinct fiery tinge that
+painted a new touch of ghastliness into the picture.</p>
+
+<p>But when, wholly unable to explain or to credit it, he turned his
+attention to the other tracks to discover if they, too, bore similar
+witness, he noticed that these had meanwhile undergone a change that was
+infinitely worse, and charged with far more horrible suggestion. For, in
+the last hundred yards or so, he saw that they had grown gradually into
+the semblance of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the change had come
+about, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see where the change first
+began. The result, however, was beyond question. Smaller, neater, more
+cleanly modeled, they formed now an exact and careful duplicate of the
+larger tracks beside them. The feet that produced them had, therefore,
+also changed. And something in his mind reared up with loathing and with
+terror as he saw it.</p>
+
+<p>Simpson, for the first time, hesitated; then, ashamed of his alarm and
+indecision, took a few hurried steps ahead; the next instant stopped
+dead in his tracks. Immediately in front of him all signs of the trail
+ceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for a hundred
+yards and more, he searched in vain for the least indication of their
+continuance. There was&mdash;nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The trees were very thick just there, big trees all of them, spruce,
+cedar, hemlock; there was no underbrush. He stood, looking about him,
+all distraught; bereft of any power of judgment. Then he set to work to
+search again, and again, and yet again, but always with the same result:
+<i>nothing</i>. The feet that printed the surface of the snow thus far had
+now, apparently, left the ground!</p>
+
+<p>And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip of
+terror laid its most nicely calculated lash about his heart. It dropped
+with deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving
+him. He had been secretly dreading all the time that it would come&mdash;and
+come it did.</p>
+
+<p>Far overhead, muted by great height and distance, strangely thinned and
+wailing, he heard the crying voice of D&eacute;fago, the guide.</p>
+
+<p>The sound dropped upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an effect
+of dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stood
+motionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, then
+staggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganized
+hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the
+most shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so that
+his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden
+draught.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! oh! This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire ...!&quot; ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this
+voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called&mdash;then silence through all
+the listening wilderness of trees.</p>
+
+<p>And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himself
+running wildly to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots and
+boulders, and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after
+the Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion with which
+experience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half-deranged,
+picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and
+heart and soul. For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him in
+that far voice&mdash;the Power of untamed Distance&mdash;the Enticement of the
+Desolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the pains of
+someone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust and
+travail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of D&eacute;fago, eternally
+hunted, driven and pursued across the skiey vastness of those ancient
+forests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his thoughts ...</p>
+
+<p>It seemed ages before he could find anything in the chaos of his
+disorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for a
+moment, and think ...</p>
+
+<p>The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling brought no response;
+the inscrutable forces of the Wild had summoned their victim beyond
+recall&mdash;and held him fast.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>Yet he searched and called, it seems, for hours afterwards, for it was
+late in the afternoon when at length he decided to abandon a useless
+pursuit and return to his camp on the shores of Fifty Island Water. Even
+then he went with reluctance, that crying voice still echoing in his
+ears. With difficulty he found his rifle and the homeward trail. The
+concentration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees, and a biting
+hunger that gnawed, helped to keep his mind steady. Otherwise, he
+admits, the temporary aberration he had suffered might have been
+prolonged to the point of positive disaster. Gradually the ballast
+shifted back again, and he regained something that approached his normal
+equilibrium.</p>
+
+<p>But for all that the journey through the gathering dusk was miserably
+haunted. He heard innumerable following footsteps; voices that laughed
+and whispered; and saw figures crouching behind trees and boulders,
+making signs to one another for a concerted attack the moment he had
+passed. The creeping murmur of the wind made him start and listen. He
+went stealthily, trying to hide where possible, and making as little
+sound as he could. The shadows of the woods, hitherto protective or
+covering merely, had now become menacing, challenging; and the pageantry
+in his frightened mind masked a host of possibilities that were all the
+more ominous for being obscure. The presentiment of a nameless doom
+lurked ill-concealed behind every detail of what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>It was really admirable how he emerged victor in the end; men of riper
+powers and experience might have come through the ordeal with less
+success. He had himself tolerably well in hand, all things considered,
+and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of the
+question and traveling an unknown trail in the darkness equally
+impracticable, he sat up the whole of that night, rifle in hand, before
+a fire he never for a single moment allowed to die down. The severity of
+the haunted vigil marked his soul for life; but it was successfully
+accomplished; and with the very first signs of dawn he set forth upon
+the long return journey to the home camp to get help. As before, he left
+a written note to explain his absence, and to indicate where he had left
+a plentiful <i>cache</i> of food and matches&mdash;though he had no expectation
+that any human hands would find them!</p>
+
+<p>How Simpson found his way alone by the lake and forest might well make a
+story in itself, for to hear him tell it is to <i>know</i> the passionate
+loneliness of soul that a man can feel when the Wilderness holds him in
+the hollow of its illimitable hand&mdash;and laughs. It is also to admire his
+indomitable pluck.</p>
+
+<p>He claims no skill, declaring that he followed the almost invisible
+trail mechanically, and without thinking. And this, doubtless, is the
+truth. He relied upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which is
+instinct. Perhaps, too, some sense of orientation, known to animals and
+primitive men, may have helped as well, for through all that tangled
+region he succeeded in reaching the exact spot where D&eacute;fago had hidden
+the canoe nearly three days before with the remark, &quot;Strike doo west
+across the lake into the sun to find the camp.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was not much sun left to guide him, but he used his compass to the
+best of his ability, embarking in the frail craft for the last twelve
+miles of his journey with a sensation of immense relief that the forest
+was at last behind him. And, fortunately, the water was calm; he took
+his line across the center of the lake instead of coasting round the
+shores for another twenty miles. Fortunately, too, the other hunters
+were back. The light of their fires furnished a steering point without
+which he might have searched all night long for the actual position of
+the camp.</p>
+
+<p>It was close upon midnight all the same when his canoe grated on the
+sandy cove, and Hank, Punk and his uncle, disturbed in their sleep by
+his cries, ran quickly down and helped a very exhausted and broken
+specimen of Scotch humanity over the rocks toward a dying fire.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="VI"></a><h2>VI</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The sudden entrance of his prosaic uncle into this world of wizardry
+and horror that had haunted him without interruption now for two days
+and two nights, had the immediate effect of giving to the affair an
+entirely new aspect. The sound of that crisp &quot;Hulloa, my boy! And what's
+up <i>now</i>?&quot; and the grasp of that dry and vigorous hand introduced
+another standard of judgment. A revulsion of feeling washed through him.
+He realized that he had let himself &quot;go&quot; rather badly. He even felt
+vaguely ashamed of himself. The native hard-headedness of his race
+reclaimed him.</p>
+
+<p>And this doubtless explains why he found it so hard to tell that group
+round the fire&mdash;everything. He told enough, however, for the immediate
+decision to be arrived at that a relief party must start at the earliest
+possible moment, and that Simpson, in order to guide it capably, must
+first have food and, above all, sleep. Dr. Cathcart observing the lad's
+condition more shrewdly than his patient knew, gave him a very slight
+injection of morphine. For six hours he slept like the dead.</p>
+
+<p>From the description carefully written out afterwards by this student of
+divinity, it appears that the account he gave to the astonished group
+omitted sundry vital and important details. He declares that, with his
+uncle's wholesome, matter-of-fact countenance staring him in the face,
+he simply had not the courage to mention them. Thus, all the search
+party gathered, it would seem, was that D&eacute;fago had suffered in the night
+an acute and inexplicable attack of mania, had imagined himself &quot;called&quot;
+by someone or something, and had plunged into the bush after it without
+food or rifle, where he must die a horrible and lingering death by cold
+and starvation unless he could be found and rescued in time. &quot;In time,&quot;
+moreover, meant <i>at once</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the following day, however&mdash;they were off by seven,
+leaving Punk in charge with instructions to have food and fire always
+ready&mdash;Simpson found it possible to tell his uncle a good deal more of
+the story's true inwardness, without divining that it was drawn out of
+him as a matter of fact by a very subtle form of cross examination. By
+the time they reached the beginning of the trail, where the canoe was
+laid up against the return journey, he had mentioned how D&eacute;fago spoke
+vaguely of &quot;something he called a 'Wendigo'&quot;; how he cried in his sleep;
+how he imagined an unusual scent about the camp; and had betrayed other
+symptoms of mental excitement. He also admitted the bewildering effect
+of &quot;that extraordinary odor&quot; upon himself, &quot;pungent and acrid like the
+odor of lions.&quot; And by the time they were within an easy hour of Fifty
+Island Water he had let slip the further fact&mdash;a foolish avowal of his
+own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards&mdash;that he had heard the
+vanished guide call &quot;for help.&quot; He omitted the singular phrases used,
+for he simply could not bring himself to repeat the preposterous
+language. Also, while describing how the man's footsteps in the snow had
+gradually assumed an exact miniature likeness of the animal's plunging
+tracks, he left out the fact that they measured a <i>wholly</i> incredible
+distance. It seemed a question, nicely balanced between individual pride
+and honesty, what he should reveal and what suppress. He mentioned the
+fiery tinge in the snow, for instance, yet shrank from telling that body
+and bed had been partly dragged out of the tent....</p>
+
+<p>With the net result that Dr. Cathcart, adroit psychologist that he
+fancied himself to be, had assured him clearly enough exactly where his
+mind, influenced by loneliness, bewilderment and terror, had yielded to
+the strain and invited delusion. While praising his conduct, he managed
+at the same time to point out where, when, and how his mind had gone
+astray. He made his nephew think himself finer than he was by judicious
+praise, yet more foolish than he was by minimizing the value of the
+evidence. Like many another materialist, that is, he lied cleverly on
+the basis of insufficient knowledge, <i>because</i> the knowledge supplied
+seemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The spell of these terrible solitudes,&quot; he said, &quot;cannot leave any mind
+untouched, any mind, that is, possessed of the higher imaginative
+qualities. It has worked upon yours exactly as it worked upon my own
+when I was your age. The animal that haunted your little camp was
+undoubtedly a moose, for the 'belling' of a moose may have, sometimes, a
+very peculiar quality of sound. The colored appearance of the big tracks
+was obviously a defect of vision in your own eyes produced by
+excitement. The size and stretch of the tracks we shall prove when we
+come to them. But the hallucination of an audible voice, of course, is
+one of the commonest forms of delusion due to mental excitement&mdash;an
+excitement, my dear boy, perfectly excusable, and, let me add,
+wonderfully controlled by you under the circumstances. For the rest, I
+am bound to say, you have acted with a splendid courage, for the terror
+of feeling oneself lost in this wilderness is nothing short of awful,
+and, had I been in your place, I don't for a moment believe I could have
+behaved with one quarter of your wisdom and decision. The only thing I
+find it uncommonly difficult to explain is&mdash;that&mdash;damned odor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It made me feel sick, I assure you,&quot; declared his nephew, &quot;positively
+dizzy!&quot; His uncle's attitude of calm omniscience, merely because he knew
+more psychological formulae, made him slightly defiant. It was so easy
+to be wise in the explanation of an experience one has not personally
+witnessed. &quot;A kind of desolate and terrible odor is the only way I can
+describe it,&quot; he concluded, glancing at the features of the quiet,
+unemotional man beside him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can only marvel,&quot; was the reply, &quot;that under the circumstances it did
+not seem to you even worse.&quot; The dry words, Simpson knew, hovered
+between the truth, and his uncle's interpretation of &quot;the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>And so at last they came to the little camp and found the tent still
+standing, the remains of the fire, and the piece of paper pinned to a
+stake beside it&mdash;untouched. The cache, poorly contrived by inexperienced
+hands, however, had been discovered and opened&mdash;by musk rats, mink and
+squirrel. The matches lay scattered about the opening, but the food had
+been taken to the last crumb.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, fellers, he ain't here,&quot; exclaimed Hank loudly after his fashion.
+&quot;And that's as sartain as the coal supply down below! But whar he's got
+to by this time is 'bout as unsartain as the trade in crowns in t'other
+place.&quot; The presence of a divinity student was no barrier to his
+language at such a time, though for the reader's sake it may be severely
+edited. &quot;I propose,&quot; he added, &quot;that we start out at once an' hunt for'm
+like hell!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The gloom of D&eacute;fago's probable fate oppressed the whole party with a
+sense of dreadful gravity the moment they saw the familiar signs of
+recent occupancy. Especially the tent, with the bed of balsam branches
+still smoothed and flattened by the pressure of his body, seemed to
+bring his presence near to them. Simpson, feeling vaguely as if his
+world were somehow at stake, went about explaining particulars in a
+hushed tone. He was much calmer now, though overwearied with the strain
+of his many journeys. His uncle's method of explaining&mdash;&quot;explaining
+away,&quot; rather&mdash;the details still fresh in his haunted memory helped,
+too, to put ice upon his emotions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And that's the direction he ran off in,&quot; he said to his two companions,
+pointing in the direction where the guide had vanished that morning in
+the grey dawn. &quot;Straight down there he ran like a deer, in between the
+birch and the hemlock....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hank and Dr. Cathcart exchanged glances.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And it was about two miles down there, in a straight line,&quot; continued
+the other, speaking with something of the former terror in his voice,
+&quot;that I followed his trail to the place where&mdash;it stopped&mdash;dead!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And where you heered him callin' an' caught the stench, an' all the
+rest of the wicked entertainment,&quot; cried Hank, with a volubility that
+betrayed his keen distress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And where your excitement overcame you to the point of producing
+illusions,&quot; added Dr. Cathcart under his breath, yet not so low that his
+nephew did not hear it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>It was early in the afternoon, for they had traveled quickly, and there
+were still a good two hours of daylight left. Dr. Cathcart and Hank lost
+no time in beginning the search, but Simpson was too exhausted to
+accompany them. They would follow the blazed marks on the trees, and
+where possible, his footsteps. Meanwhile the best thing he could do was
+to keep a good fire going, and rest.</p>
+
+<p>But after something like three hours' search, the darkness already down,
+the two men returned to camp with nothing to report. Fresh snow had
+covered all signs, and though they had followed the blazed trees to the
+spot where Simpson had turned back, they had not discovered the smallest
+indication of a human being&mdash;or for that matter, of an animal. There
+were no fresh tracks of any kind; the snow lay undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>It was difficult to know what was best to do, though in reality there
+was nothing more they <i>could</i> do. They might stay and search for weeks
+without much chance of success. The fresh snow destroyed their only
+hope, and they gathered round the fire for supper, a gloomy and
+despondent party. The facts, indeed, were sad enough, for D&eacute;fago had a
+wife at Rat Portage, and his earnings were the family's sole means of
+support.</p>
+
+<p>Now that the whole truth in all its ugliness was out, it seemed useless
+to deal in further disguise or pretense. They talked openly of the facts
+and probabilities. It was not the first time, even in the experience of
+Dr. Cathcart, that a man had yielded to the singular seduction of the
+Solitudes and gone out of his mind; D&eacute;fago, moreover, was predisposed to
+something of the sort, for he already had a touch of melancholia in his
+blood, and his fiber was weakened by bouts of drinking that often lasted
+for weeks at a time. Something on this trip&mdash;one might never know
+precisely what&mdash;had sufficed to push him over the line, that was all.
+And he had gone, gone off into the great wilderness of trees and lakes
+to die by starvation and exhaustion. The chances against his finding
+camp again were overwhelming; the delirium that was upon him would also
+doubtless have increased, and it was quite likely he might do violence
+to himself and so hasten his cruel fate. Even while they talked, indeed,
+the end had probably come. On the suggestion of Hank, his old pal,
+however, they proposed to wait a little longer and devote the whole of
+the following day, from dawn to darkness, to the most systematic search
+they could devise. They would divide the territory between them. They
+discussed their plan in great detail. All that men could do they would
+do. And, meanwhile, they talked about the particular form in which the
+singular Panic of the Wilderness had made its attack upon the mind of
+the unfortunate guide. Hank, though familiar with the legend in its
+general outline, obviously did not welcome the turn the conversation had
+taken. He contributed little, though that little was illuminating. For
+he admitted that a story ran over all this section of country to the
+effect that several Indians had &quot;seen the Wendigo&quot; along the shores of
+Fifty Island Water in the &quot;fall&quot; of last year, and that this was the
+true reason of D&eacute;fago's disinclination to hunt there. Hank doubtless
+felt that he had in a sense helped his old pal to death by
+overpersuading him. &quot;When an Indian goes crazy,&quot; he explained, talking
+to himself more than to the others, it seemed, &quot;it's always put that
+he's 'seen the Wendigo.' An' pore old D&eacute;faygo was superstitious down to
+he very heels ...!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then Simpson, feeling the atmosphere more sympathetic, told over
+again the full story of his astonishing tale; he left out no details
+this time; he mentioned his own sensations and gripping fears. He only
+omitted the strange language used.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But D&eacute;fago surely had already told you all these details of the Wendigo
+legend, my dear fellow,&quot; insisted the doctor. &quot;I mean, he had talked
+about it, and thus put into your mind the ideas which your own
+excitement afterwards developed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Simpson again repeated the facts. D&eacute;fago, he declared, had
+barely mentioned the beast. He, Simpson, knew nothing of the story, and,
+so far as he remembered, had never even read about it. Even the word was
+unfamiliar.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he was telling the truth, and Dr. Cathcart was reluctantly
+compelled to admit the singular character of the whole affair. He did
+not do this in words so much as in manner, however. He kept his back
+against a good, stout tree; he poked the fire into a blaze the moment it
+showed signs of dying down; he was quicker than any of them to notice
+the least sound in the night about them&mdash;a fish jumping in the lake, a
+twig snapping in the bush, the dropping of occasional fragments of
+frozen snow from the branches overhead where the heat loosened them. His
+voice, too, changed a little in quality, becoming a shade less
+confident, lower also in tone. Fear, to put it plainly, hovered close
+about that little camp, and though all three would have been glad to
+speak of other matters, the only thing they seemed able to discuss was
+this&mdash;the source of their fear. They tried other subjects in vain; there
+was nothing to say about them. Hank was the most honest of the group; he
+said next to nothing. He never once, however, turned his back to the
+darkness. His face was always to the forest, and when wood was needed he
+didn't go farther than was necessary to get it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="VII"></a><h2>VII</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>A wall of silence wrapped them in, for the snow, though not thick, was
+sufficient to deaden any noise, and the frost held things pretty tight
+besides. No sound but their voices and the soft roar of the flames made
+itself heard. Only, from time to time, something soft as the flutter of
+a pine moth's wings went past them through the air. No one seemed
+anxious to go to bed. The hours slipped towards midnight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The legend is picturesque enough,&quot; observed the doctor after one of the
+longer pauses, speaking to break it rather than because he had anything
+to say, &quot;for the Wendigo is simply the Call of the Wild personified,
+which some natures hear to their own destruction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's about it,&quot; Hank said presently. &quot;An' there's no misunderstandin'
+when you hear it. It calls you by name right 'nough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Another pause followed. Then Dr. Cathcart came back to the forbidden
+subject with a rush that made the others jump.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The allegory <i>is</i> significant,&quot; he remarked, looking about him into the
+darkness, &quot;for the Voice, they say, resembles all the minor sounds of
+the Bush&mdash;wind, falling water, cries of the animals, and so forth. And,
+once the victim hears <i>that</i>&mdash;he's off for good, of course! His most
+vulnerable points, moreover, are said to be the feet and the eyes; the
+feet, you see, for the lust of wandering, and the eyes for the lust of
+beauty. The poor beggar goes at such a dreadful speed that he bleeds
+beneath the eyes, and his feet burn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Cathcart, as he spoke, continued to peer uneasily into the
+surrounding gloom. His voice sank to a hushed tone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Wendigo,&quot; he added, &quot;is said to burn his feet&mdash;owing to the
+friction, apparently caused by its tremendous velocity&mdash;till they drop
+off, and new ones form exactly like its own.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Simpson listened in horrified amazement; but it was the pallor on Hank's
+face that fascinated him most. He would willingly have stopped his ears
+and closed his eyes, had he dared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It don't always keep to the ground neither,&quot; came in Hank's slow, heavy
+drawl, &quot;for it goes so high that he thinks the stars have set him all
+a-fire. An' it'll take great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an' run along the
+tops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an' then droppin' him
+jest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin'. An' its
+food, of all the muck in the whole Bush is&mdash;moss!&quot; And he laughed a
+short, unnatural laugh. &quot;It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo,&quot; he added,
+looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. &quot;Moss-eater,&quot; he
+repeated, with a string of the most outlandish oaths he could invent.</p>
+
+<p>But Simpson now understood the true purpose of all this talk. What
+these two men, each strong and &quot;experienced&quot; in his own way, dreaded
+more than anything else was&mdash;silence. They were talking against time.
+They were also talking against darkness, against the invasion of panic,
+against the admission reflection might bring that they were in an
+enemy's country&mdash;against anything, in fact, rather than allow their
+inmost thoughts to assume control. He himself, already initiated by the
+awful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He had
+reached the stage where he was immune. But these two, the scoffing,
+analytical doctor, and the honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sat
+trembling in the depths of his being.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the hours passed; and thus, with lowered voices and a kind of taut
+inner resistance of spirit, this little group of humanity sat in the
+jaws of the wilderness and talked foolishly of the terrible and haunting
+legend. It was an unequal contest, all things considered, for the
+wilderness had already the advantage of first attack&mdash;and of a hostage.
+The fate of their comrade hung over them with a steadily increasing
+weight of oppression that finally became insupportable.</p>
+
+<p>It was Hank, after a pause longer than the preceding ones that no one
+seemed able to break, who first let loose all this pent-up emotion in
+very unexpected fashion, by springing suddenly to his feet and letting
+out the most ear-shattering yell imaginable into the night. He could not
+contain himself any longer, it seemed. To make it carry even beyond an
+ordinary cry he interrupted its rhythm by shaking the palm of his hand
+before his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's for D&eacute;fago,&quot; he said, looking down at the other two with a
+queer, defiant laugh, &quot;for it's my belief&quot;&mdash;the sandwiched oaths may be
+omitted&mdash;&quot;that my ole partner's not far from us at this very minute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a vehemence and recklessness about his performance that made
+Simpson, too, start to his feet in amazement, and betrayed even the
+doctor into letting the pipe slip from between his lips. Hank's face was
+ghastly, but Cathcart's showed a sudden weakness&mdash;a loosening of all his
+faculties, as it were. Then a momentary anger blazed into his eyes, and
+he too, though with deliberation born of habitual self-control, got upon
+his feet and faced the excited guide. For this was unpermissible,
+foolish, dangerous, and he meant to stop it in the bud.</p>
+
+<p>What might have happened in the next minute or two one may speculate
+about, yet never definitely know, for in the instant of profound silence
+that followed Hank's roaring voice, and as though in answer to it,
+something went past through the darkness of the sky overhead at terrific
+speed&mdash;something of necessity very large, for it displaced much air,
+while down between the trees there fell a faint and windy cry of a human
+voice, calling in tones of indescribable anguish and appeal&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>White to the very edge of his shirt, Hank looked stupidly about him like
+a child. Dr. Cathcart uttered some kind of unintelligible cry, turning
+as he did so with an instinctive movement of blind terror towards the
+protection of the tent, then halting in the act as though frozen.
+Simpson, alone of the three, retained his presence of mind a little. His
+own horror was too deep to allow of any immediate reaction. He had heard
+that cry before.</p>
+
+<p>Turning to his stricken companions, he said almost calmly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's exactly the cry I heard&mdash;the very words he used!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then, lifting his face to the sky, he cried aloud, &quot;D&eacute;fago, D&eacute;fago! Come
+down here to us! Come down&mdash;!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And before there was time for anybody to take definite action one way or
+another, there came the sound of something dropping heavily between the
+trees, striking the branches on the way down, and landing with a
+dreadful thud upon the frozen earth below. The crash and thunder of it
+was really terrific.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's him, s'help me the good Gawd!&quot; came from Hank in a whispering
+cry half choked, his hand going automatically toward the hunting knife
+in his belt. &quot;And he's coming! He's coming!&quot; he added, with an
+irrational laugh of horror, as the sounds of heavy footsteps crunching
+over the snow became distinctly audible, approaching through the
+blackness towards the circle of light.</p>
+
+<p>And while the steps, with their stumbling motion, moved nearer and
+nearer upon them, the three men stood round that fire, motionless and
+dumb. Dr. Cathcart had the appearance of a man suddenly withered; even
+his eyes did not move. Hank, suffering shockingly, seemed on the verge
+again of violent action; yet did nothing. He, too, was hewn of stone.
+Like stricken children they seemed. The picture was hideous. And,
+meanwhile, their owner still invisible, the footsteps came closer,
+crunching the frozen snow. It was endless&mdash;too prolonged to be quite
+real&mdash;this measured and pitiless approach. It was accursed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="VIII"></a><h2>VIII</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Then at length the darkness, having thus laboriously conceived, brought
+forth&mdash;a figure. It drew forward into the zone of uncertain light where
+fire and shadows mingled, not ten feet away; then halted, staring at
+them fixedly. The same instant it started forward again with the
+spasmodic motion as of a thing moved by wires, and coming up closer to
+them, full into the glare of the fire, they perceived then that&mdash;it was
+a man; and apparently that this man was&mdash;D&eacute;fago.</p>
+
+<p>Something like a skin of horror almost perceptibly drew down in that
+moment over every face, and three pairs of eyes shone through it as
+though they saw across the frontiers of normal vision into the Unknown.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago advanced, his tread faltering and uncertain; he made his way
+straight up to them as a group first, then turned sharply and peered
+close into the face of Simpson. The sound of a voice issued from his
+lips&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here I am, Boss Simpson. I heered someone calling me.&quot; It was a faint,
+dried up voice, made wheezy and breathless as by immense exertion. &quot;I'm
+havin' a reg'lar hellfire kind of a trip, I am.&quot; And he laughed,
+thrusting his head forward into the other's face.</p>
+
+<p>But that laugh started the machinery of the group of waxwork figures
+with the wax-white skins. Hank immediately sprang forward with a stream
+of oaths so farfetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English at
+all, but thought he had lapsed into Indian or some other lingo. He only
+realized that Hank's presence, thrust thus between them, was
+welcome&mdash;uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly and
+leisurely, advanced behind him, heavily stumbling.</p>
+
+<p>Simpson seems hazy as to what was actually said and done in those next
+few seconds, for the eyes of that detestable and blasted visage peering
+at such close quarters into his own utterly bewildered his senses at
+first. He merely stood still. He said nothing. He had not the trained
+will of the older men that forced them into action in defiance of all
+emotional stress. He watched them moving as behind a glass that half
+destroyed their reality; it was dreamlike; perverted. Yet, through the
+torrent of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing his uncle's
+tone of authority&mdash;hard and forced&mdash;saying several things about food and
+warmth, blankets, whisky and the rest ... and, further, that whiffs of
+that penetrating, unaccustomed odor, vile yet sweetly bewildering,
+assailed his nostrils during all that followed.</p>
+
+<p>It was no less a person than himself, however&mdash;less experienced and
+adroit than the others though he was&mdash;who gave instinctive utterance to
+the sentence that brought a measure of relief into the ghastly situation
+by expressing the doubt and thought in each one's heart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It <i>is</i>&mdash;YOU, isn't it, D&eacute;fago?&quot; he asked under his breath, horror
+breaking his speech.</p>
+
+<p>And at once Cathcart burst out with the loud answer before the other had
+time to move his lips. &quot;Of course it is! Of course it is! Only&mdash;can't
+you see&mdash;he's nearly dead with exhaustion, cold and terror! Isn't <i>that</i>
+enough to change a man beyond all recognition?&quot; It was said in order to
+convince himself as much as to convince the others. The overemphasis
+alone proved that. And continually, while he spoke and acted, he held a
+handkerchief to his nose. That odor pervaded the whole camp.</p>
+
+<p>For the &quot;D&eacute;fago&quot; who sat huddled by the big fire, wrapped in blankets,
+drinking hot whisky and holding food in wasted hands, was no more like
+the guide they had last seen alive than the picture of a man of sixty is
+like a daguerreotype of his early youth in the costume of another
+generation. Nothing really can describe that ghastly caricature, that
+parody, masquerading there in the firelight as D&eacute;fago. From the ruins of
+the dark and awful memories he still retains, Simpson declares that the
+face was more animal than human, the features drawn about into wrong
+proportions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had been subjected
+to extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely of
+those bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that change
+their expression as they swell, and as they collapse emit a faint and
+wailing imitation of a voice. Both face and voice suggested some such
+abominable resemblance. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking to
+describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a face
+and body that had been in air so rarified that, the weight of atmosphere
+being removed, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder and
+become&mdash;<i>incoherent</i>....</p>
+
+<p>It was Hank, though all distraught and shaking with a tearing volume of
+emotion he could neither handle nor understand, who brought things to a
+head without much ado. He went off to a little distance from the fire,
+apparently so that the light should not dazzle him too much, and shading
+his eyes for a moment with both hands, shouted in a loud voice that held
+anger and affection dreadfully mingled:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ain't D&eacute;faygo! You ain't D&eacute;faygo at all! I don't give a&mdash;damn, but
+that ain't you, my ole pal of twenty years!&quot; He glared upon the huddled
+figure as though he would destroy him with his eyes. &quot;An' if it is I'll
+swab the floor of hell with a wad of cotton wool on a toothpick, s'help
+me the good Gawd!&quot; he added, with a violent fling of horror and disgust.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible to silence him. He stood there shouting like one
+possessed, horrible to see, horrible to hear&mdash;<i>because it was the
+truth</i>. He repeated himself in fifty different ways, each more
+outlandish than the last. The woods rang with echoes. At one time it
+looked as if he meant to fling himself upon &quot;the intruder,&quot; for his hand
+continually jerked towards the long hunting knife in his belt.</p>
+
+<p>But in the end he did nothing, and the whole tempest completed itself
+very shortly with tears. Hank's voice suddenly broke, he collapsed on
+the ground, and Cathcart somehow or other persuaded him at last to go
+into the tent and lie quiet. The remainder of the affair, indeed, was
+witnessed by him from behind the canvas, his white and terrified face
+peeping through the crack of the tent door flap.</p>
+
+<p>Then Dr. Cathcart, closely followed by his nephew who so far had kept
+his courage better than all of them, went up with a determined air and
+stood opposite to the figure of D&eacute;fago huddled over the fire. He looked
+him squarely in the face and spoke. At first his voice was firm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;D&eacute;fago, tell us what's happened&mdash;just a little, so that we can know
+how best to help you?&quot; he asked in a tone of authority, almost of
+command. And at that point, it <i>was</i> command. At once afterwards,
+however, it changed in quality, for the figure turned up to him a face
+so piteous, so terrible and so little like humanity, that the doctor
+shrank back from him as from something spiritually unclean. Simpson,
+watching close behind him, says he got the impression of a mask that was
+on the verge of dropping off, and that underneath they would discover
+something black and diabolical, revealed in utter nakedness. &quot;Out with
+it, man, out with it!&quot; Cathcart cried, terror running neck and neck with
+entreaty. &quot;None of us can stand this much longer ...!&quot; It was the cry of
+instinct over reason.</p>
+
+<p>And then &quot;D&eacute;fago,&quot; smiling <i>whitely</i>, answered in that thin and fading
+voice that already seemed passing over into a sound of quite another
+character&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I seen that great Wendigo thing,&quot; he whispered, sniffing the air about
+him exactly like an animal. &quot;I been with it too&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whether the poor devil would have said more, or whether Dr. Cathcart
+would have continued the impossible cross examination cannot be known,
+for at that moment the voice of Hank was heard yelling at the top of his
+voice from behind the canvas that concealed all but his terrified eyes.
+Such a howling was never heard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His feet! Oh, Gawd, his feet! Look at his great changed&mdash;feet!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;fago, shuffling where he sat, had moved in such a way that for the
+first time his legs were in full light and his feet were visible. Yet
+Simpson had no time, himself, to see properly what Hank had seen. And
+Hank has never seen fit to tell. That same instant, with a leap like
+that of a frightened tiger, Cathcart was upon him, bundling the folds of
+blanket about his legs with such speed that the young student caught
+little more than a passing glimpse of something dark and oddly massed
+where moccasined feet ought to have been, and saw even that but with
+uncertain vision.</p>
+
+<p>Then, before the doctor had time to do more, or Simpson time to even
+think a question, much less ask it, D&eacute;fago was standing upright in front
+of them, balancing with pain and difficulty, and upon his shapeless and
+twisted visage an expression so dark and so malicious that it was, in
+the true sense, monstrous.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now <i>you</i> seen it too,&quot; he wheezed, &quot;you seen my fiery, burning feet!
+And now&mdash;that is, unless you kin save me an' prevent&mdash;it's 'bout time
+for&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His piteous and beseeching voice was interrupted by a sound that was
+like the roar of wind coming across the lake. The trees overhead shook
+their tangled branches. The blazing fire bent its flames as before a
+blast. And something swept with a terrific, rushing noise about the
+little camp and seemed to surround it entirely in a single moment of
+time. D&eacute;fago shook the clinging blankets from his body, turned towards
+the woods behind, and with the same stumbling motion that had brought
+him&mdash;was gone: gone, before anyone could move muscle to prevent him,
+gone with an amazing, blundering swiftness that left no time to act. The
+darkness positively swallowed him; and less than a dozen seconds later,
+above the roar of the swaying trees and the shout of the sudden wind,
+all three men, watching and listening with stricken hearts, heard a cry
+that seemed to drop down upon them from a great height of sky and
+distance&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire ...!&quot; then died away, into untold space and silence.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Cathcart&mdash;suddenly master of himself, and therefore of the
+others&mdash;was just able to seize Hank violently by the arm as he tried to
+dash headlong into the Bush.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I want ter know,&mdash;you!&quot; shrieked the guide. &quot;I want ter see! That
+ain't him at all, but some&mdash;devil that's shunted into his place ...!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Somehow or other&mdash;he admits he never quite knew how he accomplished
+it&mdash;he managed to keep him in the tent and pacify him. The doctor,
+apparently, had reached the stage where reaction had set in and allowed
+his own innate force to conquer. Certainly he &quot;managed&quot; Hank admirably.
+It was his nephew, however, hitherto so wonderfully controlled, who gave
+him most cause for anxiety, for the cumulative strain had now produced a
+condition of lachrymose hysteria which made it necessary to isolate him
+upon a bed of boughs and blankets as far removed from Hank as was
+possible under the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>And there he lay, as the watches of that haunted night passed over the
+lonely camp, crying startled sentences, and fragments of sentences, into
+the folds of his blanket. A quantity of gibberish about speed and height
+and fire mingled oddly with biblical memories of the classroom. &quot;People
+with broken faces all on fire are coming at a most awful, awful, pace
+towards the camp!&quot; he would moan one minute; and the next would sit up
+and stare into the woods, intently listening, and whisper, &quot;How terrible
+in the wilderness are&mdash;are the feet of them that&mdash;&quot; until his uncle came
+across to change the direction of his thoughts and comfort him.</p>
+
+<p>The hysteria, fortunately, proved but temporary. Sleep cured him, just
+as it cured Hank.</p>
+
+<p>Till the first signs of daylight came, soon after five o'clock, Dr.
+Cathcart kept his vigil. His face was the color of chalk, and there were
+strange flushes beneath the eyes. An appalling terror of the soul
+battled with his will all through those silent hours. These were some of
+the outer signs ...</p>
+
+<p>At dawn he lit the fire himself, made breakfast, and woke the others,
+and by seven they were well on their way back to the home camp&mdash;three
+perplexed and afflicted men, but each in his own way having reduced his
+inner turmoil to a condition of more or less systematized order again.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="IX"></a><h2>IX</h2>
+<br>
+
+
+<p>They talked little, and then only of the most wholesome and common
+things, for their minds were charged with painful thoughts that
+clamoured for explanation, though no one dared refer to them. Hank,
+being nearest to primitive conditions, was the first to find himself,
+for he was also less complex. In Dr. Cathcart "civilization" championed
+his forces against an attack singular enough. To this day, perhaps, he
+is not <i>quite</i> sure of certain things. Anyhow, he took longer to "find
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions
+probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order.
+Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely
+witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that
+had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically,
+betraying a scale of life still monstrous and immature. He envisaged it
+rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic
+and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men; when the forces of nature
+were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe
+not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later
+in a sermon "savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of
+men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity
+as it exists."</p>
+
+<p>With his uncle he never discussed the matter in detail, for the barrier
+between the two types of mind made it difficult. Only once, years later,
+something led them to the frontier of the subject&mdash;of a single detail of
+the subject, rather&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you even tell me what&mdash;<i>they</i> were like?" he asked; and the reply,
+though conceived in wisdom, was not encouraging, "It is far better you
+should not try to know, or to find out."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;that odour...?" persisted the nephew. "What do you make of that?"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Cathcart looked at him and raised his eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"Odours," he replied, "are not so easy as sounds and sights of telepathic
+communication. I make as much, or as little, probably, as you do
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>He was not quite so glib as usual with his explanations. That was all.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>At the fall of day, cold, exhausted, famished, the party came to the
+end of the long portage and dragged themselves into a camp that at
+first glimpse seemed empty. Fire there was none, and no Punk came
+forward to welcome them. The emotional capacity of all three was too
+over-spent to recognize either surprise or annoyance; but the cry of
+spontaneous affection that burst from the lips of Hank, as he rushed
+ahead of them towards the fire-place, came probably as a warning that
+the end of the amazing affair was not quite yet. And both Cathcart and
+his nephew confessed afterwards that when they saw him kneel down in
+his excitement and embrace something that reclined, gently moving,
+beside the extinguished ashes, they felt in their very bones that this
+"something" would prove to be D&eacute;fago&mdash;the true D&eacute;fago, returned.</p>
+
+<p>And so, indeed, it was.</p>
+
+<p>It is soon told. Exhausted to the point of emaciation, the French
+Canadian&mdash;what was left of him, that is&mdash;fumbled among the ashes, trying
+to make a fire. His body crouched there, the weak fingers obeying feebly
+the instinctive habit of a lifetime with twigs and matches. But there
+was no longer any mind to direct the simple operation. The mind had
+fled beyond recall. And with it, too, had fled memory. Not only recent
+events, but all previous life was a blank.</p>
+
+<p>This time it was the real man, though incredibly and horribly shrunken.
+On his face was no expression of any kind whatever&mdash;fear, welcome, or
+recognition. He did not seem to know who it was that embraced him, or
+who it was that fed, warmed and spoke to him the words of comfort and
+relief. Forlorn and broken beyond all reach of human aid, the little man
+did meekly as he was bidden. The "something" that had constituted him
+"individual" had vanished for ever.</p>
+
+<p>In some ways it was more terribly moving than anything they had yet
+seen&mdash;that idiot smile as he drew wads of coarse moss from his swollen
+cheeks and told them that he was "a damned moss-eater"; the continued
+vomiting of even the simplest food; and, worst of all, the piteous
+and childish voice of complaint in which he told them that his feet
+pained him&mdash;"burn like fire"&mdash;which was natural enough when Dr. Cathcart
+examined them and found that both were dreadfully frozen. Beneath the
+eyes there were faint indications of recent bleeding.</p>
+
+<p>The details of how he survived the prolonged exposure, of where he had
+been, or of how he covered the great distance from one camp to the
+other, including an immense detour of the lake on foot since he had
+no canoe&mdash;all this remains unknown. His memory had vanished completely.
+And before the end of the winter whose beginning witnessed this strange
+occurrence, D&eacute;fago, bereft of mind, memory and soul, had gone with it.
+He lingered only a few weeks.</p>
+
+<p>And what Punk was able to contribute to the story throws no further
+light upon it. He was cleaning fish by the lake shore about five o'clock
+in the evening&mdash;an hour, that is, before the search party returned&mdash;when
+he saw this shadow of the guide picking its way weakly into camp. In
+advance of him, he declares, came the faint whiff of a certain singular
+odour.</p>
+
+<p>That same instant old Punk started for home. He covered the entire
+journey of three days as only Indian blood could have covered it. The
+terror of a whole race drove him. He knew what it all meant. D&eacute;fago
+had "seen the Wendigo."</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wendigo
+
+Author: Algernon Blackwood
+
+Release Date: January 31, 2004 [EBook #10897]
+[Last updated: March 10, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WENDIGO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Dave Morgan and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WENDIGO
+
+Algernon Blackwood
+
+1910
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year without
+finding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, and
+the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective families
+with the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr.
+Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he brought
+instead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all the
+bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, was
+interested in other things besides moose--amongst them the vagaries of
+the human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in his
+book on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confided
+once to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a part
+in it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole....
+
+Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson, his
+nephew, a divinity student destined for the "Wee Kirk" (then on his
+first visit to Canadian backwoods), and the latter's guide, Defago.
+Joseph Defago was a French "Canuck," who had strayed from his native
+Province of Quebec years before, and had got caught in Rat Portage when
+the Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who, in addition to
+his unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore, could also sing
+the old _voyageur_ songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into the
+bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spell
+which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved the
+wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to
+an obsession. The life of the backwoods fascinated him--whence,
+doubtless, his surpassing efficiency in dealing with their mysteries.
+
+On this particular expedition he was Hank's choice. Hank knew him and
+swore by him. He also swore at him, "jest as a pal might," and since he
+had a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless, oaths, the
+conversation between the two stalwart and hardy woodsmen was often of a
+rather lively description. This river of expletives, however, Hank
+agreed to dam a little out of respect for his old "hunting boss," Dr.
+Cathcart, whom of course he addressed after the fashion of the country
+as "Doc," and also because he understood that young Simpson was already
+a "bit of a parson." He had, however, one objection to Defago, and one
+only--which was, that the French Canadian sometimes exhibited what Hank
+described as "the output of a cursed and dismal mind," meaning
+apparently that he sometimes was true to type, Latin type, and suffered
+fits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing could induce him to
+utter speech. Defago, that is to say, was imaginative and melancholy.
+And, as a rule, it was too long a spell of "civilization" that induced
+the attacks, for a few days of the wilderness invariably cured them.
+
+This, then, was the party of four that found themselves in camp the last
+week in October of that "shy moose year" 'way up in the wilderness north
+of Rat Portage--a forsaken and desolate country. There was also Punk, an
+Indian, who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their hunting trips
+in previous years, and who acted as cook. His duty was merely to stay in
+camp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks and coffee at a few
+minutes' notice. He dressed in the worn-out clothes bequeathed to him by
+former patrons, and, except for his coarse black hair and dark skin, he
+looked in these city garments no more like a real redskin than a stage
+Negro looks like a real African. For all that, however, Punk had in him
+still the instincts of his dying race; his taciturn silence and his
+endurance survived; also his superstition.
+
+The party round the blazing fire that night were despondent, for a week
+had passed without a single sign of recent moose discovering itself.
+Defago had sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank, in bad
+humor, reminded him so often that "he kep' mussing-up the fac's so, that
+it was 'most all nothin' but a petered-out lie," that the Frenchman had
+finally subsided into a sulky silence which nothing seemed likely to
+break. Dr. Cathcart and his nephew were fairly done after an exhausting
+day. Punk was washing up the dishes, grunting to himself under the
+lean-to of branches, where he later also slept. No one troubled to stir
+the slowly dying fire. Overhead the stars were brilliant in a sky quite
+wintry, and there was so little wind that ice was already forming
+stealthily along the shores of the still lake behind them. The silence
+of the vast listening forest stole forward and enveloped them.
+
+Hank broke in suddenly with his nasal voice.
+
+"I'm in favor of breaking new ground tomorrow, Doc," he observed with
+energy, looking across at his employer. "We don't stand a dead Dago's
+chance around here."
+
+"Agreed," said Cathcart, always a man of few words. "Think the idea's
+good."
+
+"Sure pop, it's good," Hank resumed with confidence. "S'pose, now, you
+and I strike west, up Garden Lake way for a change! None of us ain't
+touched that quiet bit o' land yet--"
+
+"I'm with you."
+
+"And you, Defago, take Mr. Simpson along in the small canoe, skip across
+the lake, portage over into Fifty Island Water, and take a good squint
+down that thar southern shore. The moose 'yarded' there like hell last
+year, and for all we know they may be doin' it agin this year jest to
+spite us."
+
+Defago, keeping his eyes on the fire, said nothing by way of reply. He
+was still offended, possibly, about his interrupted story.
+
+"No one's been up that way this year, an' I'll lay my bottom dollar on
+_that!_" Hank added with emphasis, as though he had a reason for
+knowing. He looked over at his partner sharply. "Better take the little
+silk tent and stay away a couple o' nights," he concluded, as though the
+matter were definitely settled. For Hank was recognized as general
+organizer of the hunt, and in charge of the party.
+
+It was obvious to anyone that Defago did not jump at the plan, but his
+silence seemed to convey something more than ordinary disapproval, and
+across his sensitive dark face there passed a curious expression like a
+flash of firelight--not so quickly, however, that the three men had not
+time to catch it.
+
+"He funked for some reason, _I_ thought," Simpson said afterwards in the
+tent he shared with his uncle. Dr. Cathcart made no immediate reply,
+although the look had interested him enough at the time for him to make
+a mental note of it. The expression had caused him a passing uneasiness
+he could not quite account for at the moment.
+
+But Hank, of course, had been the first to notice it, and the odd thing
+was that instead of becoming explosive or angry over the other's
+reluctance, he at once began to humor him a bit.
+
+"But there ain't no _speshul_ reason why no one's been up there this
+year," he said with a perceptible hush in his tone; "not the reason you
+mean, anyway! Las' year it was the fires that kep' folks out, and this
+year I guess--I guess it jest happened so, that's all!" His manner was
+clearly meant to be encouraging.
+
+Joseph Defago raised his eyes a moment, then dropped them again. A
+breath of wind stole out of the forest and stirred the embers into a
+passing blaze. Dr. Cathcart again noticed the expression in the guide's
+face, and again he did not like it. But this time the nature of the look
+betrayed itself. In those eyes, for an instant, he caught the gleam of a
+man scared in his very soul. It disquieted him more than he cared to
+admit.
+
+"Bad Indians up that way?" he asked, with a laugh to ease matters a
+little, while Simpson, too sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, moved
+off to bed with a prodigious yawn; "or--or anything wrong with the
+country?" he added, when his nephew was out of hearing.
+
+Hank met his eye with something less than his usual frankness.
+
+"He's jest skeered," he replied good-humouredly. "Skeered stiff about
+some ole feery tale! That's all, ain't it, ole pard?" And he gave Defago
+a friendly kick on the moccasined foot that lay nearest the fire.
+
+Defago looked up quickly, as from an interrupted reverie, a reverie,
+however, that had not prevented his seeing all that went on about him.
+
+"Skeered--_nuthin'!_" he answered, with a flush of defiance. "There's
+nuthin' in the Bush that can skeer Joseph Defago, and don't you forget
+it!" And the natural energy with which he spoke made it impossible to
+know whether he told the whole truth or only a part of it.
+
+Hank turned towards the doctor. He was just going to add something when
+he stopped abruptly and looked round. A sound close behind them in the
+darkness made all three start. It was old Punk, who had moved up from
+his lean-to while they talked and now stood there just beyond the circle
+of firelight--listening.
+
+"'Nother time, Doc!" Hank whispered, with a wink, "when the gallery
+ain't stepped down into the stalls!" And, springing to his feet, he
+slapped the Indian on the back and cried noisily, "Come up t' the fire
+an' warm yer dirty red skin a bit." He dragged him towards the blaze and
+threw more wood on. "That was a mighty good feed you give us an hour or
+two back," he continued heartily, as though to set the man's thoughts on
+another scent, "and it ain't Christian to let you stand out there
+freezin' yer ole soul to hell while we're gettin' all good an' toasted!"
+Punk moved in and warmed his feet, smiling darkly at the other's
+volubility which he only half understood, but saying nothing. And
+presently Dr. Cathcart, seeing that further conversation was impossible,
+followed his nephew's example and moved off to the tent, leaving the
+three men smoking over the now blazing fire.
+
+It is not easy to undress in a small tent without waking one's
+companion, and Cathcart, hardened and warm-blooded as he was in spite of
+his fifty odd years, did what Hank would have described as "considerable
+of his twilight" in the open. He noticed, during the process, that Punk
+had meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, and that Hank and Defago were
+at it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammer and anvil, the little French
+Canadian being the anvil. It was all very like the conventional stage
+picture of Western melodrama: the fire lighting up their faces with
+patches of alternate red and black; Defago, in slouch hat and moccasins
+in the part of the "badlands" villain; Hank, open-faced and hatless,
+with that reckless fling of his shoulders, the honest and deceived hero;
+and old Punk, eavesdropping in the background, supplying the atmosphere
+of mystery. The doctor smiled as he noticed the details; but at the same
+time something deep within him--he hardly knew what--shrank a little, as
+though an almost imperceptible breath of warning had touched the surface
+of his soul and was gone again before he could seize it. Probably it was
+traceable to that "scared expression" he had seen in the eyes of Defago;
+"probably"--for this hint of fugitive emotion otherwise escaped his
+usually so keen analysis. Defago, he was vaguely aware, might cause
+trouble somehow ...He was not as steady a guide as Hank, for
+instance ... Further than that he could not get ...
+
+He watched the men a moment longer before diving into the stuffy tent
+where Simpson already slept soundly. Hank, he saw, was swearing like a
+mad African in a New York nigger saloon; but it was the swearing of
+"affection." The ridiculous oaths flew freely now that the cause of
+their obstruction was asleep. Presently he put his arm almost tenderly
+upon his comrade's shoulder, and they moved off together into the
+shadows where their tent stood faintly glimmering. Punk, too, a moment
+later followed their example and disappeared between his odorous
+blankets in the opposite direction.
+
+Dr. Cathcart then likewise turned in, weariness and sleep still fighting
+in his mind with an obscure curiosity to know what it was that had
+scared Defago about the country up Fifty Island Water way,--wondering,
+too, why Punk's presence had prevented the completion of what Hank had
+to say. Then sleep overtook him. He would know tomorrow. Hank would tell
+him the story while they trudged after the elusive moose.
+
+Deep silence fell about the little camp, planted there so audaciously in
+the jaws of the wilderness. The lake gleamed like a sheet of black glass
+beneath the stars. The cold air pricked. In the draughts of night that
+poured their silent tide from the depths of the forest, with messages
+from distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze, there lay
+already the faint, bleak odors of coming winter. White men, with their
+dull scent, might never have divined them; the fragrance of the wood
+fire would have concealed from them these almost electrical hints of
+moss and bark and hardening swamp a hundred miles away. Even Hank and
+Defago, subtly in league with the soul of the woods as they were, would
+probably have spread their delicate nostrils in vain....
+
+But an hour later, when all slept like the dead, old Punk crept from his
+blankets and went down to the shore of the lake like a shadow--silently,
+as only Indian blood can move. He raised his head and looked about him.
+The thick darkness rendered sight of small avail, but, like the animals,
+he possessed other senses that darkness could not mute. He
+listened--then sniffed the air. Motionless as a hemlock stem he stood
+there. After five minutes again he lifted his head and sniffed, and yet
+once again. A tingling of the wonderful nerves that betrayed itself by
+no outer sign, ran through him as he tasted the keen air. Then, merging
+his figure into the surrounding blackness in a way that only wild men
+and animals understand, he turned, still moving like a shadow, and went
+stealthily back to his lean-to and his bed.
+
+And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirred
+gently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising among the far
+ridges of the country beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from the
+direction in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleeping camp
+with a faint and sighing murmur through the tops of the big trees that
+was almost too delicate to be audible. With it, down the desert paths of
+night, though too faint, too high even for the Indian's hair-like
+nerves, there passed a curious, thin odor, strangely disquieting, an
+odor of something that seemed unfamiliar--utterly unknown.
+
+The French Canadian and the man of Indian blood each stirred uneasily in
+his sleep just about this time, though neither of them woke. Then the
+ghost of that unforgettably strange odor passed away and was lost among
+the leagues of tenantless forest beyond.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+In the morning the camp was astir before the sun. There had been a
+light fall of snow during the night and the air was sharp. Punk had done
+his duty betimes, for the odors of coffee and fried bacon reached every
+tent. All were in good spirits.
+
+"Wind's shifted!" cried Hank vigorously, watching Simpson and his guide
+already loading the small canoe. "It's across the lake--dead right for
+you fellers. And the snow'll make bully trails! If there's any moose
+mussing around up thar, they'll not get so much as a tail-end scent of
+you with the wind as it is. Good luck, Monsieur Defago!" he added,
+facetiously giving the name its French pronunciation for once, "_bonne
+chance!_"
+
+Defago returned the good wishes, apparently in the best of spirits, the
+silent mood gone. Before eight o'clock old Punk had the camp to
+himself, Cathcart and Hank were far along the trail that led westwards,
+while the canoe that carried Defago and Simpson, with silk tent and grub
+for two days, was already a dark speck bobbing on the bosom of the lake,
+going due east.
+
+The wintry sharpness of the air was tempered now by a sun that topped
+the wooded ridges and blazed with a luxurious warmth upon the world of
+lake and forest below; loons flew skimming through the sparkling spray
+that the wind lifted; divers shook their dripping heads to the sun and
+popped smartly out of sight again; and as far as eye could reach rose
+the leagues of endless, crowding Bush, desolate in its lonely sweep and
+grandeur, untrodden by foot of man, and stretching its mighty and
+unbroken carpet right up to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay.
+
+Simpson, who saw it all for the first time as he paddled hard in the
+bows of the dancing canoe, was enchanted by its austere beauty. His
+heart drank in the sense of freedom and great spaces just as his lungs
+drank in the cool and perfumed wind. Behind him in the stern seat,
+singing fragments of his native chanties, Defago steered the craft of
+birch bark like a thing of life, answering cheerfully all his
+companion's questions. Both were gay and light-hearted. On such
+occasions men lose the superficial, worldly distinctions; they become
+human beings working together for a common end. Simpson, the employer,
+and Defago the employed, among these primitive forces, were simply--two
+men, the "guider" and the "guided." Superior knowledge, of course,
+assumed control, and the younger man fell without a second thought into
+the quasi-subordinate position. He never dreamed of objecting when
+Defago dropped the "Mr.," and addressed him as "Say, Simpson," or
+"Simpson, boss," which was invariably the case before they reached the
+farther shore after a stiff paddle of twelve miles against a head wind.
+He only laughed, and liked it; then ceased to notice it at all.
+
+For this "divinity student" was a young man of parts and character,
+though as yet, of course, untraveled; and on this trip--the first time
+he had seen any country but his own and little Switzerland--the huge
+scale of things somewhat bewildered him. It was one thing, he realized,
+to hear about primeval forests, but quite another to see them. While to
+dwell in them and seek acquaintance with their wild life was, again, an
+initiation that no intelligent man could undergo without a certain
+shifting of personal values hitherto held for permanent and sacred.
+
+Simpson knew the first faint indication of this emotion when he held the
+new. 303 rifle in his hands and looked along its pair of faultless,
+gleaming barrels. The three days' journey to their headquarters, by lake
+and portage, had carried the process a stage farther. And now that he
+was about to plunge beyond even the fringe of wilderness where they were
+camped into the virgin heart of uninhabited regions as vast as Europe
+itself, the true nature of the situation stole upon him with an effect
+of delight and awe that his imagination was fully capable of
+appreciating. It was himself and Defago against a multitude--at least,
+against a Titan!
+
+The bleak splendors of these remote and lonely forests rather
+overwhelmed him with the sense of his own littleness. That stern quality
+of the tangled backwoods which can only be described as merciless and
+terrible, rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon,
+and revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized his
+own utter helplessness. Only Defago, as a symbol of a distant
+civilization where man was master, stood between him and a pitiless
+death by exhaustion and starvation.
+
+It was thrilling to him, therefore, to watch Defago turn over the canoe
+upon the shore, pack the paddles carefully underneath, and then proceed
+to "blaze" the spruce stems for some distance on either side of an
+almost invisible trail, with the careless remark thrown in, "Say,
+Simpson, if anything happens to me, you'll find the canoe all correc' by
+these marks;--then strike doo west into the sun to hit the home camp
+agin, see?"
+
+It was the most natural thing in the world to say, and he said it
+without any noticeable inflexion of the voice, only it happened to
+express the youth's emotions at the moment with an utterance that was
+symbolic of the situation and of his own helplessness as a factor in it.
+He was alone with Defago in a primitive world: that was all. The canoe,
+another symbol of man's ascendancy, was now to be left behind. Those
+small yellow patches, made on the trees by the axe, were the only
+indications of its hiding place.
+
+Meanwhile, shouldering the packs between them, each man carrying his own
+rifle, they followed the slender trail over rocks and fallen trunks and
+across half-frozen swamps; skirting numerous lakes that fairly gemmed
+the forest, their borders fringed with mist; and towards five o'clock
+found themselves suddenly on the edge of the woods, looking out across a
+large sheet of water in front of them, dotted with pine-clad islands of
+all describable shapes and sizes.
+
+"Fifty Island Water," announced Defago wearily, "and the sun jest goin'
+to dip his bald old head into it!" he added, with unconscious poetry;
+and immediately they set about pitching camp for the night.
+
+In a very few minutes, under those skilful hands that never made a
+movement too much or a movement too little, the silk tent stood taut and
+cozy, the beds of balsam boughs ready laid, and a brisk cooking fire
+burned with the minimum of smoke. While the young Scotchman cleaned the
+fish they had caught trolling behind the canoe, Defago "guessed" he
+would "jest as soon" take a turn through the Bush for indications of
+moose. "_May_ come across a trunk where they bin and rubbed horns," he
+said, as he moved off, "or feedin' on the last of the maple leaves"--and
+he was gone.
+
+His small figure melted away like a shadow in the dusk, while Simpson
+noted with a kind of admiration how easily the forest absorbed him into
+herself. A few steps, it seemed, and he was no longer visible.
+
+Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts; the trees stood somewhat
+apart, well spaced; and in the clearings grew silver birch and maple,
+spearlike and slender, against the immense stems of spruce and hemlock.
+But for occasional prostrate monsters, and the boulders of grey rock
+that thrust uncouth shoulders here and there out of the ground, it might
+well have been a bit of park in the Old Country. Almost, one might have
+seen in it the hand of man. A little to the right, however, began the
+great burnt section, miles in extent, proclaiming its real
+character--_brule_, as it is called, where the fires of the previous
+year had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps now rose gaunt and
+ugly, bereft of branches, like gigantic match heads stuck into the
+ground, savage and desolate beyond words. The perfume of charcoal and
+rain-soaked ashes still hung faintly about it.
+
+The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the
+fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the
+only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that
+vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the
+woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might
+stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees. In front,
+through doorways pillared by huge straight stems, lay the stretch of
+Fifty Island Water, a crescent-shaped lake some fifteen miles from tip
+to tip, and perhaps five miles across where they were camped. A sky of
+rose and saffron, more clear than any atmosphere Simpson had ever
+known, still dropped its pale streaming fires across the waves, where
+the islands--a hundred, surely, rather than fifty--floated like the
+fairy barques of some enchanted fleet. Fringed with pines, whose crests
+fingered most delicately the sky, they almost seemed to move upwards as
+the light faded--about to weigh anchor and navigate the pathways of the
+heavens instead of the currents of their native and desolate lake.
+
+And strips of colored cloud, like flaunting pennons, signaled their
+departure to the stars....
+
+The beauty of the scene was strangely uplifting. Simpson smoked the fish
+and burnt his fingers into the bargain in his efforts to enjoy it and at
+the same time tend the frying pan and the fire. Yet, ever at the back of
+his thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness: the indifference
+to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of
+man. The sense of his utter loneliness, now that even Defago had gone,
+came close as he looked about him and listened for the sound of his
+companion's returning footsteps.
+
+There was pleasure in the sensation, yet with it a perfectly
+comprehensible alarm. And instinctively the thought stirred in him:
+"What should I--_could_ I, do--if anything happened and he did not come
+back--?"
+
+They enjoyed their well-earned supper, eating untold quantities of fish,
+and drinking unmilked tea strong enough to kill men who had not covered
+thirty miles of hard "going," eating little on the way. And when it was
+over, they smoked and told stories round the blazing fire, laughing,
+stretching weary limbs, and discussing plans for the morrow. Defago was
+in excellent spirits, though disappointed at having no signs of moose to
+report. But it was dark and he had not gone far. The _brule_, too, was
+bad. His clothes and hands were smeared with charcoal. Simpson, watching
+him, realized with renewed vividness their position--alone together in
+the wilderness.
+
+"Defago," he said presently, "these woods, you know, are a bit too big
+to feel quite at home in--to feel comfortable in, I mean!... Eh?" He
+merely gave expression to the mood of the moment; he was hardly prepared
+for the earnestness, the solemnity even, with which the guide took him
+up.
+
+"You've hit it right, Simpson, boss," he replied, fixing his searching
+brown eyes on his face, "and that's the truth, sure. There's no end to
+'em--no end at all." Then he added in a lowered tone as if to himself,
+"There's lots found out _that_, and gone plumb to pieces!"
+
+But the man's gravity of manner was not quite to the other's liking; it
+was a little too suggestive for this scenery and setting; he was sorry
+he had broached the subject. He remembered suddenly how his uncle had
+told him that men were sometimes stricken with a strange fever of the
+wilderness, when the seduction of the uninhabited wastes caught them so
+fiercely that they went forth, half fascinated, half deluded, to their
+death. And he had a shrewd idea that his companion held something in
+sympathy with that queer type. He led the conversation on to other
+topics, on to Hank and the doctor, for instance, and the natural rivalry
+as to who should get the first sight of moose.
+
+"If they went doo west," observed Defago carelessly, "there's sixty
+miles between us now--with ole Punk at halfway house eatin' himself full
+to bustin' with fish and coffee." They laughed together over the
+picture. But the casual mention of those sixty miles again made Simpson
+realize the prodigious scale of this land where they hunted; sixty miles
+was a mere step; two hundred little more than a step. Stories of lost
+hunters rose persistently before his memory. The passion and mystery of
+homeless and wandering men, seduced by the beauty of great forests,
+swept his soul in a way too vivid to be quite pleasant. He wondered
+vaguely whether it was the mood of his companion that invited the
+unwelcome suggestion with such persistence.
+
+"Sing us a song, Defago, if you're not too tired," he asked; "one of
+those old _voyageur_ songs you sang the other night." He handed his
+tobacco pouch to the guide and then filled his own pipe, while the
+Canadian, nothing loth, sent his light voice across the lake in one of
+those plaintive, almost melancholy chanties with which lumbermen and
+trappers lessen the burden of their labor. There was an appealing and
+romantic flavor about it, something that recalled the atmosphere of the
+old pioneer days when Indians and wilderness were leagued together,
+battles frequent, and the Old Country farther off than it is today. The
+sound traveled pleasantly over the water, but the forest at their backs
+seemed to swallow it down with a single gulp that permitted neither echo
+nor resonance.
+
+It was in the middle of the third verse that Simpson noticed something
+unusual--something that brought his thoughts back with a rush from
+faraway scenes. A curious change had come into the man's voice. Even
+before he knew what it was, uneasiness caught him, and looking up
+quickly, he saw that Defago, though still singing, was peering about him
+into the Bush, as though he heard or saw something. His voice grew
+fainter--dropped to a hush--then ceased altogether. The same instant,
+with a movement amazingly alert, he started to his feet and stood
+upright--_sniffing the air_. Like a dog scenting game, he drew the air
+into his nostrils in short, sharp breaths, turning quickly as he did so
+in all directions, and finally "pointing" down the lake shore,
+eastwards. It was a performance unpleasantly suggestive and at the same
+time singularly dramatic. Simpson's heart fluttered disagreeably as he
+watched it.
+
+"Lord, man! How you made me jump!" he exclaimed, on his feet beside him
+the same instant, and peering over his shoulder into the sea of
+darkness. "What's up? Are you frightened--?"
+
+Even before the question was out of his mouth he knew it was foolish,
+for any man with a pair of eyes in his head could see that the Canadian
+had turned white down to his very gills. Not even sunburn and the glare
+of the fire could hide that.
+
+The student felt himself trembling a little, weakish in the knees.
+"What's up?" he repeated quickly. "D'you smell moose? Or anything queer,
+anything--wrong?" He lowered his voice instinctively.
+
+The forest pressed round them with its encircling wall; the nearer tree
+stems gleamed like bronze in the firelight; beyond that--blackness, and,
+so far as he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them a passing
+puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softly
+down again without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as if a
+million invisible causes had combined just to produce that single
+visible effect. _Other_ life pulsed about them--and was gone.
+
+Defago turned abruptly; the livid hue of his face had turned to a dirty
+grey.
+
+"I never said I heered--or smelt--nuthin'," he said slowly and
+emphatically, in an oddly altered voice that conveyed somehow a touch of
+defiance. "I was only--takin' a look round--so to speak. It's always a
+mistake to be too previous with yer questions." Then he added suddenly
+with obvious effort, in his more natural voice, "Have you got the
+matches, Boss Simpson?" and proceeded to light the pipe he had half
+filled just before he began to sing.
+
+Without speaking another word they sat down again by the fire. Defago
+changing his side so that he could face the direction the wind came
+from. For even a tenderfoot could tell that. Defago changed his position
+in order to hear and smell--all there was to be heard and smelt. And,
+since he now faced the lake with his back to the trees it was evidently
+nothing in the forest that had sent so strange and sudden a warning to
+his marvelously trained nerves.
+
+"Guess now I don't feel like singing any," he explained presently of his
+own accord. "That song kinder brings back memories that's troublesome to
+me; I never oughter've begun it. It sets me on t' imagining things,
+see?"
+
+Clearly the man was still fighting with some profoundly moving emotion.
+He wished to excuse himself in the eyes of the other. But the
+explanation, in that it was only a part of the truth, was a lie, and he
+knew perfectly well that Simpson was not deceived by it. For nothing
+could explain away the livid terror that had dropped over his face while
+he stood there sniffing the air. And nothing--no amount of blazing fire,
+or chatting on ordinary subjects--could make that camp exactly as it had
+been before. The shadow of an unknown horror, naked if unguessed, that
+had flashed for an instant in the face and gestures of the guide, had
+also communicated itself, vaguely and therefore more potently, to his
+companion. The guide's visible efforts to dissemble the truth only made
+things worse. Moreover, to add to the younger man's uneasiness, was the
+difficulty, nay, the impossibility he felt of asking questions, and also
+his complete ignorance as to the cause ...Indians, wild animals, forest
+fires--all these, he knew, were wholly out of the question. His
+imagination searched vigorously, but in vain....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet, somehow or other, after another long spell of smoking, talking and
+roasting themselves before the great fire, the shadow that had so
+suddenly invaded their peaceful camp began to shift. Perhaps Defago's
+efforts, or the return of his quiet and normal attitude accomplished
+this; perhaps Simpson himself had exaggerated the affair out of all
+proportion to the truth; or possibly the vigorous air of the wilderness
+brought its own powers of healing. Whatever the cause, the feeling of
+immediate horror seemed to have passed away as mysteriously as it had
+come, for nothing occurred to feed it. Simpson began to feel that he had
+permitted himself the unreasoning terror of a child. He put it down
+partly to a certain subconscious excitement that this wild and immense
+scenery generated in his blood, partly to the spell of solitude, and
+partly to overfatigue. That pallor in the guide's face was, of course,
+uncommonly hard to explain, yet it _might_ have been due in some way to
+an effect of firelight, or his own imagination ...He gave it the benefit
+of the doubt; he was Scotch.
+
+When a somewhat unordinary emotion has disappeared, the mind always
+finds a dozen ways of explaining away its causes ...Simpson lit a last
+pipe and tried to laugh to himself. On getting home to Scotland it would
+make quite a good story. He did not realize that this laughter was a
+sign that terror still lurked in the recesses of his soul--that, in
+fact, it was merely one of the conventional signs by which a man,
+seriously alarmed, tries to persuade himself that he is _not_ so.
+
+Defago, however, heard that low laughter and looked up with surprise on
+his face. The two men stood, side by side, kicking the embers about
+before going to bed. It was ten o'clock--a late hour for hunters to be
+still awake.
+
+"What's ticklin' yer?" he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely.
+
+"I--I was thinking of our little toy woods at home, just at that
+moment," stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated his
+mind, and startled by the question, "and comparing them to--to all
+this," and he swept his arm round to indicate the Bush.
+
+A pause followed in which neither of them said anything.
+
+"All the same I wouldn't laugh about it, if I was you," Defago added,
+looking over Simpson's shoulder into the shadows. "There's places in
+there nobody won't never see into--nobody knows what lives in there
+either."
+
+"Too big--too far off?" The suggestion in the guide's manner was immense
+and horrible.
+
+Defago nodded. The expression on his face was dark. He, too, felt
+uneasy. The younger man understood that in a _hinterland_ of this size
+there might well be depths of wood that would never in the life of the
+world be known or trodden. The thought was not exactly the sort he
+welcomed. In a loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time for
+bed. But the guide lingered, tinkering with the fire, arranging the
+stones needlessly, doing a dozen things that did not really need doing.
+Evidently there was something he wanted to say, yet found it difficult
+to "get at."
+
+"Say, you, Boss Simpson," he began suddenly, as the last shower of
+sparks went up into the air, "you don't--smell nothing, do you--nothing
+pertickler, I mean?" The commonplace question, Simpson realized, veiled
+a dreadfully serious thought in his mind. A shiver ran down his back.
+
+"Nothing but burning wood," he replied firmly, kicking again at the
+embers. The sound of his own foot made him start.
+
+"And all the evenin' you ain't smelt--nothing?" persisted the guide,
+peering at him through the gloom; "nothing extrordiny, and different to
+anything else you ever smelt before?"
+
+"No, no, man; nothing at all!" he replied aggressively, half angrily.
+
+Defago's face cleared. "That's good!" he exclaimed with evident relief.
+"That's good to hear."
+
+"Have _you?_" asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted the
+question.
+
+The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He shook his head. "I guess
+not," he said, though without overwhelming conviction. "It must've been
+just that song of mine that did it. It's the song they sing in lumber
+camps and godforsaken places like that, when they're skeered the
+Wendigo's somewhere around, doin' a bit of swift traveling.--"
+
+"And what's the Wendigo, pray?" Simpson asked quickly, irritated because
+again he could not prevent that sudden shiver of the nerves. He knew
+that he was close upon the man's terror and the cause of it. Yet a
+rushing passionate curiosity overcame his better judgment, and his fear.
+
+Defago turned swiftly and looked at him as though he were suddenly about
+to shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open. Yet all he said,
+or whispered rather, for his voice sank very low, was: "It's
+nuthin'--nuthin' but what those lousy fellers believe when they've bin
+hittin' the bottle too long--a sort of great animal that lives up
+yonder," he jerked his head northwards, "quick as lightning in its
+tracks, an' bigger'n anything else in the Bush, an' ain't supposed to be
+very good to look at--that's all!"
+
+"A backwoods superstition--" began Simpson, moving hastily toward the
+tent in order to shake off the hand of the guide that clutched his arm.
+"Come, come, hurry up for God's sake, and get the lantern going! It's
+time we were in bed and asleep if we're going to be up with the sun
+tomorrow...."
+
+The guide was close on his heels. "I'm coming," he answered out of the
+darkness, "I'm coming." And after a slight delay he appeared with the
+lantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. The
+shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so,
+and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole
+tent trembled as though a gust of wind struck it.
+
+The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft balsam
+boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside, all was warm and cozy, but outside
+the world of crowding trees pressed close about them, marshalling their
+million shadows, and smothering the little tent that stood there like a
+wee white shell facing the ocean of tremendous forest.
+
+Between the two lonely figures within, however, there pressed another
+shadow that was _not_ a shadow from the night. It was the Shadow cast by
+the strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped suddenly upon
+Defago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson, as he lay there,
+watching the darkness through the open flap of the tent, ready to plunge
+into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that unique and profound
+stillness of a primeval forest when no wind stirs ... and when the night
+has weight and substance that enters into the soul to bind a veil about
+it.... Then sleep took him....
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Thus, it seemed to him, at least. Yet it was true that the lap of the
+water, just beyond the tent door, still beat time with his lessening
+pulses when he realized that he was lying with his eyes open and that
+another sound had recently introduced itself with cunning softness
+between the splash and murmur of the little waves.
+
+And, long before he understood what this sound was, it had stirred in
+him the centers of pity and alarm. He listened intently, though at first
+in vain, for the running blood beat all its drums too noisily in his
+ears. Did it come, he wondered, from the lake, or from the woods?...
+
+Then, suddenly, with a rush and a flutter of the heart, he knew that it
+was close beside him in the tent; and, when he turned over for a better
+hearing, it focused itself unmistakably not two feet away. It was a
+sound of weeping; Defago upon his bed of branches was sobbing in the
+darkness as though his heart would break, the blankets evidently stuffed
+against his mouth to stifle it.
+
+And his first feeling, before he could think or reflect, was the rush of
+a poignant and searching tenderness. This intimate, human sound, heard
+amid the desolation about them, woke pity. It was so incongruous, so
+pitifully incongruous--and so vain! Tears--in this vast and cruel
+wilderness: of what avail? He thought of a little child crying in
+mid-Atlantic.... Then, of course, with fuller realization, and the
+memory of what had gone before, came the descent of the terror upon him,
+and his blood ran cold.
+
+"Defago," he whispered quickly, "what's the matter?" He tried to make
+his voice very gentle. "Are you in pain--unhappy--?" There was no reply,
+but the sounds ceased abruptly. He stretched his hand out and touched
+him. The body did not stir.
+
+"Are you awake?" for it occurred to him that the man was crying in his
+sleep. "Are you cold?" He noticed that his feet, which were uncovered,
+projected beyond the mouth of the tent. He spread an extra fold of his
+own blankets over them. The guide had slipped down in his bed, and the
+branches seemed to have been dragged with him. He was afraid to pull the
+body back again, for fear of waking him.
+
+One or two tentative questions he ventured softly, but though he waited
+for several minutes there came no reply, nor any sign of movement.
+Presently he heard his regular and quiet breathing, and putting his hand
+again gently on the breast, felt the steady rise and fall beneath.
+
+"Let me know if anything's wrong," he whispered, "or if I can do
+anything. Wake me at once if you feel--queer."
+
+He hardly knew what to say. He lay down again, thinking and wondering
+what it all meant. Defago, of course, had been crying in his sleep. Some
+dream or other had afflicted him. Yet never in his life would he forget
+that pitiful sound of sobbing, and the feeling that the whole awful
+wilderness of woods listened....
+
+His own mind busied itself for a long time with the recent events, of
+which _this_ took its mysterious place as one, and though his reason
+successfully argued away all unwelcome suggestions, a sensation of
+uneasiness remained, resisting ejection, very deep-seated--peculiar
+beyond ordinary.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+But sleep, in the long run, proves greater than all emotions. His
+thoughts soon wandered again; he lay there, warm as toast, exceedingly
+weary; the night soothed and comforted, blunting the edges of memory and
+alarm. Half an hour later he was oblivious of everything in the outer
+world about him.
+
+Yet sleep, in this case, was his great enemy, concealing all approaches,
+smothering the warning of his nerves.
+
+As, sometimes, in a nightmare events crowd upon each other's heels with
+a conviction of dreadfulest reality, yet some inconsistent detail
+accuses the whole display of incompleteness and disguise, so the events
+that now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the mind
+somehow that the detail which could explain them had been overlooked in
+the confusion, and that therefore they were but partly true, the rest
+delusion. At the back of the sleeper's mind something remains awake,
+ready to let slip the judgment. "All this is not _quite_ real; when you
+wake up you'll understand."
+
+And thus, in a way, it was with Simpson. The events, not wholly
+inexplicable or incredible in themselves, yet remain for the man who saw
+and heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold horror, because the
+little piece that might have made the puzzle clear lay concealed or
+overlooked.
+
+So far as he can recall, it was a violent movement, running downwards
+through the tent towards the door, that first woke him and made him
+aware that his companion was sitting bolt upright beside him--quivering.
+Hours must have passed, for it was the pale gleam of the dawn that
+revealed his outline against the canvas. This time the man was not
+crying; he was quaking like a leaf; the trembling he felt plainly
+through the blankets down the entire length of his own body. Defago had
+huddled down against him for protection, shrinking away from something
+that apparently concealed itself near the door flaps of the little tent.
+
+Simpson thereupon called out in a loud voice some question or other--in
+the first bewilderment of waking he does not remember exactly what--and
+the man made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare lay
+horribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult. At first,
+indeed, he was not sure where he was--whether in one of the earlier
+camps, or at home in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense of confusion was
+very troubling.
+
+And next--almost simultaneous with his waking, it seemed--the profound
+stillness of the dawn outside was shattered by a most uncommon sound. It
+came without warning, or audible approach; and it was unspeakably
+dreadful. It was a voice, Simpson declares, possibly a human voice;
+hoarse yet plaintive--a soft, roaring voice close outside the tent,
+overhead rather than upon the ground, of immense volume, while in some
+strange way most penetratingly and seductively sweet. It rang out, too,
+in three separate and distinct notes, or cries, that bore in some odd
+fashion a resemblance, farfetched yet recognizable, to the name of the
+guide: "_De-fa-go!_"
+
+The student admits he is unable to describe it quite intelligently, for
+it was unlike any sound he had ever heard in his life, and combined a
+blending of such contrary qualities. "A sort of windy, crying voice," he
+calls it, "as of something lonely and untamed, wild and of abominable
+power...."
+
+And, even before it ceased, dropping back into the great gulfs of
+silence, the guide beside him had sprung to his feet with an answering
+though unintelligible cry. He blundered against the tent pole with
+violence, shaking the whole structure, spreading his arms out
+frantically for more room, and kicking his legs impetuously free of the
+clinging blankets. For a second, perhaps two, he stood upright by the
+door, his outline dark against the pallor of the dawn; then, with a
+furious, rushing speed, before his companion could move a hand to stop
+him, he shot with a plunge through the flaps of canvas--and was gone.
+And as he went--so astonishingly fast that the voice could actually be
+heard dying in the distance--he called aloud in tones of anguished
+terror that at the same time held something strangely like the frenzied
+exultation of delight--
+
+"Oh! oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire! Oh! oh! This height
+and fiery speed!"
+
+And then the distance quickly buried it, and the deep silence of very
+early morning descended upon the forest as before.
+
+It had all come about with such rapidity that, but for the evidence of
+the empty bed beside him, Simpson could almost have believed it to have
+been the memory of a nightmare carried over from sleep. He still felt
+the warm pressure of that vanished body against his side; there lay the
+twisted blankets in a heap; the very tent yet trembled with the
+vehemence of the impetuous departure. The strange words rang in his
+ears, as though he still heard them in the distance--wild language of a
+suddenly stricken mind. Moreover, it was not only the senses of sight
+and hearing that reported uncommon things to his brain, for even while
+the man cried and ran, he had become aware that a strange perfume, faint
+yet pungent, pervaded the interior of the tent. And it was at this
+point, it seems, brought to himself by the consciousness that his
+nostrils were taking this distressing odor down into his throat, that he
+found his courage, sprang quickly to his feet--and went out.
+
+The grey light of dawn that dropped, cold and glimmering, between the
+trees revealed the scene tolerably well. There stood the tent behind
+him, soaked with dew; the dark ashes of the fire, still warm; the lake,
+white beneath a coating of mist, the islands rising darkly out of it
+like objects packed in wool; and patches of snow beyond among the
+clearer spaces of the Bush--everything cold, still, waiting for the sun.
+But nowhere a sign of the vanished guide--still, doubtless, flying at
+frantic speed through the frozen woods. There was not even the sound of
+disappearing footsteps, nor the echoes of the dying voice. He had
+gone--utterly.
+
+There was nothing; nothing but the sense of his recent presence, so
+strongly left behind about the camp; _and_--this penetrating,
+all-pervading odor.
+
+And even this was now rapidly disappearing in its turn. In spite of his
+exceeding mental perturbation, Simpson struggled hard to detect its
+nature, and define it, but the ascertaining of an elusive scent, not
+recognized subconsciously and at once, is a very subtle operation of
+the mind. And he failed. It was gone before he could properly seize or
+name it. Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult,
+for it was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid rather, not unlike the odor
+of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not wholly unpleasing, with
+something almost sweet in it that reminded him of the scent of decaying
+garden leaves, earth, and the myriad, nameless perfumes that make up the
+odor of a big forest. Yet the "odor of lions" is the phrase with which
+he usually sums it all up.
+
+Then--it was wholly gone, and he found himself standing by the ashes of
+the fire in a state of amazement and stupid terror that left him the
+helpless prey of anything that chose to happen. Had a muskrat poked its
+pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled in that instant down
+the bark of a tree, he would most likely have collapsed without more ado
+and fainted. For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a
+great Outer Horror ... and his scattered powers had not as yet had time
+to collect themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-control.
+
+Nothing did happen, however. A great kiss of wind ran softly through the
+awakening forest, and a few maple leaves here and there rustled
+tremblingly to earth. The sky seemed to grow suddenly much lighter.
+Simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek and uncovered head; realized
+that he was shivering with the cold; and, making a great effort,
+realized next that he was alone in the Bush--_and_ that he was called
+upon to take immediate steps to find and succor his vanished companion.
+
+Make an effort, accordingly, he did, though an ill-calculated and futile
+one. With that wilderness of trees about him, the sheet of water cutting
+him off behind, and the horror of that wild cry in his blood, he did
+what any other inexperienced man would have done in similar
+bewilderment: he ran about, without any sense of direction, like a
+frantic child, and called loudly without ceasing the name of the guide:
+
+"Defago! Defago! Defago!" he yelled, and the trees gave him back the
+name as often as he shouted, only a little softened--"Defago! Defago!
+Defago!"
+
+He followed the trail that lay a short distance across the patches of
+snow, and then lost it again where the trees grew too thickly for snow
+to lie. He shouted till he was hoarse, and till the sound of his own
+voice in all that unanswering and listening world began to frighten him.
+His confusion increased in direct ratio to the violence of his efforts.
+His distress became formidably acute, till at length his exertions
+defeated their own object, and from sheer exhaustion he headed back to
+the camp again. It remains a wonder that he ever found his way. It was
+with great difficulty, and only after numberless false clues, that he at
+last saw the white tent between the trees, and so reached safety.
+
+Exhaustion then applied its own remedy, and he grew calmer. He made the
+fire and breakfasted. Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense and
+judgment into him again, and he realized that he had been behaving like
+a boy. He now made another, and more successful attempt to face the
+situation collectedly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to his
+assistance, he decided that he must first make as thorough a search as
+possible, failing success in which, he must find his way into the home
+camp as best he could and bring help.
+
+And this was what he did. Taking food, matches and rifle with him, and a
+small axe to blaze the trees against his return journey, he set forth.
+It was eight o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the tops of
+the trees in a sky without clouds. Pinned to a stake by the fire he left
+a note in case Defago returned while he was away.
+
+This time, according to a careful plan, he took a new direction,
+intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or later cut into
+indications of the guide's trail; and, before he had gone a quarter of a
+mile he came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow, and beside
+it the light and smaller tracks of what were beyond question human
+feet--the feet of Defago. The relief he at once experienced was natural,
+though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple
+explanation of the whole matter: these big marks had surely been left by
+a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, and
+uttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was
+apparent. Defago, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the
+point of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the wind
+hours before. His excitement and disappearance were due, of course,
+to--to his--
+
+Then the impossible explanation at which he grasped faded, as common
+sense showed him mercilessly that none of this was true. No guide, much
+less a guide like Defago, could have acted in so irrational a way, going
+off even without his rifle ...! The whole affair demanded a far more
+complicated elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all--the
+cry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face of horror when his
+nostrils first caught the new odor; that muffled sobbing in the
+darkness, and--for this, too, now came back to him dimly--the man's
+original aversion for this particular bit of country....
+
+Besides, now that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks of
+a bull moose at all! Hank had explained to him the outline of a bull's
+hoofs, of a cow's or calf's, too, for that matter; he had drawn them
+clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were wholly different. They
+were big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs.
+He wondered for a moment whether bear tracks were like that. There was
+no other animal he could think of, for caribou did not come so far
+south at this season, and, even if they did, would leave hoof marks.
+
+They were ominous signs--these mysterious writings left in the snow by
+the unknown creature that had lured a human being away from safety--and
+when he coupled them in his imagination with that haunting sound that
+broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind,
+distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the _threatening_ aspect of
+it all. And, stooping down to examine the marks more closely, he caught
+a faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odor that made him instantly
+straighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.
+
+Then his memory played him another evil trick. He suddenly recalled
+those uncovered feet projecting beyond the edge of the tent, and the
+body's appearance of having been dragged towards the opening; the man's
+shrinking from something by the door when he woke later. The details now
+beat against his trembling mind with concerted attack. They seemed to
+gather in those deep spaces of the silent forest about him, where the
+host of trees stood waiting, listening, watching to see what he would
+do. The woods were closing round him.
+
+With the persistence of true pluck, however, Simpson went forward,
+following the tracks as best he could, smothering these ugly emotions
+that sought to weaken his will. He blazed innumerable trees as he went,
+ever fearful of being unable to find the way back, and calling aloud at
+intervals of a few seconds the name of the guide. The dull tapping of
+the axe upon the massive trunks, and the unnatural accents of his own
+voice became at length sounds that he even dreaded to make, dreaded to
+hear. For they drew attention without ceasing to his presence and exact
+whereabouts, and if it were really the case that something was hunting
+himself down in the same way that he was hunting down another--
+
+With a strong effort, he crushed the thought out the instant it rose.
+It was the beginning, he realized, of a bewilderment utterly diabolical
+in kind that would speedily destroy him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Although the snow was not continuous, lying merely in shallow flurries
+over the more open spaces, he found no difficulty in following the
+tracks for the first few miles. They went straight as a ruled line
+wherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to increase in
+length, till it finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutely
+impossible for any ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps
+they became. One of these he measured, and though he knew that "stretch"
+of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was at a complete loss to
+understand why he found no signs on the snow between the extreme points.
+But what perplexed him even more, making him feel his vision had gone
+utterly awry, was that Defago's stride increased in the same manner, and
+finally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as if the great
+beast had lifted him with it and carried him across these astonishing
+intervals. Simpson, who was much longer in the limb, found that he could
+not compass even half the stretch by taking a running jump.
+
+And the sight of these huge tracks, running side by side, silent
+evidence of a dreadful journey in which terror or madness had urged to
+impossible results, was profoundly moving. It shocked him in the secret
+depths of his soul. It was the most horrible thing his eyes had ever
+looked upon. He began to follow them mechanically, absentmindedly
+almost, ever peering over his shoulder to see if he, too, were being
+followed by something with a gigantic tread.... And soon it came about
+that he no longer quite realized what it was they signified--these
+impressions left upon the snow by something nameless and untamed, always
+accompanied by the footmarks of the little French Canadian, his guide,
+his comrade, the man who had shared his tent a few hours before,
+chatting, laughing, even singing by his side....
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+For a man of his years and inexperience, only a canny Scot, perhaps,
+grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have preserved
+even that measure of balance that this youth somehow or other did manage
+to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two things he
+presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him
+headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of only
+making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his
+heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way
+to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change,
+so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some
+undecipherable manner--appalling.
+
+It was in the bigger tracks he first noticed this, and for a long time
+he could not quite believe his eyes. Was it the blown leaves that
+produced odd effects of light and shade, or that the dry snow, drifting
+like finely ground rice about the edges, cast shadows and high lights?
+Or was it actually the fact that the great marks had become faintly
+colored? For round about the deep, plunging holes of the animal there
+now appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more like an effect of
+light than of anything that dyed the substance of the snow itself. Every
+mark had it, and had it increasingly--this indistinct fiery tinge that
+painted a new touch of ghastliness into the picture.
+
+But when, wholly unable to explain or to credit it, he turned his
+attention to the other tracks to discover if they, too, bore similar
+witness, he noticed that these had meanwhile undergone a change that was
+infinitely worse, and charged with far more horrible suggestion. For, in
+the last hundred yards or so, he saw that they had grown gradually into
+the semblance of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the change had come
+about, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see where the change first
+began. The result, however, was beyond question. Smaller, neater, more
+cleanly modeled, they formed now an exact and careful duplicate of the
+larger tracks beside them. The feet that produced them had, therefore,
+also changed. And something in his mind reared up with loathing and with
+terror as he saw it.
+
+Simpson, for the first time, hesitated; then, ashamed of his alarm and
+indecision, took a few hurried steps ahead; the next instant stopped
+dead in his tracks. Immediately in front of him all signs of the trail
+ceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for a hundred
+yards and more, he searched in vain for the least indication of their
+continuance. There was--nothing.
+
+The trees were very thick just there, big trees all of them, spruce,
+cedar, hemlock; there was no underbrush. He stood, looking about him,
+all distraught; bereft of any power of judgment. Then he set to work to
+search again, and again, and yet again, but always with the same result:
+_nothing_. The feet that printed the surface of the snow thus far had
+now, apparently, left the ground!
+
+And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip of
+terror laid its most nicely calculated lash about his heart. It dropped
+with deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving
+him. He had been secretly dreading all the time that it would come--and
+come it did.
+
+Far overhead, muted by great height and distance, strangely thinned and
+wailing, he heard the crying voice of Defago, the guide.
+
+The sound dropped upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an effect
+of dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stood
+motionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, then
+staggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganized
+hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the
+most shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so that
+his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden
+draught.
+
+"Oh! oh! This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire ...!" ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this
+voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called--then silence through all
+the listening wilderness of trees.
+
+And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himself
+running wildly to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots and
+boulders, and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after
+the Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion with which
+experience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half-deranged,
+picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and
+heart and soul. For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him in
+that far voice--the Power of untamed Distance--the Enticement of the
+Desolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the pains of
+someone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust and
+travail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of Defago, eternally
+hunted, driven and pursued across the skiey vastness of those ancient
+forests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his thoughts ...
+
+It seemed ages before he could find anything in the chaos of his
+disorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for a
+moment, and think ...
+
+The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling brought no response;
+the inscrutable forces of the Wild had summoned their victim beyond
+recall--and held him fast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet he searched and called, it seems, for hours afterwards, for it was
+late in the afternoon when at length he decided to abandon a useless
+pursuit and return to his camp on the shores of Fifty Island Water. Even
+then he went with reluctance, that crying voice still echoing in his
+ears. With difficulty he found his rifle and the homeward trail. The
+concentration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees, and a biting
+hunger that gnawed, helped to keep his mind steady. Otherwise, he
+admits, the temporary aberration he had suffered might have been
+prolonged to the point of positive disaster. Gradually the ballast
+shifted back again, and he regained something that approached his normal
+equilibrium.
+
+But for all that the journey through the gathering dusk was miserably
+haunted. He heard innumerable following footsteps; voices that laughed
+and whispered; and saw figures crouching behind trees and boulders,
+making signs to one another for a concerted attack the moment he had
+passed. The creeping murmur of the wind made him start and listen. He
+went stealthily, trying to hide where possible, and making as little
+sound as he could. The shadows of the woods, hitherto protective or
+covering merely, had now become menacing, challenging; and the pageantry
+in his frightened mind masked a host of possibilities that were all the
+more ominous for being obscure. The presentiment of a nameless doom
+lurked ill-concealed behind every detail of what had happened.
+
+It was really admirable how he emerged victor in the end; men of riper
+powers and experience might have come through the ordeal with less
+success. He had himself tolerably well in hand, all things considered,
+and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of the
+question and traveling an unknown trail in the darkness equally
+impracticable, he sat up the whole of that night, rifle in hand, before
+a fire he never for a single moment allowed to die down. The severity of
+the haunted vigil marked his soul for life; but it was successfully
+accomplished; and with the very first signs of dawn he set forth upon
+the long return journey to the home camp to get help. As before, he left
+a written note to explain his absence, and to indicate where he had left
+a plentiful _cache_ of food and matches--though he had no expectation
+that any human hands would find them!
+
+How Simpson found his way alone by the lake and forest might well make a
+story in itself, for to hear him tell it is to _know_ the passionate
+loneliness of soul that a man can feel when the Wilderness holds him in
+the hollow of its illimitable hand--and laughs. It is also to admire his
+indomitable pluck.
+
+He claims no skill, declaring that he followed the almost invisible
+trail mechanically, and without thinking. And this, doubtless, is the
+truth. He relied upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which is
+instinct. Perhaps, too, some sense of orientation, known to animals and
+primitive men, may have helped as well, for through all that tangled
+region he succeeded in reaching the exact spot where Defago had hidden
+the canoe nearly three days before with the remark, "Strike doo west
+across the lake into the sun to find the camp."
+
+There was not much sun left to guide him, but he used his compass to the
+best of his ability, embarking in the frail craft for the last twelve
+miles of his journey with a sensation of immense relief that the forest
+was at last behind him. And, fortunately, the water was calm; he took
+his line across the center of the lake instead of coasting round the
+shores for another twenty miles. Fortunately, too, the other hunters
+were back. The light of their fires furnished a steering point without
+which he might have searched all night long for the actual position of
+the camp.
+
+It was close upon midnight all the same when his canoe grated on the
+sandy cove, and Hank, Punk and his uncle, disturbed in their sleep by
+his cries, ran quickly down and helped a very exhausted and broken
+specimen of Scotch humanity over the rocks toward a dying fire.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The sudden entrance of his prosaic uncle into this world of wizardry
+and horror that had haunted him without interruption now for two days
+and two nights, had the immediate effect of giving to the affair an
+entirely new aspect. The sound of that crisp "Hulloa, my boy! And what's
+up _now_?" and the grasp of that dry and vigorous hand introduced
+another standard of judgment. A revulsion of feeling washed through him.
+He realized that he had let himself "go" rather badly. He even felt
+vaguely ashamed of himself. The native hard-headedness of his race
+reclaimed him.
+
+And this doubtless explains why he found it so hard to tell that group
+round the fire--everything. He told enough, however, for the immediate
+decision to be arrived at that a relief party must start at the earliest
+possible moment, and that Simpson, in order to guide it capably, must
+first have food and, above all, sleep. Dr. Cathcart observing the lad's
+condition more shrewdly than his patient knew, gave him a very slight
+injection of morphine. For six hours he slept like the dead.
+
+From the description carefully written out afterwards by this student of
+divinity, it appears that the account he gave to the astonished group
+omitted sundry vital and important details. He declares that, with his
+uncle's wholesome, matter-of-fact countenance staring him in the face,
+he simply had not the courage to mention them. Thus, all the search
+party gathered, it would seem, was that Defago had suffered in the night
+an acute and inexplicable attack of mania, had imagined himself "called"
+by someone or something, and had plunged into the bush after it without
+food or rifle, where he must die a horrible and lingering death by cold
+and starvation unless he could be found and rescued in time. "In time,"
+moreover, meant _at once_.
+
+In the course of the following day, however--they were off by seven,
+leaving Punk in charge with instructions to have food and fire always
+ready--Simpson found it possible to tell his uncle a good deal more of
+the story's true inwardness, without divining that it was drawn out of
+him as a matter of fact by a very subtle form of cross examination. By
+the time they reached the beginning of the trail, where the canoe was
+laid up against the return journey, he had mentioned how Defago spoke
+vaguely of "something he called a 'Wendigo'"; how he cried in his sleep;
+how he imagined an unusual scent about the camp; and had betrayed other
+symptoms of mental excitement. He also admitted the bewildering effect
+of "that extraordinary odor" upon himself, "pungent and acrid like the
+odor of lions." And by the time they were within an easy hour of Fifty
+Island Water he had let slip the further fact--a foolish avowal of his
+own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards--that he had heard the
+vanished guide call "for help." He omitted the singular phrases used,
+for he simply could not bring himself to repeat the preposterous
+language. Also, while describing how the man's footsteps in the snow had
+gradually assumed an exact miniature likeness of the animal's plunging
+tracks, he left out the fact that they measured a _wholly_ incredible
+distance. It seemed a question, nicely balanced between individual pride
+and honesty, what he should reveal and what suppress. He mentioned the
+fiery tinge in the snow, for instance, yet shrank from telling that body
+and bed had been partly dragged out of the tent....
+
+With the net result that Dr. Cathcart, adroit psychologist that he
+fancied himself to be, had assured him clearly enough exactly where his
+mind, influenced by loneliness, bewilderment and terror, had yielded to
+the strain and invited delusion. While praising his conduct, he managed
+at the same time to point out where, when, and how his mind had gone
+astray. He made his nephew think himself finer than he was by judicious
+praise, yet more foolish than he was by minimizing the value of the
+evidence. Like many another materialist, that is, he lied cleverly on
+the basis of insufficient knowledge, _because_ the knowledge supplied
+seemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible.
+
+"The spell of these terrible solitudes," he said, "cannot leave any mind
+untouched, any mind, that is, possessed of the higher imaginative
+qualities. It has worked upon yours exactly as it worked upon my own
+when I was your age. The animal that haunted your little camp was
+undoubtedly a moose, for the 'belling' of a moose may have, sometimes, a
+very peculiar quality of sound. The colored appearance of the big tracks
+was obviously a defect of vision in your own eyes produced by
+excitement. The size and stretch of the tracks we shall prove when we
+come to them. But the hallucination of an audible voice, of course, is
+one of the commonest forms of delusion due to mental excitement--an
+excitement, my dear boy, perfectly excusable, and, let me add,
+wonderfully controlled by you under the circumstances. For the rest, I
+am bound to say, you have acted with a splendid courage, for the terror
+of feeling oneself lost in this wilderness is nothing short of awful,
+and, had I been in your place, I don't for a moment believe I could have
+behaved with one quarter of your wisdom and decision. The only thing I
+find it uncommonly difficult to explain is--that--damned odor."
+
+"It made me feel sick, I assure you," declared his nephew, "positively
+dizzy!" His uncle's attitude of calm omniscience, merely because he knew
+more psychological formulae, made him slightly defiant. It was so easy
+to be wise in the explanation of an experience one has not personally
+witnessed. "A kind of desolate and terrible odor is the only way I can
+describe it," he concluded, glancing at the features of the quiet,
+unemotional man beside him.
+
+"I can only marvel," was the reply, "that under the circumstances it did
+not seem to you even worse." The dry words, Simpson knew, hovered
+between the truth, and his uncle's interpretation of "the truth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so at last they came to the little camp and found the tent still
+standing, the remains of the fire, and the piece of paper pinned to a
+stake beside it--untouched. The cache, poorly contrived by inexperienced
+hands, however, had been discovered and opened--by musk rats, mink and
+squirrel. The matches lay scattered about the opening, but the food had
+been taken to the last crumb.
+
+"Well, fellers, he ain't here," exclaimed Hank loudly after his fashion.
+"And that's as sartain as the coal supply down below! But whar he's got
+to by this time is 'bout as unsartain as the trade in crowns in t'other
+place." The presence of a divinity student was no barrier to his
+language at such a time, though for the reader's sake it may be severely
+edited. "I propose," he added, "that we start out at once an' hunt for'm
+like hell!"
+
+The gloom of Defago's probable fate oppressed the whole party with a
+sense of dreadful gravity the moment they saw the familiar signs of
+recent occupancy. Especially the tent, with the bed of balsam branches
+still smoothed and flattened by the pressure of his body, seemed to
+bring his presence near to them. Simpson, feeling vaguely as if his
+world were somehow at stake, went about explaining particulars in a
+hushed tone. He was much calmer now, though overwearied with the strain
+of his many journeys. His uncle's method of explaining--"explaining
+away," rather--the details still fresh in his haunted memory helped,
+too, to put ice upon his emotions.
+
+"And that's the direction he ran off in," he said to his two companions,
+pointing in the direction where the guide had vanished that morning in
+the grey dawn. "Straight down there he ran like a deer, in between the
+birch and the hemlock...."
+
+Hank and Dr. Cathcart exchanged glances.
+
+"And it was about two miles down there, in a straight line," continued
+the other, speaking with something of the former terror in his voice,
+"that I followed his trail to the place where--it stopped--dead!"
+
+"And where you heered him callin' an' caught the stench, an' all the
+rest of the wicked entertainment," cried Hank, with a volubility that
+betrayed his keen distress.
+
+"And where your excitement overcame you to the point of producing
+illusions," added Dr. Cathcart under his breath, yet not so low that his
+nephew did not hear it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was early in the afternoon, for they had traveled quickly, and there
+were still a good two hours of daylight left. Dr. Cathcart and Hank lost
+no time in beginning the search, but Simpson was too exhausted to
+accompany them. They would follow the blazed marks on the trees, and
+where possible, his footsteps. Meanwhile the best thing he could do was
+to keep a good fire going, and rest.
+
+But after something like three hours' search, the darkness already down,
+the two men returned to camp with nothing to report. Fresh snow had
+covered all signs, and though they had followed the blazed trees to the
+spot where Simpson had turned back, they had not discovered the smallest
+indication of a human being--or for that matter, of an animal. There
+were no fresh tracks of any kind; the snow lay undisturbed.
+
+It was difficult to know what was best to do, though in reality there
+was nothing more they _could_ do. They might stay and search for weeks
+without much chance of success. The fresh snow destroyed their only
+hope, and they gathered round the fire for supper, a gloomy and
+despondent party. The facts, indeed, were sad enough, for Defago had a
+wife at Rat Portage, and his earnings were the family's sole means of
+support.
+
+Now that the whole truth in all its ugliness was out, it seemed useless
+to deal in further disguise or pretense. They talked openly of the facts
+and probabilities. It was not the first time, even in the experience of
+Dr. Cathcart, that a man had yielded to the singular seduction of the
+Solitudes and gone out of his mind; Defago, moreover, was predisposed to
+something of the sort, for he already had a touch of melancholia in his
+blood, and his fiber was weakened by bouts of drinking that often lasted
+for weeks at a time. Something on this trip--one might never know
+precisely what--had sufficed to push him over the line, that was all.
+And he had gone, gone off into the great wilderness of trees and lakes
+to die by starvation and exhaustion. The chances against his finding
+camp again were overwhelming; the delirium that was upon him would also
+doubtless have increased, and it was quite likely he might do violence
+to himself and so hasten his cruel fate. Even while they talked, indeed,
+the end had probably come. On the suggestion of Hank, his old pal,
+however, they proposed to wait a little longer and devote the whole of
+the following day, from dawn to darkness, to the most systematic search
+they could devise. They would divide the territory between them. They
+discussed their plan in great detail. All that men could do they would
+do. And, meanwhile, they talked about the particular form in which the
+singular Panic of the Wilderness had made its attack upon the mind of
+the unfortunate guide. Hank, though familiar with the legend in its
+general outline, obviously did not welcome the turn the conversation had
+taken. He contributed little, though that little was illuminating. For
+he admitted that a story ran over all this section of country to the
+effect that several Indians had "seen the Wendigo" along the shores of
+Fifty Island Water in the "fall" of last year, and that this was the
+true reason of Defago's disinclination to hunt there. Hank doubtless
+felt that he had in a sense helped his old pal to death by
+overpersuading him. "When an Indian goes crazy," he explained, talking
+to himself more than to the others, it seemed, "it's always put that
+he's 'seen the Wendigo.' An' pore old Defaygo was superstitious down to
+he very heels ...!"
+
+And then Simpson, feeling the atmosphere more sympathetic, told over
+again the full story of his astonishing tale; he left out no details
+this time; he mentioned his own sensations and gripping fears. He only
+omitted the strange language used.
+
+"But Defago surely had already told you all these details of the Wendigo
+legend, my dear fellow," insisted the doctor. "I mean, he had talked
+about it, and thus put into your mind the ideas which your own
+excitement afterwards developed?"
+
+Whereupon Simpson again repeated the facts. Defago, he declared, had
+barely mentioned the beast. He, Simpson, knew nothing of the story, and,
+so far as he remembered, had never even read about it. Even the word was
+unfamiliar.
+
+Of course he was telling the truth, and Dr. Cathcart was reluctantly
+compelled to admit the singular character of the whole affair. He did
+not do this in words so much as in manner, however. He kept his back
+against a good, stout tree; he poked the fire into a blaze the moment it
+showed signs of dying down; he was quicker than any of them to notice
+the least sound in the night about them--a fish jumping in the lake, a
+twig snapping in the bush, the dropping of occasional fragments of
+frozen snow from the branches overhead where the heat loosened them. His
+voice, too, changed a little in quality, becoming a shade less
+confident, lower also in tone. Fear, to put it plainly, hovered close
+about that little camp, and though all three would have been glad to
+speak of other matters, the only thing they seemed able to discuss was
+this--the source of their fear. They tried other subjects in vain; there
+was nothing to say about them. Hank was the most honest of the group; he
+said next to nothing. He never once, however, turned his back to the
+darkness. His face was always to the forest, and when wood was needed he
+didn't go farther than was necessary to get it.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+A wall of silence wrapped them in, for the snow, though not thick, was
+sufficient to deaden any noise, and the frost held things pretty tight
+besides. No sound but their voices and the soft roar of the flames made
+itself heard. Only, from time to time, something soft as the flutter of
+a pine moth's wings went past them through the air. No one seemed
+anxious to go to bed. The hours slipped towards midnight.
+
+"The legend is picturesque enough," observed the doctor after one of the
+longer pauses, speaking to break it rather than because he had anything
+to say, "for the Wendigo is simply the Call of the Wild personified,
+which some natures hear to their own destruction."
+
+"That's about it," Hank said presently. "An' there's no misunderstandin'
+when you hear it. It calls you by name right 'nough."
+
+Another pause followed. Then Dr. Cathcart came back to the forbidden
+subject with a rush that made the others jump.
+
+"The allegory _is_ significant," he remarked, looking about him into the
+darkness, "for the Voice, they say, resembles all the minor sounds of
+the Bush--wind, falling water, cries of the animals, and so forth. And,
+once the victim hears _that_--he's off for good, of course! His most
+vulnerable points, moreover, are said to be the feet and the eyes; the
+feet, you see, for the lust of wandering, and the eyes for the lust of
+beauty. The poor beggar goes at such a dreadful speed that he bleeds
+beneath the eyes, and his feet burn."
+
+Dr. Cathcart, as he spoke, continued to peer uneasily into the
+surrounding gloom. His voice sank to a hushed tone.
+
+"The Wendigo," he added, "is said to burn his feet--owing to the
+friction, apparently caused by its tremendous velocity--till they drop
+off, and new ones form exactly like its own."
+
+Simpson listened in horrified amazement; but it was the pallor on Hank's
+face that fascinated him most. He would willingly have stopped his ears
+and closed his eyes, had he dared.
+
+"It don't always keep to the ground neither," came in Hank's slow, heavy
+drawl, "for it goes so high that he thinks the stars have set him all
+a-fire. An' it'll take great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an' run along the
+tops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an' then droppin' him
+jest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin'. An' its
+food, of all the muck in the whole Bush is--moss!" And he laughed a
+short, unnatural laugh. "It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo," he added,
+looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. "Moss-eater," he
+repeated, with a string of the most outlandish oaths he could invent.
+
+But Simpson now understood the true purpose of all this talk. What
+these two men, each strong and "experienced" in his own way, dreaded
+more than anything else was--silence. They were talking against time.
+They were also talking against darkness, against the invasion of panic,
+against the admission reflection might bring that they were in an
+enemy's country--against anything, in fact, rather than allow their
+inmost thoughts to assume control. He himself, already initiated by the
+awful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He had
+reached the stage where he was immune. But these two, the scoffing,
+analytical doctor, and the honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sat
+trembling in the depths of his being.
+
+Thus the hours passed; and thus, with lowered voices and a kind of taut
+inner resistance of spirit, this little group of humanity sat in the
+jaws of the wilderness and talked foolishly of the terrible and haunting
+legend. It was an unequal contest, all things considered, for the
+wilderness had already the advantage of first attack--and of a hostage.
+The fate of their comrade hung over them with a steadily increasing
+weight of oppression that finally became insupportable.
+
+It was Hank, after a pause longer than the preceding ones that no one
+seemed able to break, who first let loose all this pent-up emotion in
+very unexpected fashion, by springing suddenly to his feet and letting
+out the most ear-shattering yell imaginable into the night. He could not
+contain himself any longer, it seemed. To make it carry even beyond an
+ordinary cry he interrupted its rhythm by shaking the palm of his hand
+before his mouth.
+
+"That's for Defago," he said, looking down at the other two with a
+queer, defiant laugh, "for it's my belief"--the sandwiched oaths may be
+omitted--"that my ole partner's not far from us at this very minute."
+
+There was a vehemence and recklessness about his performance that made
+Simpson, too, start to his feet in amazement, and betrayed even the
+doctor into letting the pipe slip from between his lips. Hank's face was
+ghastly, but Cathcart's showed a sudden weakness--a loosening of all his
+faculties, as it were. Then a momentary anger blazed into his eyes, and
+he too, though with deliberation born of habitual self-control, got upon
+his feet and faced the excited guide. For this was unpermissible,
+foolish, dangerous, and he meant to stop it in the bud.
+
+What might have happened in the next minute or two one may speculate
+about, yet never definitely know, for in the instant of profound silence
+that followed Hank's roaring voice, and as though in answer to it,
+something went past through the darkness of the sky overhead at terrific
+speed--something of necessity very large, for it displaced much air,
+while down between the trees there fell a faint and windy cry of a human
+voice, calling in tones of indescribable anguish and appeal--
+
+"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire!"
+
+White to the very edge of his shirt, Hank looked stupidly about him like
+a child. Dr. Cathcart uttered some kind of unintelligible cry, turning
+as he did so with an instinctive movement of blind terror towards the
+protection of the tent, then halting in the act as though frozen.
+Simpson, alone of the three, retained his presence of mind a little. His
+own horror was too deep to allow of any immediate reaction. He had heard
+that cry before.
+
+Turning to his stricken companions, he said almost calmly--
+
+"That's exactly the cry I heard--the very words he used!"
+
+Then, lifting his face to the sky, he cried aloud, "Defago, Defago! Come
+down here to us! Come down--!"
+
+And before there was time for anybody to take definite action one way or
+another, there came the sound of something dropping heavily between the
+trees, striking the branches on the way down, and landing with a
+dreadful thud upon the frozen earth below. The crash and thunder of it
+was really terrific.
+
+"That's him, s'help me the good Gawd!" came from Hank in a whispering
+cry half choked, his hand going automatically toward the hunting knife
+in his belt. "And he's coming! He's coming!" he added, with an
+irrational laugh of horror, as the sounds of heavy footsteps crunching
+over the snow became distinctly audible, approaching through the
+blackness towards the circle of light.
+
+And while the steps, with their stumbling motion, moved nearer and
+nearer upon them, the three men stood round that fire, motionless and
+dumb. Dr. Cathcart had the appearance of a man suddenly withered; even
+his eyes did not move. Hank, suffering shockingly, seemed on the verge
+again of violent action; yet did nothing. He, too, was hewn of stone.
+Like stricken children they seemed. The picture was hideous. And,
+meanwhile, their owner still invisible, the footsteps came closer,
+crunching the frozen snow. It was endless--too prolonged to be quite
+real--this measured and pitiless approach. It was accursed.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Then at length the darkness, having thus laboriously conceived, brought
+forth--a figure. It drew forward into the zone of uncertain light where
+fire and shadows mingled, not ten feet away; then halted, staring at
+them fixedly. The same instant it started forward again with the
+spasmodic motion as of a thing moved by wires, and coming up closer to
+them, full into the glare of the fire, they perceived then that--it was
+a man; and apparently that this man was--Defago.
+
+Something like a skin of horror almost perceptibly drew down in that
+moment over every face, and three pairs of eyes shone through it as
+though they saw across the frontiers of normal vision into the Unknown.
+
+Defago advanced, his tread faltering and uncertain; he made his way
+straight up to them as a group first, then turned sharply and peered
+close into the face of Simpson. The sound of a voice issued from his
+lips--
+
+"Here I am, Boss Simpson. I heered someone calling me." It was a faint,
+dried up voice, made wheezy and breathless as by immense exertion. "I'm
+havin' a reg'lar hellfire kind of a trip, I am." And he laughed,
+thrusting his head forward into the other's face.
+
+But that laugh started the machinery of the group of waxwork figures
+with the wax-white skins. Hank immediately sprang forward with a stream
+of oaths so farfetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English at
+all, but thought he had lapsed into Indian or some other lingo. He only
+realized that Hank's presence, thrust thus between them, was
+welcome--uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly and
+leisurely, advanced behind him, heavily stumbling.
+
+Simpson seems hazy as to what was actually said and done in those next
+few seconds, for the eyes of that detestable and blasted visage peering
+at such close quarters into his own utterly bewildered his senses at
+first. He merely stood still. He said nothing. He had not the trained
+will of the older men that forced them into action in defiance of all
+emotional stress. He watched them moving as behind a glass that half
+destroyed their reality; it was dreamlike; perverted. Yet, through the
+torrent of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing his uncle's
+tone of authority--hard and forced--saying several things about food and
+warmth, blankets, whisky and the rest ... and, further, that whiffs of
+that penetrating, unaccustomed odor, vile yet sweetly bewildering,
+assailed his nostrils during all that followed.
+
+It was no less a person than himself, however--less experienced and
+adroit than the others though he was--who gave instinctive utterance to
+the sentence that brought a measure of relief into the ghastly situation
+by expressing the doubt and thought in each one's heart.
+
+"It _is_--YOU, isn't it, Defago?" he asked under his breath, horror
+breaking his speech.
+
+And at once Cathcart burst out with the loud answer before the other had
+time to move his lips. "Of course it is! Of course it is! Only--can't
+you see--he's nearly dead with exhaustion, cold and terror! Isn't _that_
+enough to change a man beyond all recognition?" It was said in order to
+convince himself as much as to convince the others. The overemphasis
+alone proved that. And continually, while he spoke and acted, he held a
+handkerchief to his nose. That odor pervaded the whole camp.
+
+For the "Defago" who sat huddled by the big fire, wrapped in blankets,
+drinking hot whisky and holding food in wasted hands, was no more like
+the guide they had last seen alive than the picture of a man of sixty is
+like a daguerreotype of his early youth in the costume of another
+generation. Nothing really can describe that ghastly caricature, that
+parody, masquerading there in the firelight as Defago. From the ruins of
+the dark and awful memories he still retains, Simpson declares that the
+face was more animal than human, the features drawn about into wrong
+proportions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had been subjected
+to extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely of
+those bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that change
+their expression as they swell, and as they collapse emit a faint and
+wailing imitation of a voice. Both face and voice suggested some such
+abominable resemblance. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking to
+describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a face
+and body that had been in air so rarified that, the weight of atmosphere
+being removed, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder and
+become--_incoherent_....
+
+It was Hank, though all distraught and shaking with a tearing volume of
+emotion he could neither handle nor understand, who brought things to a
+head without much ado. He went off to a little distance from the fire,
+apparently so that the light should not dazzle him too much, and shading
+his eyes for a moment with both hands, shouted in a loud voice that held
+anger and affection dreadfully mingled:
+
+"You ain't Defaygo! You ain't Defaygo at all! I don't give a--damn, but
+that ain't you, my ole pal of twenty years!" He glared upon the huddled
+figure as though he would destroy him with his eyes. "An' if it is I'll
+swab the floor of hell with a wad of cotton wool on a toothpick, s'help
+me the good Gawd!" he added, with a violent fling of horror and disgust.
+
+It was impossible to silence him. He stood there shouting like one
+possessed, horrible to see, horrible to hear--_because it was the
+truth_. He repeated himself in fifty different ways, each more
+outlandish than the last. The woods rang with echoes. At one time it
+looked as if he meant to fling himself upon "the intruder," for his hand
+continually jerked towards the long hunting knife in his belt.
+
+But in the end he did nothing, and the whole tempest completed itself
+very shortly with tears. Hank's voice suddenly broke, he collapsed on
+the ground, and Cathcart somehow or other persuaded him at last to go
+into the tent and lie quiet. The remainder of the affair, indeed, was
+witnessed by him from behind the canvas, his white and terrified face
+peeping through the crack of the tent door flap.
+
+Then Dr. Cathcart, closely followed by his nephew who so far had kept
+his courage better than all of them, went up with a determined air and
+stood opposite to the figure of Defago huddled over the fire. He looked
+him squarely in the face and spoke. At first his voice was firm.
+
+"Defago, tell us what's happened--just a little, so that we can know
+how best to help you?" he asked in a tone of authority, almost of
+command. And at that point, it _was_ command. At once afterwards,
+however, it changed in quality, for the figure turned up to him a face
+so piteous, so terrible and so little like humanity, that the doctor
+shrank back from him as from something spiritually unclean. Simpson,
+watching close behind him, says he got the impression of a mask that was
+on the verge of dropping off, and that underneath they would discover
+something black and diabolical, revealed in utter nakedness. "Out with
+it, man, out with it!" Cathcart cried, terror running neck and neck with
+entreaty. "None of us can stand this much longer ...!" It was the cry of
+instinct over reason.
+
+And then "Defago," smiling _whitely_, answered in that thin and fading
+voice that already seemed passing over into a sound of quite another
+character--
+
+"I seen that great Wendigo thing," he whispered, sniffing the air about
+him exactly like an animal. "I been with it too--"
+
+Whether the poor devil would have said more, or whether Dr. Cathcart
+would have continued the impossible cross examination cannot be known,
+for at that moment the voice of Hank was heard yelling at the top of his
+voice from behind the canvas that concealed all but his terrified eyes.
+Such a howling was never heard.
+
+"His feet! Oh, Gawd, his feet! Look at his great changed--feet!"
+
+Defago, shuffling where he sat, had moved in such a way that for the
+first time his legs were in full light and his feet were visible. Yet
+Simpson had no time, himself, to see properly what Hank had seen. And
+Hank has never seen fit to tell. That same instant, with a leap like
+that of a frightened tiger, Cathcart was upon him, bundling the folds of
+blanket about his legs with such speed that the young student caught
+little more than a passing glimpse of something dark and oddly massed
+where moccasined feet ought to have been, and saw even that but with
+uncertain vision.
+
+Then, before the doctor had time to do more, or Simpson time to even
+think a question, much less ask it, Defago was standing upright in front
+of them, balancing with pain and difficulty, and upon his shapeless and
+twisted visage an expression so dark and so malicious that it was, in
+the true sense, monstrous.
+
+"Now _you_ seen it too," he wheezed, "you seen my fiery, burning feet!
+And now--that is, unless you kin save me an' prevent--it's 'bout time
+for--"
+
+His piteous and beseeching voice was interrupted by a sound that was
+like the roar of wind coming across the lake. The trees overhead shook
+their tangled branches. The blazing fire bent its flames as before a
+blast. And something swept with a terrific, rushing noise about the
+little camp and seemed to surround it entirely in a single moment of
+time. Defago shook the clinging blankets from his body, turned towards
+the woods behind, and with the same stumbling motion that had brought
+him--was gone: gone, before anyone could move muscle to prevent him,
+gone with an amazing, blundering swiftness that left no time to act. The
+darkness positively swallowed him; and less than a dozen seconds later,
+above the roar of the swaying trees and the shout of the sudden wind,
+all three men, watching and listening with stricken hearts, heard a cry
+that seemed to drop down upon them from a great height of sky and
+distance--
+
+"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of
+fire ...!" then died away, into untold space and silence.
+
+Dr. Cathcart--suddenly master of himself, and therefore of the
+others--was just able to seize Hank violently by the arm as he tried to
+dash headlong into the Bush.
+
+"But I want ter know,--you!" shrieked the guide. "I want ter see! That
+ain't him at all, but some--devil that's shunted into his place ...!"
+
+Somehow or other--he admits he never quite knew how he accomplished
+it--he managed to keep him in the tent and pacify him. The doctor,
+apparently, had reached the stage where reaction had set in and allowed
+his own innate force to conquer. Certainly he "managed" Hank admirably.
+It was his nephew, however, hitherto so wonderfully controlled, who gave
+him most cause for anxiety, for the cumulative strain had now produced a
+condition of lachrymose hysteria which made it necessary to isolate him
+upon a bed of boughs and blankets as far removed from Hank as was
+possible under the circumstances.
+
+And there he lay, as the watches of that haunted night passed over the
+lonely camp, crying startled sentences, and fragments of sentences, into
+the folds of his blanket. A quantity of gibberish about speed and height
+and fire mingled oddly with biblical memories of the classroom. "People
+with broken faces all on fire are coming at a most awful, awful, pace
+towards the camp!" he would moan one minute; and the next would sit up
+and stare into the woods, intently listening, and whisper, "How terrible
+in the wilderness are--are the feet of them that--" until his uncle came
+across to change the direction of his thoughts and comfort him.
+
+The hysteria, fortunately, proved but temporary. Sleep cured him, just
+as it cured Hank.
+
+Till the first signs of daylight came, soon after five o'clock, Dr.
+Cathcart kept his vigil. His face was the color of chalk, and there were
+strange flushes beneath the eyes. An appalling terror of the soul
+battled with his will all through those silent hours. These were some of
+the outer signs ...
+
+At dawn he lit the fire himself, made breakfast, and woke the others,
+and by seven they were well on their way back to the home camp--three
+perplexed and afflicted men, but each in his own way having reduced his
+inner turmoil to a condition of more or less systematized order again.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+They talked little, and then only of the most wholesome and common
+things, for their minds were charged with painful thoughts that
+clamoured for explanation, though no one dared refer to them. Hank,
+being nearest to primitive conditions, was the first to find himself,
+for he was also less complex. In Dr. Cathcart "civilization" championed
+his forces against an attack singular enough. To this day, perhaps, he
+is not _quite_ sure of certain things. Anyhow, he took longer to "find
+himself."
+
+Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions
+probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order.
+Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely
+witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that
+had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically,
+betraying a scale of life still monstrous and immature. He envisaged it
+rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic
+and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men; when the forces of nature
+were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe
+not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later
+in a sermon "savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of
+men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity
+as it exists."
+
+With his uncle he never discussed the matter in detail, for the barrier
+between the two types of mind made it difficult. Only once, years later,
+something led them to the frontier of the subject--of a single detail of
+the subject, rather--
+
+"Can't you even tell me what--_they_ were like?" he asked; and the reply,
+though conceived in wisdom, was not encouraging, "It is far better you
+should not try to know, or to find out."
+
+"Well--that odour...?" persisted the nephew. "What do you make of that?"
+
+Dr. Cathcart looked at him and raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Odours," he replied, "are not so easy as sounds and sights of telepathic
+communication. I make as much, or as little, probably, as you do
+yourself."
+
+He was not quite so glib as usual with his explanations. That was all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the fall of day, cold, exhausted, famished, the party came to the
+end of the long portage and dragged themselves into a camp that at
+first glimpse seemed empty. Fire there was none, and no Punk came
+forward to welcome them. The emotional capacity of all three was too
+over-spent to recognize either surprise or annoyance; but the cry of
+spontaneous affection that burst from the lips of Hank, as he rushed
+ahead of them towards the fire-place, came probably as a warning that
+the end of the amazing affair was not quite yet. And both Cathcart and
+his nephew confessed afterwards that when they saw him kneel down in
+his excitement and embrace something that reclined, gently moving,
+beside the extinguished ashes, they felt in their very bones that this
+"something" would prove to be Defago--the true Defago, returned.
+
+And so, indeed, it was.
+
+It is soon told. Exhausted to the point of emaciation, the French
+Canadian--what was left of him, that is--fumbled among the ashes, trying
+to make a fire. His body crouched there, the weak fingers obeying feebly
+the instinctive habit of a lifetime with twigs and matches. But there
+was no longer any mind to direct the simple operation. The mind had
+fled beyond recall. And with it, too, had fled memory. Not only recent
+events, but all previous life was a blank.
+
+This time it was the real man, though incredibly and horribly shrunken.
+On his face was no expression of any kind whatever--fear, welcome, or
+recognition. He did not seem to know who it was that embraced him, or
+who it was that fed, warmed and spoke to him the words of comfort and
+relief. Forlorn and broken beyond all reach of human aid, the little man
+did meekly as he was bidden. The "something" that had constituted him
+"individual" had vanished for ever.
+
+In some ways it was more terribly moving than anything they had yet
+seen--that idiot smile as he drew wads of coarse moss from his swollen
+cheeks and told them that he was "a damned moss-eater"; the continued
+vomiting of even the simplest food; and, worst of all, the piteous
+and childish voice of complaint in which he told them that his feet
+pained him--"burn like fire"--which was natural enough when Dr. Cathcart
+examined them and found that both were dreadfully frozen. Beneath the
+eyes there were faint indications of recent bleeding.
+
+The details of how he survived the prolonged exposure, of where he had
+been, or of how he covered the great distance from one camp to the
+other, including an immense detour of the lake on foot since he had
+no canoe--all this remains unknown. His memory had vanished completely.
+And before the end of the winter whose beginning witnessed this strange
+occurrence, Defago, bereft of mind, memory and soul, had gone with it.
+He lingered only a few weeks.
+
+And what Punk was able to contribute to the story throws no further
+light upon it. He was cleaning fish by the lake shore about five o'clock
+in the evening--an hour, that is, before the search party returned--when
+he saw this shadow of the guide picking its way weakly into camp. In
+advance of him, he declares, came the faint whiff of a certain singular
+odour.
+
+That same instant old Punk started for home. He covered the entire
+journey of three days as only Indian blood could have covered it. The
+terror of a whole race drove him. He knew what it all meant. Defago
+had "seen the Wendigo."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood
+
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