i a considerable number of hunting parties wereout that year without finding so much as a fresh trail; for themoose were uncommonly shy, and the various nimrods returned to the bosomsof their respective families with the best excuses the facts of their imaginationscould suggest. dr. cathcart, among others, came back withouta trophy; but he brought instead the memory of an experience whichhe declares was worth all the bull moose that had ever been shot. but thencathcart, of aberdeen, was interested in other things besides moose--amongstthem the vagaries of
the human mind. this particular story, however,found no mention in his book on collective hallucination for the simplereason (so he confided once to a fellow colleague) that he himselfplayed too intimate a part in it to form a competent judgment of theaffair 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 thelatter's guide, defago. joseph defago was a french "canuck," who hadstrayed from his native province of quebec years before, and had gotcaught in rat portage when
the canadian pacific railway was a-building;a man who, in addition to his unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft andbush-lore, could also sing the old _voyageur_ songs and tell a capitalhunting yarn into the bargain. he was deeply susceptible, moreover,to that singular spell which the wilderness lays upon certain lonelynatures, and he loved the wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passionthat amounted almost to an obsession. the life of the backwoods fascinatedhim--whence, doubtless, his surpassing efficiency in dealingwith their mysteries. on this particular expedition he was hank'schoice. hank knew him and
swore by him. he also swore at him, "jestas a pal might," and since he had a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterlymeaningless, oaths, the conversation between the two stalwart andhardy woodsmen was often of a rather lively description. this river of expletives,however, hank agreed to dam a little out of respect forhis old "hunting boss," dr. cathcart, whom of course he addressed afterthe fashion of the country as "doc," and also because he understood thatyoung simpson was already a "bit of a parson." he had, however, oneobjection to defago, and one only--which was, that the french canadiansometimes exhibited what hank
described as "the output of a cursed and dismalmind," meaning apparently that he sometimes was true to type,latin type, and suffered fits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothingcould induce him to utter speech. defago, that is to say, wasimaginative and melancholy. and, as a rule, it was too long a spell of"civilization" that induced the attacks, for a few days of the wildernessinvariably cured them. this, then, was the party of four that foundthemselves in camp the last week in october of that "shy moose year" 'wayup in the wilderness north of rat portage--a forsaken and desolate country.there was also punk, an
indian, who had accompanied dr. cathcart andhank 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 steaksand coffee at a few minutes' notice. he dressed in the worn-outclothes bequeathed to him by former patrons, and, except for his coarseblack hair and dark skin, he looked in these city garments no more likea 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; histaciturn silence and his endurance survived; also his superstition.
the party round the blazing fire that nightwere despondent, for a week had passed without a single sign of recentmoose discovering itself. defago had sung his song and plunged intoa 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-outlie," that the frenchman had finally subsided into a sulky silence whichnothing seemed likely to break. dr. cathcart and his nephew were fairlydone after an exhausting day. punk was washing up the dishes, gruntingto himself under the lean-to of branches, where he later also slept.no one troubled to stir
the slowly dying fire. overhead the starswere brilliant in a sky quite wintry, and there was so little wind thatice was already forming stealthily along the shores of the still lakebehind them. the silence of the vast listening forest stole forwardand 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. "wedon't stand a dead dago's chance around here." "agreed," said cathcart, always a man of fewwords. "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 fora change! none of us ain't touched that quiet bit o' land yet--" "i'm with you." "and you, defago, take mr. simpson along inthe 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, saidnothing by way of reply. he was still offended, possibly, about his interruptedstory. "no one's been up that way this year, an'i'll lay my bottom dollar on _that!_" hank added with emphasis, as thoughhe 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 wasrecognized as general organizer of the hunt, and in charge of theparty.
it was obvious to anyone that defago did notjump at the plan, but his silence seemed to convey something more thanordinary disapproval, and across his sensitive dark face there passeda 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. cathcartmade no immediate reply, although the look had interested him enoughat the time for him to make a mental note of it. the expression had causedhim a passing uneasiness
he could not quite account for at the moment. but hank, of course, had been the first tonotice it, and the odd thing was that instead of becoming explosive orangry over the other's reluctance, he at once began to humor hima bit. "but there ain't no _speshul_ reason why noone's been up there this year," he said with a perceptible hush inhis tone; "not the reason you mean, anyway! las' year it was the fires thatkep' 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, thendropped them again. a breath of wind stole out of the forest andstirred the embers into a passing blaze. dr. cathcart again noticedthe expression in the guide's face, and again he did not like it. but thistime 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 disquietedhim more than he cared to admit. "bad indians up that way?" he asked, witha laugh to ease matters a little, while simpson, too sleepy to noticethis subtle by-play, moved
off to bed with a prodigious yawn; "or--oranything wrong with the country?" he added, when his nephew was outof hearing. hank met his eye with something less thanhis 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 thatlay nearest the fire. defago looked up quickly, as from an interruptedreverie, a reverie, however, that had not prevented his seeingall that went on about him. "skeered--_nuthin'!_" he answered, with aflush of defiance. "there's
nuthin' in the bush that can skeer josephdefago, and don't you forget it!" and the natural energy with which hespoke made it impossible to know whether he told the whole truth or onlya part of it. hank turned towards the doctor. he was justgoing to add something when he stopped abruptly and looked round. a soundclose behind them in the darkness made all three start. it was oldpunk, who had moved up from his lean-to while they talked and now stoodthere just beyond the circle of firelight--listening. "'nother time, doc!" hank whispered, witha 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 draggedhim towards the blaze and threw more wood on. "that was a mighty goodfeed you give us an hour or two back," he continued heartily, as thoughto set the man's thoughts on another scent, "and it ain't christian tolet you stand out there freezin' yer ole soul to hell while we'regettin' all good an' toasted!" punk moved in and warmed his feet, smilingdarkly at the other's volubility which he only half understood,but saying nothing. and
presently dr. cathcart, seeing that furtherconversation was impossible, followed his nephew's example and moved offto the tent, leaving the three men smoking over the now blazing fire. it is not easy to undress in a small tentwithout waking one's companion, and cathcart, hardened and warm-bloodedas he was in spite of his fifty odd years, did what hank would havedescribed as "considerable of his twilight" in the open. he noticed,during the process, that punk had meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, andthat hank and defago were at it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammerand anvil, the little french
canadian being the anvil. it was all verylike the conventional stage picture of western melodrama: the fire lightingup 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 noticedthe details; but at the same time something deep within him--he hardlyknew what--shrank a little, as though an almost imperceptible breath of warninghad touched the surface
of his soul and was gone again before he couldseize it. probably it was traceable to that "scared expression" he hadseen in the eyes of defago; "probably"--for this hint of fugitive emotionotherwise escaped his usually so keen analysis. defago, he was vaguelyaware, might cause trouble somehow ...he was not as steady aguide as hank, for instance ... further than that he could notget ... he watched the men a moment longer beforediving into the stuffy tent where simpson already slept soundly. hank,he saw, was swearing like a mad african in a new york nigger saloon; butit was the swearing of
"affection." the ridiculous oaths flew freelynow that the cause of their obstruction was asleep. presently heput his arm almost tenderly upon his comrade's shoulder, and they movedoff together into the shadows where their tent stood faintly glimmering.punk, too, a moment later followed their example and disappearedbetween his odorous blankets in the opposite direction. dr. cathcart then likewise turned in, wearinessand sleep still fighting in his mind with an obscure curiosity to knowwhat it was that had scared defago about the country up fifty islandwater way,--wondering,
too, why punk's presence had prevented thecompletion of what hank had to say. then sleep overtook him. he wouldknow tomorrow. hank would tell him the story while they trudged after theelusive moose. deep silence fell about the little camp, plantedthere so audaciously in the jaws of the wilderness. the lake gleamedlike a sheet of black glass beneath the stars. the cold air pricked. inthe draughts of night that poured their silent tide from the depths ofthe forest, with messages from distant ridges and from lakes just beginningto 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 thesealmost electrical hints of moss and bark and hardening swamp a hundredmiles away. even hank and defago, subtly in league with the soul ofthe woods as they were, would probably have spread their delicate nostrilsin vain.... but an hour later, when all slept like thedead, old punk crept from his blankets and went down to the shore of thelake like a shadow--silently, as only indian blood can move. he raised hishead and looked about him. the thick darkness rendered sight of smallavail, but, like the animals,
he possessed other senses that darkness couldnot mute. he listened--then sniffed the air. motionlessas a hemlock stem he stood there. after five minutes again he liftedhis head and sniffed, and yet once again. a tingling of the wonderful nervesthat betrayed itself by no outer sign, ran through him as he tastedthe keen air. then, merging his figure into the surrounding blacknessin a way that only wild men and animals understand, he turned, still movinglike a shadow, and went stealthily back to his lean-to and his bed. and soon after he slept, the change of windhe had divined stirred
gently the reflection of the stars withinthe lake. rising among the far ridges of the country beyond fifty islandwater, it came from the direction in which he had stared, and it passedover the sleeping camp with a faint and sighing murmur through thetops of the big trees that was almost too delicate to be audible. withit, down the desert paths of night, though too faint, too high even forthe indian's hair-like nerves, there passed a curious, thin odor,strangely disquieting, an odor of something that seemed unfamiliar--utterlyunknown. the french canadian and the man of indianblood each stirred uneasily in
his sleep just about this time, though neitherof them woke. then the ghost of that unforgettably strange odor passedaway and was lost among the leagues of tenantless forest beyond. ii in the morning the camp was astir before thesun. there had been a light fall of snow during the night and theair was sharp. punk had done his duty betimes, for the odors of coffeeand fried bacon reached every tent. all were in good spirits. "wind's shifted!" cried hank vigorously, watchingsimpson and his guide
already loading the small canoe. "it's acrossthe 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 somuch as a tail-end scent of you with the wind as it is. good luck, monsieurdefago!" he added, facetiously giving the name its french pronunciationfor once, "_bonne chance!_" defago returned the good wishes, apparentlyin the best of spirits, the silent mood gone. before eight o'clock oldpunk had the camp to himself, cathcart and hank were far alongthe 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 bobbingon the bosom of the lake, going due east. the wintry sharpness of the air was temperednow by a sun that topped the wooded ridges and blazed with a luxuriouswarmth upon the world of lake and forest below; loons flew skimmingthrough the sparkling spray that the wind lifted; divers shook their drippingheads to the sun and popped smartly out of sight again; and asfar as eye could reach rose the leagues of endless, crowding bush, desolatein its lonely sweep and
grandeur, untrodden by foot of man, and stretchingits mighty and unbroken carpet right up to the frozen shoresof hudson bay. simpson, who saw it all for the first timeas he paddled hard in the bows of the dancing canoe, was enchanted byits austere beauty. his heart drank in the sense of freedom and greatspaces just as his lungs drank in the cool and perfumed wind. behindhim in the stern seat, singing fragments of his native chanties,defago steered the craft of birch bark like a thing of life, answeringcheerfully all his companion's questions. both were gay and light-hearted.on such
occasions men lose the superficial, worldlydistinctions; they become human beings working together for a commonend. simpson, the employer, and defago the employed, among these primitiveforces, were simply--two men, the "guider" and the "guided." superiorknowledge, of course, assumed control, and the younger man fellwithout a second thought into the quasi-subordinate position. he never dreamedof objecting when defago dropped the "mr.," and addressed himas "say, simpson," or "simpson, boss," which was invariably thecase before they reached the farther shore after a stiff paddle of twelvemiles against a head wind.
he only laughed, and liked it; then ceasedto notice it at all. for this "divinity student" was a young manof parts and character, though as yet, of course, untraveled; andon this trip--the first time he had seen any country but his own and littleswitzerland--the huge scale of things somewhat bewildered him. itwas one thing, he realized, to hear about primeval forests, but quiteanother to see them. while to dwell in them and seek acquaintance with theirwild life was, again, an initiation that no intelligent man could undergowithout a certain shifting of personal values hitherto heldfor permanent and sacred.
simpson knew the first faint indication ofthis emotion when he held the new. 303 rifle in his hands and looked alongits pair of faultless, gleaming barrels. the three days' journeyto their headquarters, by lake and portage, had carried the process a stagefarther. and now that he was about to plunge beyond even the fringeof wilderness where they were camped into the virgin heart of uninhabitedregions as vast as europe itself, the true nature of the situation stoleupon him with an effect of delight and awe that his imagination wasfully capable of appreciating. it was himself and defago againsta multitude--at least,
against a titan! the bleak splendors of these remote and lonelyforests rather overwhelmed him with the sense of his ownlittleness. that stern quality of the tangled backwoods which can only bedescribed as merciless and terrible, rose out of these far blue woodsswimming upon the horizon, and revealed itself. he understood the silentwarning. he realized his own utter helplessness. only defago, as asymbol of a distant civilization where man was master, stood betweenhim and a pitiless death by exhaustion and starvation.
it was thrilling to him, therefore, to watchdefago turn over the canoe upon the shore, pack the paddles carefullyunderneath, and then proceed to "blaze" the spruce stems for some distanceon either side of an almost invisible trail, with the carelessremark thrown in, "say, simpson, if anything happens to me, you'llfind the canoe all correc' by these marks;--then strike doo west into thesun to hit the home camp agin, see?" it was the most natural thing in the worldto say, and he said it without any noticeable inflexion of the voice,only it happened to
express the youth's emotions at the momentwith an utterance that was symbolic of the situation and of his own helplessnessas 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 nowto be left behind. those small yellow patches, made on the trees bythe 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 overrocks and fallen trunks and across half-frozen swamps; skirting numerouslakes that fairly gemmed
the forest, their borders fringed with mist;and towards five o'clock found themselves suddenly on the edge of thewoods, looking out across a large sheet of water in front of them, dottedwith 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 campfor the night. in a very few minutes, under those skilfulhands 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 theyoung scotchman cleaned the fish they had caught trolling behind the canoe,defago "guessed" he would "jest as soon" take a turn through thebush for indications of moose. "_may_ come across a trunk where theybin and rubbed horns," he said, as he moved off, "or feedin' on thelast of the maple leaves"--and he was gone. his small figure melted away like a shadowin the dusk, while simpson noted with a kind of admiration how easilythe forest absorbed him into
herself. a few steps, it seemed, and he wasno longer visible. yet there was little underbrush hereabouts;the trees stood somewhat apart, well spaced; and in the clearings grewsilver birch and maple, spearlike and slender, against the immensestems of spruce and hemlock. but for occasional prostrate monsters, andthe boulders of grey rock that thrust uncouth shoulders here and thereout 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 theright, however, began the great burnt section, miles in extent, proclaimingits real
character--_brule_, as it is called, wherethe fires of the previous year had raged for weeks, and the blackenedstumps now rose gaunt and ugly, bereft of branches, like gigantic matchheads stuck into the ground, savage and desolate beyond words.the perfume of charcoal and rain-soaked ashes still hung faintly aboutit. the dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grewdark; the crackling of the fire and the wash of little waves along therocky lake shore were the only sounds audible. the wind had droppedwith the sun, and in all that vast world of branches nothing stirred. anymoment, it seemed, the
woodland gods, who are to be worshipped insilence and loneliness, might stretch their mighty and terrific outlinesamong the trees. in front, through doorways pillared by huge straightstems, lay the stretch of fifty island water, a crescent-shaped lakesome fifteen miles from tip to tip, and perhaps five miles across wherethey were camped. a sky of rose and saffron, more clear than any atmospheresimpson had ever known, still dropped its pale streaming firesacross the waves, where the islands--a hundred, surely, rather thanfifty--floated like the fairy barques of some enchanted fleet. fringedwith pines, whose crests
fingered most delicately the sky, they almostseemed to move upwards as the light faded--about to weigh anchor andnavigate the pathways of the heavens instead of the currents of their nativeand desolate lake. and strips of colored cloud, like flauntingpennons, 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 inhis efforts to enjoy it and at the same time tend the frying pan and thefire. yet, ever at the back of his thoughts, lay that other aspect of thewilderness: the indifference
to human life, the merciless spirit of desolationwhich took no note of man. the sense of his utter loneliness, nowthat even defago had gone, came close as he looked about him and listenedfor the sound of his companion's returning footsteps. there was pleasure in the sensation, yet withit a perfectly comprehensible alarm. and instinctively thethought stirred in him: "what should i--_could_ i, do--if anythinghappened and he did not come back--?" they enjoyed their well-earned supper, eatinguntold quantities of fish,
and drinking unmilked tea strong enough tokill men who had not covered thirty miles of hard "going," eating littleon the way. and when it was over, they smoked and told stories round theblazing fire, laughing, stretching weary limbs, and discussing plansfor the morrow. defago was in excellent spirits, though disappointedat having no signs of moose to report. but it was dark and he had not gonefar. the _brule_, too, was bad. his clothes and hands were smeared withcharcoal. simpson, watching him, realized with renewed vividness theirposition--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 comfortablein, i mean!... eh?" he merely gave expression to the mood of themoment; he was hardly prepared for the earnestness, the solemnity even, withwhich 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 loweredtone as if to himself, "there's lots found out _that_, and gone plumbto pieces!"
but the man's gravity of manner was not quiteto the other's liking; it was a little too suggestive for this sceneryand setting; he was sorry he had broached the subject. he rememberedsuddenly how his uncle had told him that men were sometimes strickenwith a strange fever of the wilderness, when the seduction of the uninhabitedwastes caught them so fiercely that they went forth, half fascinated,half deluded, to their death. and he had a shrewd idea that his companionheld something in sympathy with that queer type. he led theconversation 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 halfwayhouse eatin' himself full to bustin' with fish and coffee." they laughedtogether over the picture. but the casual mention of those sixtymiles again made simpson realize the prodigious scale of this landwhere they hunted; sixty miles was a mere step; two hundred little more thana step. stories of lost hunters rose persistently before his memory.the passion and mystery of homeless and wandering men, seduced by thebeauty of great forests,
swept his soul in a way too vivid to be quitepleasant. he wondered vaguely whether it was the mood of his companionthat invited the unwelcome suggestion with such persistence. "sing us a song, defago, if you're not tootired," he asked; "one of those old _voyageur_ songs you sang the othernight." he handed his tobacco pouch to the guide and then filledhis own pipe, while the canadian, nothing loth, sent his light voiceacross the lake in one of those plaintive, almost melancholy chantieswith which lumbermen and trappers lessen the burden of their labor.there was an appealing and
romantic flavor about it, something that recalledthe atmosphere of the old pioneer days when indians and wildernesswere leagued together, battles frequent, and the old country fartheroff 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 gulpthat permitted neither echo nor resonance. it was in the middle of the third verse thatsimpson noticed something unusual--something that brought his thoughtsback with a rush from faraway scenes. a curious change had comeinto the man's voice. even
before he knew what it was, uneasiness caughthim, and looking up quickly, he saw that defago, though stillsinging, 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 startedto his feet and stood upright--_sniffing the air_. like a dog scentinggame, 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 unpleasantlysuggestive and at the same
time singularly dramatic. simpson's heartfluttered 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 shoulderinto the sea of darkness. "what's up? are you frightened--?" even before the question was out of his mouthhe knew it was foolish, for any man with a pair of eyes in his headcould see that the canadian had turned white down to his very gills. noteven 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 smellmoose? or anything queer, anything--wrong?" he lowered his voice instinctively. the forest pressed round them with its encirclingwall; 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, lookedat it, then laid it softly down again without disturbing the rest ofthe covey. it seemed as if a million invisible causes had combined justto produce that single
visible effect. _other_ life pulsed aboutthem--and was gone. defago turned abruptly; the livid hue of hisface had turned to a dirty grey. "i never said i heered--or smelt--nuthin',"he said slowly and emphatically, in an oddly altered voice thatconveyed somehow a touch of defiance. "i was only--takin' a look round--soto 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 lightthe pipe he had half
filled just before he began to sing. without speaking another word they sat downagain by the fire. defago changing his side so that he could face thedirection the wind came from. for even a tenderfoot could tell that.defago changed his position in order to hear and smell--all there wasto be heard and smelt. and, since he now faced the lake with his backto the trees it was evidently nothing in the forest that had sent so strangeand 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 backmemories that's troublesome to me; i never oughter've begun it. it sets meon t' imagining things, see?" clearly the man was still fighting with someprofoundly moving emotion. he wished to excuse himself in the eyes ofthe other. but the explanation, in that it was only a part ofthe truth, was a lie, and he knew perfectly well that simpson was not deceivedby it. for nothing could explain away the livid terror that haddropped over his face while he stood there sniffing the air. and nothing--noamount of blazing fire,
or chatting on ordinary subjects--could makethat 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 andgestures of the guide, had also communicated itself, vaguely and thereforemore potently, to his companion. the guide's visible efforts todissemble the truth only made things worse. moreover, to add to the youngerman's uneasiness, was the difficulty, nay, the impossibility he feltof asking questions, and also his complete ignorance as to the cause ...indians,wild animals, forest fires--all these, he knew, were wholly outof the question. his
imagination searched vigorously, but in vain.... * * * * * yet, somehow or other, after another longspell of smoking, talking and roasting themselves before the great fire,the shadow that had so suddenly invaded their peaceful camp beganto shirt. perhaps defago's efforts, or the return of his quiet and normalattitude accomplished this; perhaps simpson himself had exaggeratedthe affair out of all proportion to the truth; or possibly the vigorousair of the wilderness brought its own powers of healing. whateverthe cause, the feeling of
immediate horror seemed to have passed awayas mysteriously as it had come, for nothing occurred to feed it. simpsonbegan to feel that he had permitted himself the unreasoning terror ofa child. he put it down partly to a certain subconscious excitementthat this wild and immense scenery generated in his blood, partly tothe spell of solitude, and partly to overfatigue. that pallor in theguide'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 itscauses ...simpson lit a last pipe and tried to laugh to himself. on gettinghome to scotland it would make quite a good story. he did not realizethat this laughter was a sign that terror still lurked in the recessesof his soul--that, in fact, it was merely one of the conventionalsigns by which a man, seriously alarmed, tries to persuade himselfthat he is _not_ so. defago, however, heard that low laughter andlooked 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--alate hour for hunters to be still awake. "what's ticklin' yer?" he asked in his ordinarytone, yet gravely. "i--i was thinking of our little toy woodsat home, just at that moment," stammered simpson, coming back towhat really dominated his mind, and startled by the question, "and comparingthem to--to all this," and he swept his arm round to indicatethe bush. a pause followed in which neither of themsaid anything. "all the same i wouldn't laugh about it, ifi was you," defago added,
looking over simpson's shoulder into the shadows."there's places in there nobody won't never see into--nobodyknows what lives in there either." "too big--too far off?" the suggestion inthe guide's manner was immense and horrible. defago nodded. the expression on his facewas dark. he, too, felt uneasy. the younger man understood that ina _hinterland_ of this size there might well be depths of wood that wouldnever in the life of the world be known or trodden. the thought wasnot exactly the sort he
welcomed. in a loud voice, cheerfully, hesuggested that it was time for bed. but the guide lingered, tinkering withthe fire, arranging the stones needlessly, doing a dozen things thatdid not really need doing. evidently there was something he wanted tosay, 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--smellnothing, 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 himstart. "and all the evenin' you ain't smelt--nothing?"persisted the guide, peering at him through the gloom; "nothingextrordiny, and different to anything else you ever smelt before?" "no, no, man; nothing at all!" he repliedaggressively, half angrily. defago's face cleared. "that's good!" he exclaimedwith evident relief. "that's good to hear." "have _you?_" asked simpson sharply, and thesame instant regretted the
question. the canadian came closer in the darkness.he shook his head. "i guess not," he said, though without overwhelmingconviction. "it must've been just that song of mine that did it. it's thesong they sing in lumber camps and godforsaken places like that, whenthey're skeered the wendigo's somewhere around, doin' a bit ofswift traveling.--" "and what's the wendigo, pray?" simpson askedquickly, irritated because again he could not prevent that sudden shiverof the nerves. he knew that he was close upon the man's terror andthe cause of it. yet a
rushing passionate curiosity overcame hisbetter judgment, and his fear. defago turned swiftly and looked at him asthough he were suddenly about to shriek. his eyes shone, but his mouth waswide open. yet all he said, or whispered rather, for his voice sank verylow, was: "it's nuthin'--nuthin' but what those lousy fellersbelieve when they've bin hittin' the bottle too long--a sort of greatanimal that lives up yonder," he jerked his head northwards, "quickas lightning in its tracks, an' bigger'n anything else in thebush, 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 theguide that clutched his arm. "come, come, hurry up for god's sake, andget the lantern going! it's time we were in bed and asleep if we're goingto 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 slightdelay he appeared with the lantern and hung it from a nail in the frontpole of the tent. the shadows of a hundred trees shifted their placesquickly as he did so,
and when he stumbled over the rope, divingswiftly inside, the whole tent trembled as though a gust of wind struckit. the two men lay down, without undressing,upon their beds of soft balsam boughs, cunningly arranged. inside, all waswarm and cozy, but outside the world of crowding trees pressed closeabout them, marshalling their million shadows, and smothering the littletent that stood there like a wee white shell facing the ocean of tremendousforest. 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 flapof the tent, ready to plunge into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew firstthat unique and profound stillness of a primeval forest when no windstirs ... and when the night has weight and substance that enters intothe soul to bind a veil about it.... then sleep took him.... iii thus, it seemed to him, at least. yet it wastrue that the lap of the
water, just beyond the tent door, still beattime with his lessening pulses when he realized that he was lyingwith his eyes open and that another sound had recently introduced itselfwith cunning softness between the splash and murmur of the littlewaves. and, long before he understood what this soundwas, it had stirred in him the centers of pity and alarm. he listenedintently, though at first in vain, for the running blood beat all itsdrums too noisily in his ears. did it come, he wondered, from the lake,or from the woods?... then, suddenly, with a rush and a flutterof the heart, he knew that it
was close beside him in the tent; and, whenhe turned over for a better hearing, it focused itself unmistakably nottwo feet away. it was a sound of weeping; defago upon his bed of brancheswas 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 thinkor reflect, was the rush of a poignant and searching tenderness. thisintimate, human sound, heard amid the desolation about them, woke pity.it was so incongruous, so pitifully incongruous--and so vain! tears--inthis vast and cruel
wilderness: of what avail? he thought of alittle child crying in mid-atlantic.... then, of course, with fullerrealization, and the memory of what had gone before, came the descentof the terror upon him, and his blood ran cold. "defago," he whispered quickly, "what's thematter?" he tried to make his voice very gentle. "are you in pain--unhappy--?"there was no reply, but the sounds ceased abruptly. he stretchedhis hand out and touched him. the body did not stir. "are you awake?" for it occurred to him thatthe man was crying in his
sleep. "are you cold?" he noticed that hisfeet, which were uncovered, projected beyond the mouth of the tent. hespread an extra fold of his own blankets over them. the guide had slippeddown in his bed, and the branches seemed to have been dragged withhim. he was afraid to pull the body back again, for fear of waking him. one or two tentative questions he venturedsoftly, but though he waited for several minutes there came no reply, norany sign of movement. presently he heard his regular and quiet breathing,and putting his hand again gently on the breast, felt the steadyrise 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, hadbeen crying in his sleep. some dream or other had afflicted him. yet neverin his life would he forget that pitiful sound of sobbing, and the feelingthat the whole awful wilderness of woods listened.... his own mind busied itself for a long timewith the recent events, of which _this_ took its mysterious place asone, and though his reason
successfully argued away all unwelcome suggestions,a sensation of uneasiness remained, resisting ejection, verydeep-seated--peculiar beyond ordinary. iv but sleep, in the long run, proves greaterthan all emotions. his thoughts soon wandered again; he lay there,warm as toast, exceedingly weary; the night soothed and comforted, bluntingthe edges of memory and alarm. half an hour later he was obliviousof 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 crowdupon each other's heels with a conviction of dreadfulest reality, yet someinconsistent detail accuses the whole display of incompletenessand disguise, so the events that now followed, though they actually happened,persuaded the mind somehow that the detail which could explainthem had been overlooked in the confusion, and that therefore they werebut partly true, the rest delusion. at the back of the sleeper's mindsomething remains awake,
ready to let slip the judgment. "all thisis not _quite_ real; when you wake up you'll understand." and thus, in a way, it was with simpson. theevents, not wholly inexplicable or incredible in themselves,yet remain for the man who saw and heard them a sequence of separate factsof cold horror, because the little piece that might have made the puzzleclear lay concealed or overlooked. so far as he can recall, it was a violentmovement, running downwards through the tent towards the door, that firstwoke him and made him
aware that his companion was sitting boltupright beside him--quivering. hours must have passed, for it was the palegleam of the dawn that revealed his outline against the canvas. thistime the man was not crying; he was quaking like a leaf; the tremblinghe felt plainly through the blankets down the entire lengthof his own body. defago had huddled down against him for protection, shrinkingaway from something that apparently concealed itself near thedoor flaps of the little tent. simpson thereupon called out in a loud voicesome question or other--in the first bewilderment of waking he does notremember exactly what--and
the man made no reply. the atmosphere andfeeling of true nightmare lay horribly about him, making movement and speechboth difficult. at first, indeed, he was not sure where he was--whetherin 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 shatteredby 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 voiceclose outside the tent, overhead rather than upon the ground, of immensevolume, while in some strange way most penetratingly and seductivelysweet. 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 describeit quite intelligently, for it was unlike any sound he had ever heardin his life, and combined a blending of such contrary qualities. "a sortof windy, crying voice," he
calls it, "as of something lonely and untamed,wild and of abominable power...." and, even before it ceased, dropping backinto the great gulfs of silence, the guide beside him had sprung tohis feet with an answering though unintelligible cry. he blundered againstthe tent pole with violence, shaking the whole structure, spreadinghis arms out frantically for more room, and kicking hislegs impetuously free of the clinging blankets. for a second, perhaps two,he stood upright by the door, his outline dark against the pallorof the dawn; then, with a
furious, rushing speed, before his companioncould move a hand to stop him, he shot with a plunge through the flapsof canvas--and was gone. and as he went--so astonishingly fast thatthe voice could actually be heard dying in the distance--he called aloudin tones of anguished terror that at the same time held somethingstrangely like the frenzied exultation of delight-- "oh! oh! my feet of fire! my burning feetof fire! oh! oh! this height and fiery speed!" and then the distance quickly buried it, andthe deep silence of very
early morning descended upon the forest asbefore. it had all come about with such rapidity that,but for the evidence of the empty bed beside him, simpson could almosthave believed it to have been the memory of a nightmare carried overfrom sleep. he still felt the warm pressure of that vanished body againsthis side; there lay the twisted blankets in a heap; the very tentyet trembled with the vehemence of the impetuous departure. thestrange words rang in his ears, as though he still heard them in thedistance--wild language of a suddenly stricken mind. moreover, it was notonly the senses of sight
and hearing that reported uncommon thingsto his brain, for even while the man cried and ran, he had become awarethat a strange perfume, faint yet pungent, pervaded the interior of thetent. and it was at this point, it seems, brought to himself by theconsciousness that his nostrils were taking this distressing odordown into his throat, that he found his courage, sprang quickly to his feet--andwent out. the grey light of dawn that dropped, coldand glimmering, between the trees revealed the scene tolerably well. therestood the tent behind him, soaked with dew; the dark ashes of thefire, still warm; the lake,
white beneath a coating of mist, the islandsrising darkly out of it like objects packed in wool; and patches ofsnow 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. therewas not even the sound of disappearing footsteps, nor the echoes ofthe dying voice. he had gone--utterly. there was nothing; nothing but the sense ofhis recent presence, so strongly left behind about the camp; _and_--thispenetrating,
all-pervading odor. and even this was now rapidly disappearingin its turn. in spite of his exceeding mental perturbation, simpson struggledhard to detect its nature, and define it, but the ascertainingof an elusive scent, not recognized subconsciously and at once, isa very subtle operation of the mind. and he failed. it was gone beforehe could properly seize or name it. approximate description, even, seemsto have been difficult, for it was unlike any smell he knew. acridrather, not unlike the odor of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not whollyunpleasing, with
something almost sweet in it that remindedhim of the scent of decaying garden leaves, earth, and the myriad, namelessperfumes 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 himselfstanding by the ashes of the fire in a state of amazement and stupidterror that left him the helpless prey of anything that chose to happen.had a muskrat poked its pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrelscuttled in that instant down the bark of a tree, he would most likely havecollapsed without more ado
and fainted. for he felt about the whole affairthe touch somewhere of a great outer horror ... and his scattered powershad not as yet had time to collect themselves into a definite attitudeof fighting self-control. nothing did happen, however. a great kissof wind ran softly through the awakening forest, and a few maple leaves hereand there rustled tremblingly to earth. the sky seemed to growsuddenly much lighter. simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek anduncovered 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 succorhis vanished companion. make an effort, accordingly, he did, thoughan 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 wildcry in his blood, he did what any other inexperienced man would havedone in similar bewilderment: he ran about, without any senseof direction, like a frantic child, and called loudly without ceasingthe name of the guide: "defago! defago! defago!" he yelled, and thetrees gave him back the name as often as he shouted, only a littlesoftened--"defago! defago!
defago!" he followed the trail that lay a short distanceacross the patches of snow, and then lost it again where the treesgrew too thickly for snow to lie. he shouted till he was hoarse, andtill the sound of his own voice in all that unanswering and listeningworld began to frighten him. his confusion increased in direct ratio tothe violence of his efforts. his distress became formidably acute, tillat length his exertions defeated their own object, and from sheerexhaustion he headed back to the camp again. it remains a wonder that heever found his way. it was
with great difficulty, and only after numberlessfalse clues, that he at last saw the white tent between the trees,and so reached safety. exhaustion then applied its own remedy, andhe grew calmer. he made the fire and breakfasted. hot coffee and baconput a little sense and judgment into him again, and he realized thathe had been behaving like a boy. he now made another, and more successfulattempt to face the situation collectedly, and, a nature naturallyplucky coming to his assistance, he decided that he must firstmake as thorough a search as possible, failing success in which, he mustfind his way into the home
camp as best he could and bring help. and this was what he did. taking food, matchesand rifle with him, and a small axe to blaze the trees against his returnjourney, he set forth. it was eight o'clock when he started, thesun shining over the tops of the trees in a sky without clouds. pinnedto a stake by the fire he left a note in case defago returned while he wasaway. this time, according to a careful plan, hetook a new direction, intending to make a wide sweep that must sooneror later cut into indications of the guide's trail; and, beforehe had gone a quarter of a
mile he came across the tracks of a largeanimal in the snow, and beside it the light and smaller tracks of what werebeyond question human feet--the feet of defago. the relief he atonce experienced was natural, though brief; for at first sight he saw inthese tracks a simple explanation of the whole matter: these bigmarks had surely been left by a bull moose that, wind against it, had blunderedupon the camp, and uttered its singular cry of warning and alarmthe moment its mistake was apparent. defago, in whom the hunting instinctwas developed to the point of uncanny perfection, had scented thebrute coming down the wind
hours before. his excitement and disappearancewere due, of course, to--to his-- then the impossible explanation at which hegrasped faded, as common sense showed him mercilessly that none ofthis was true. no guide, much less a guide like defago, could have actedin so irrational a way, going off even without his rifle ...! the wholeaffair demanded a far more complicated elucidation, when he rememberedthe details of it all--the cry of terror, the amazing language, the greyface of horror when his nostrils first caught the new odor; that muffledsobbing in the
darkness, and--for this, too, now came backto him dimly--the man's original aversion for this particular bitof country.... besides, now that he examined them closer,these were not the tracks of a bull moose at all! hank had explained tohim the outline of a bull's hoofs, of a cow's or calf s, too, for thatmatter; he had drawn them clearly on a strip of birch bark. and thesewere wholly different. they were big, round, ample, and with no pointedoutline as of sharp hoofs. he wondered for a moment whether bear trackswere like that. there was no other animal he could think of, for cariboudid not come so far
south at this season, and, even if they did,would leave hoof marks. they were ominous signs--these mysteriouswritings left in the snow by the unknown creature that had lured a humanbeing away from safety--and when he coupled them in his imagination withthat haunting sound that broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentarydizziness shook his mind, distressing him again beyond belief. he feltthe _threatening_ aspect of it all. and, stooping down to examine themarks more closely, he caught a faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odorthat made him instantly straighten up again, fighting a sensationalmost of nausea.
then his memory played him another evil trick.he suddenly recalled those uncovered feet projecting beyond theedge of the tent, and the body's appearance of having been dragged towardsthe opening; the man's shrinking from something by the door whenhe woke later. the details now beat against his trembling mind with concertedattack. they seemed to gather in those deep spaces of the silentforest about him, where the host of trees stood waiting, listening, watchingto 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, smotheringthese ugly emotions that sought to weaken his will. he blazedinnumerable trees as he went, ever fearful of being unable to find the wayback, and calling aloud at intervals of a few seconds the name of theguide. the dull tapping of the axe upon the massive trunks, and the unnaturalaccents of his own voice became at length sounds that he evendreaded to make, dreaded to hear. for they drew attention without ceasingto his presence and exact whereabouts, and if it were really the casethat something was hunting himself down in the same way that he was huntingdown another--
with a strong effort, he crushed the thoughtout the instant it rose. it was the beginning, he realized, of a bewildermentutterly diabolical in kind that would speedily destroy him. although the snow was not continuous, lyingmerely in shallow flurries over the more open spaces, he found no difficultyin following the tracks for the first few miles. they wentstraight as a ruled line wherever the trees permitted. the stride soonbegan to increase in length, till it finally assumed proportionsthat seemed absolutely impossible for any ordinary animal to havemade. like huge flying leaps
they became. one of these he measured, andthough he knew that "stretch" of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, hewas at a complete loss to understand why he found no signs on the snowbetween the extreme points. but what perplexed him even more, making himfeel his vision had gone utterly awry, was that defago's stride increasedin the same manner, and finally covered the same incredible distances.it looked as if the great beast had lifted him with it and carried himacross these astonishing intervals. simpson, who was much longer inthe limb, found that he could not compass even half the stretch by takinga running jump.
and the sight of these huge tracks, runningside by side, silent evidence of a dreadful journey in which terroror madness had urged to impossible results, was profoundly moving.it shocked him in the secret depths of his soul. it was the most horriblething his eyes had ever looked upon. he began to follow them mechanically,absentmindedly almost, ever peering over his shoulder tosee 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 wasthey signified--these impressions left upon the snow by somethingnameless and untamed, always
accompanied by the footmarks of the littlefrench canadian, his guide, his comrade, the man who had shared his tenta few hours before, chatting, laughing, even singing by his side.... v for a man of his years and inexperience, onlya canny scot, perhaps, grounded in common sense and established inlogic, could have preserved even that measure of balance that this youthsomehow or other did manage to preserve through the whole adventure. otherwise,two things he presently noticed, while forging pluckilyahead, must have sent him
headlong back to the comparative safety ofhis tent, instead of only making his hands close more tightly upon therifle stock, while his heart, trained for the wee kirk, sent a wordlessprayer winging its way to heaven. both tracks, he saw, had undergonea change, and this change, so far as it concerned the footsteps of theman, was in some undecipherable manner--appalling. it was in the bigger tracks he first noticedthis, and for a long time he could not quite believe his eyes. was itthe blown leaves that produced odd effects of light and shade, orthat the dry snow, drifting
like finely ground rice about the edges, castshadows and high lights? or was it actually the fact that the greatmarks had become faintly colored? for round about the deep, plungingholes of the animal there now appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge thatwas more like an effect of light than of anything that dyed the substanceof the snow itself. every mark had it, and had it increasingly--thisindistinct fiery tinge that painted a new touch of ghastliness into thepicture. but when, wholly unable to explain or to creditit, he turned his attention to the other tracks to discoverif they, too, bore similar
witness, he noticed that these had meanwhileundergone a change that was infinitely worse, and charged with far morehorrible suggestion. for, in the last hundred yards or so, he saw thatthey had grown gradually into the semblance of the parent tread. imperceptiblythe change had come about, yet unmistakably. it was hard to seewhere the change first began. the result, however, was beyond question.smaller, neater, more cleanly modeled, they formed now an exactand careful duplicate of the larger tracks beside them. the feet that producedthem had, therefore, also changed. and something in his mind rearedup 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 ofhim 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 theleast indication of their continuance. there was--nothing. the trees were very thick just there, bigtrees all of them, spruce, cedar, hemlock; there was no underbrush. hestood, looking about him,
all distraught; bereft of any power of judgment.then he set to work to search again, and again, and yet again, butalways with the same result: _nothing_. the feet that printed the surfaceof the snow thus far had now, apparently, left the ground! and it was in that moment of distress andconfusion that the whip of terror laid its most nicely calculated lashabout his heart. it dropped with deadly effect upon the sorest spot ofall, completely unnerving him. he had been secretly dreading all thetime 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 riflefell to his feet. he stood motionless an instant, listening as it werewith his whole body, then staggered back against the nearest tree forsupport, disorganized hopelessly in mind and spirit. to him, inthat moment, it seemed the most shattering and dislocating experiencehe had ever known, so that his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoeveras by a sudden
draught. "oh! oh! this fiery height! oh, my feet offire! my burning feet of fire ...!" ran in far, beseeching accentsof indescribable appeal this voice of anguish down the sky. once it called--thensilence 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 frenzyof undirected pursuit after the caller. behind the screen of memory andemotion with which
experience veils events, he plunged, distractedand half-deranged, picking up false lights like a ship at sea,terror in his eyes and heart and soul. for the panic of the wildernesshad called to him in that far voice--the power of untamed distance--theenticement of the desolation that destroys. he knew in thatmoment 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 skieyvastness of those ancient forests fled like a flame across the darkruin of his thoughts ...
it seemed ages before he could find anythingin the chaos of his disorganized sensations to which he couldanchor himself steady for a moment, and think ... the cry was not repeated; his own hoarse callingbrought no response; the inscrutable forces of the wild had summonedtheir victim beyond recall--and held him fast. yet he searched and called, it seems, forhours afterwards, for it was late in the afternoon when at length he decidedto abandon a useless pursuit and return to his camp on the shoresof fifty island water. even
then he went with reluctance, that cryingvoice still echoing in his ears. with difficulty he found his rifle andthe homeward trail. the concentration necessary to follow the badlyblazed trees, and a biting hunger that gnawed, helped to keep his mindsteady. otherwise, he admits, the temporary aberration he had sufferedmight have been prolonged to the point of positive disaster.gradually the ballast shifted back again, and he regained somethingthat approached his normal equilibrium. but for all that the journey through the gatheringdusk was miserably
haunted. he heard innumerable following footsteps;voices that laughed and whispered; and saw figures crouching behindtrees and boulders, making signs to one another for a concertedattack the moment he had passed. the creeping murmur of the wind madehim 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 possibilitiesthat were all the more ominous for being obscure. the presentimentof a nameless doom
lurked ill-concealed behind every detail ofwhat had happened. it was really admirable how he emerged victorin the end; men of riper powers and experience might have come throughthe ordeal with less success. he had himself tolerably well inhand, all things considered, and his plan of action proves it. sleep beingabsolutely out of the question and traveling an unknown trail inthe darkness equally impracticable, he sat up the whole of thatnight, rifle in hand, before a fire he never for a single moment allowedto die down. the severity of the haunted vigil marked his soul for life;but it was successfully
accomplished; and with the very first signsof dawn he set forth upon the long return journey to the home camp toget help. as before, he left a written note to explain his absence, andto indicate where he had left a plentiful _cache_ of food and matches--thoughhe had no expectation that any human hands would find them! how simpson found his way alone by the lakeand forest might well make a story in itself, for to hear him tell it isto _know_ the passionate loneliness of soul that a man can feel whenthe 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 followedthe almost invisible trail mechanically, and without thinking.and this, doubtless, is the truth. he relied upon the guiding of the unconsciousmind, which is instinct. perhaps, too, some sense of orientation,known to animals and primitive men, may have helped as well, forthrough all that tangled region he succeeded in reaching the exactspot where defago had hidden the canoe nearly three days before with theremark, "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 frailcraft for the last twelve miles of his journey with a sensation of immenserelief that the forest was at last behind him. and, fortunately,the water was calm; he took his line across the center of the lake insteadof coasting round the shores for another twenty miles. fortunately,too, the other hunters were back. the light of their fires furnisheda steering point without which he might have searched all night longfor the actual position of the camp.
it was close upon midnight all the same whenhis 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 veryexhausted and broken specimen of scotch humanity over the rockstoward a dying fire. vi the sudden entrance of his prosaic uncle intothis world of wizardry and horror that had haunted him without interruptionnow for two days and two nights, had the immediate effect ofgiving 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 vigoroushand introduced another standard of judgment. a revulsionof feeling washed through him. he realized that he had let himself "go" ratherbadly. he even felt vaguely ashamed of himself. the native hard-headednessof his race reclaimed him. and this doubtless explains why he found itso hard to tell that group round the fire--everything. he told enough,however, for the immediate decision to be arrived at that a relief partymust start at the earliest possible moment, and that simpson, in orderto 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 sleptlike the dead. from the description carefully written outafterwards by this student of divinity, it appears that the account he gaveto the astonished group omitted sundry vital and important details.he declares that, with his uncle's wholesome, matter-of-fact countenancestaring him in the face, he simply had not the courage to mention them.thus, all the search party gathered, it would seem, was that defagohad suffered in the night
an acute and inexplicable attack of mania,had imagined himself "called" by someone or something, and had plunged intothe bush after it without food or rifle, where he must die a horribleand lingering death by cold and starvation unless he could be found andrescued in time. "in time," moreover, meant _at once_. in the course of the following day, however--theywere off by seven, leaving punk in charge with instructions tohave food and fire always ready--simpson found it possible to tell hisuncle a good deal more of the story's true inwardness, without diviningthat it was drawn out of
him as a matter of fact by a very subtle formof cross examination. by the time they reached the beginning of thetrail, where the canoe was laid up against the return journey, he hadmentioned how defago spoke vaguely of "something he called a 'wendigo'";how he cried in his sleep; how he imagined an unusual scent about thecamp; and had betrayed other symptoms of mental excitement. he also admittedthe bewildering effect of "that extraordinary odor" upon himself,"pungent and acrid like the odor of lions." and by the time they werewithin an easy hour of fifty island water he had let slip the further fact--afoolish avowal of his
own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards--thathe had heard the vanished guide call "for help." he omittedthe singular phrases used, for he simply could not bring himself to repeatthe preposterous language. also, while describing how the man'sfootsteps in the snow had gradually assumed an exact miniature likenessof the animal's plunging tracks, he left out the fact that they measureda _wholly_ incredible distance. it seemed a question, nicely balancedbetween individual pride and honesty, what he should reveal and whatsuppress. he mentioned the fiery tinge in the snow, for instance, yetshrank from telling that body
and bed had been partly dragged out of thetent.... with the net result that dr. cathcart, adroitpsychologist that he fancied himself to be, had assured him clearlyenough exactly where his mind, influenced by loneliness, bewildermentand terror, had yielded to the strain and invited delusion. while praisinghis 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 finerthan he was by judicious praise, yet more foolish than he was by minimizingthe value of the evidence. like many another materialist, thatis, he lied cleverly on
the basis of insufficient knowledge, _because_the knowledge supplied seemed to his own particular intelligenceinadmissible. "the spell of these terrible solitudes," hesaid, "cannot leave any mind untouched, any mind, that is, possessed ofthe higher imaginative qualities. it has worked upon yours exactlyas it worked upon my own when i was your age. the animal that hauntedyour little camp was undoubtedly a moose, for the 'belling' ofa moose may have, sometimes, a very peculiar quality of sound. the coloredappearance of the big tracks was obviously a defect of vision in your owneyes produced by
excitement. the size and stretch of the trackswe shall prove when we come to them. but the hallucination of anaudible voice, of course, is one of the commonest forms of delusion dueto 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 splendidcourage, for the terror of feeling oneself lost in this wildernessis nothing short of awful, and, had i been in your place, i don't fora moment believe i could have behaved with one quarter of your wisdom anddecision. the only thing i
find it uncommonly difficult to explain is--that--damnedodor." "it made me feel sick, i assure you," declaredhis nephew, "positively dizzy!" his uncle's attitude of calm omniscience,merely because he knew more psychological formulae, made him slightlydefiant. it was so easy to be wise in the explanation of an experienceone has not personally witnessed. "a kind of desolate and terribleodor is the only way i can describe it," he concluded, glancing at thefeatures of the quiet, unemotional man beside him. "i can only marvel," was the reply, "thatunder the circumstances it did
not seem to you even worse." the dry words,simpson knew, hovered between the truth, and his uncle's interpretationof "the truth." and so at last they came to the little campand found the tent still standing, the remains of the fire, and thepiece of paper pinned to a stake beside it--untouched. the cache, poorlycontrived by inexperienced hands, however, had been discovered and opened--bymusk rats, mink and squirrel. the matches lay scattered aboutthe opening, but the food had been taken to the last crumb. "well, fellers, he ain't here," exclaimedhank loudly after his fashion.
"and that's as sartain as the coal supplydown below! but whar he's got to by this time is 'bout as unsartain as thetrade in crowns in t'other place." the presence of a divinity studentwas no barrier to his language at such a time, though for the reader'ssake it may be severely edited. "i propose," he added, "that we startout at once an' hunt for'm like hell!" the gloom of defago's probable fate oppressedthe whole party with a sense of dreadful gravity the moment theysaw the familiar signs of recent occupancy. especially the tent, withthe bed of balsam branches
still smoothed and flattened by the pressureof his body, seemed to bring his presence near to them. simpson,feeling vaguely as if his world were somehow at stake, went about explainingparticulars in a hushed tone. he was much calmer now, thoughoverwearied with the strain of his many journeys. his uncle's method ofexplaining--"explaining away," rather--the details still fresh inhis 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 guidehad vanished that morning in
the grey dawn. "straight down there he ranlike a deer, in between the birch and the hemlock...." hank and dr. cathcart exchanged glances. "and it was about two miles down there, ina straight line," continued the other, speaking with something of theformer terror in his voice, "that i followed his trail to the place where--itstopped--dead!" "and where you heered him callin' an' caughtthe 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 tothe 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 hadtraveled quickly, and there were still a good two hours of daylight left.dr. cathcart and hank lost no time in beginning the search, but simpsonwas too exhausted to accompany them. they would follow the blazedmarks on the trees, and where possible, his footsteps. meanwhile thebest 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 nothingto report. fresh snow had covered all signs, and though they had followedthe blazed trees to the spot where simpson had turned back, they hadnot discovered the smallest indication of a human being--or for that matter,of an animal. there were no fresh tracks of any kind; the snowlay undisturbed. it was difficult to know what was best todo, though in reality there was nothing more they _could_ do. they mightstay and search for weeks without much chance of success. the freshsnow destroyed their only
hope, and they gathered round the fire forsupper, a gloomy and despondent party. the facts, indeed, weresad enough, for defago had a wife at rat portage, and his earnings werethe family's sole means of support. now that the whole truth in all its uglinesswas out, it seemed useless to deal in further disguise or pretense. theytalked 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 thesingular seduction of the solitudes and gone out of his mind; defago,moreover, was predisposed to
something of the sort, for he already hada touch of melancholia in his blood, and his fiber was weakened by boutsof drinking that often lasted for weeks at a time. something on this trip--onemight never know precisely what--had sufficed to push him overthe line, that was all. and he had gone, gone off into the great wildernessof trees and lakes to die by starvation and exhaustion. the chancesagainst his finding camp again were overwhelming; the deliriumthat was upon him would also doubtless have increased, and it was quitelikely he might do violence to himself and so hasten his cruel fate. evenwhile they talked, indeed,
the end had probably come. on the suggestionof hank, his old pal, however, they proposed to wait a little longerand devote the whole of the following day, from dawn to darkness,to the most systematic search they could devise. they would divide the territorybetween them. they discussed their plan in great detail. allthat men could do they would do. and, meanwhile, they talked about theparticular form in which the singular panic of the wilderness had madeits attack upon the mind of the unfortunate guide. hank, though familiarwith the legend in its general outline, obviously did not welcomethe turn the conversation had
taken. he contributed little, though thatlittle was illuminating. for he admitted that a story ran over all thissection of country to the effect that several indians had "seen thewendigo" along the shores of fifty island water in the "fall" of last year,and that this was the true reason of defago's disinclination tohunt there. hank doubtless felt that he had in a sense helped his oldpal 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 defaygowas superstitious down to
he very heels ...!" and then simpson, feeling the atmosphere moresympathetic, told over again the full story of his astonishing tale;he left out no details this time; he mentioned his own sensationsand gripping fears. he only omitted the strange language used. "but defago surely had already told you allthese details of the wendigo legend, my dear fellow," insisted the doctor."i mean, he had talked about it, and thus put into your mind theideas which your own excitement afterwards developed?"
whereupon simpson again repeated the facts.defago, he declared, had barely mentioned the beast. he, simpson, knewnothing of the story, and, so far as he remembered, had never even readabout it. even the word was unfamiliar. of course he was telling the truth, and dr.cathcart was reluctantly compelled to admit the singular characterof 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 fireinto a blaze the moment it showed signs of dying down; he was quickerthan any of them to notice
the least sound in the night about them--afish jumping in the lake, a twig snapping in the bush, the dropping ofoccasional fragments of frozen snow from the branches overhead wherethe heat loosened them. his voice, too, changed a little in quality, becominga shade less confident, lower also in tone. fear, to putit plainly, hovered close about that little camp, and though all threewould have been glad to speak of other matters, the only thing theyseemed able to discuss was this--the source of their fear. they triedother subjects in vain; there was nothing to say about them. hank was themost 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 getit. vii a wall of silence wrapped them in, for thesnow, though not thick, was sufficient to deaden any noise, and the frostheld things pretty tight besides. no sound but their voices and thesoft roar of the flames made itself heard. only, from time to time, somethingsoft as the flutter of a pine moth's wings went past them throughthe air. no one seemed
anxious to go to bed. the hours slipped towardsmidnight. "the legend is picturesque enough," observedthe doctor after one of the longer pauses, speaking to break it ratherthan because he had anything to say, "for the wendigo is simply the callof 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. cathcartcame 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, resemblesall the minor sounds of the bush--wind, falling water, cries of theanimals, and so forth. and, once the victim hears _that_--he's off forgood, of course! his most vulnerable points, moreover, are said to bethe 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 dreadfulspeed that he bleeds beneath the eyes, and his feet burn." dr. cathcart, as he spoke, continued to peeruneasily into the
surrounding gloom. his voice sank to a hushedtone. "the wendigo," he added, "is said to burnhis feet--owing to the friction, apparently caused by its tremendousvelocity--till they drop off, and new ones form exactly like its own." simpson listened in horrified amazement; butit was the pallor on hank's face that fascinated him most. he would willinglyhave 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 thinksthe stars have set him all
a-fire. an' it'll take great thumpin' jumpssometimes, an' run along the tops of the trees, carrying its partner withit, an' then droppin' him jest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel tokill 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 hiscompanions. "moss-eater," he repeated, with a string of the most outlandishoaths he could invent. but simpson now understood the true purposeof all this talk. what these two men, each strong and "experienced"in his own way, dreaded
more than anything else was--silence. theywere talking against time. they were also talking against darkness, againstthe invasion of panic, against the admission reflection might bringthat 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 ofthem in this respect. he had reached the stage where he was immune. butthese two, the scoffing, analytical doctor, and the honest, doggedbackwoodsman, each sat trembling in the depths of his being.
thus the hours passed; and thus, with loweredvoices and a kind of taut inner resistance of spirit, this little groupof humanity sat in the jaws of the wilderness and talked foolishlyof the terrible and haunting legend. it was an unequal contest, all thingsconsidered, for the wilderness had already the advantage of firstattack--and of a hostage. the fate of their comrade hung over them witha steadily increasing weight of oppression that finally became insupportable. it was hank, after a pause longer than thepreceding ones that no one seemed able to break, who first let looseall this pent-up emotion in
very unexpected fashion, by springing suddenlyto his feet and letting out the most ear-shattering yell imaginableinto the night. he could not contain himself any longer, it seemed. tomake it carry even beyond an ordinary cry he interrupted its rhythm byshaking the palm of his hand before his mouth. "that's for defago," he said, looking downat the other two with a queer, defiant laugh, "for it's my belief"--thesandwiched oaths may be omitted--"that my ole partner's not far fromus at this very minute." there was a vehemence and recklessness abouthis performance that made
simpson, too, start to his feet in amazement,and betrayed even the doctor into letting the pipe slip from betweenhis lips. hank's face was ghastly, but cathcart's showed a sudden weakness--aloosening of all his faculties, as it were. then a momentary angerblazed into his eyes, and he too, though with deliberation born of habitualself-control, got upon his feet and faced the excited guide. forthis was unpermissible, foolish, dangerous, and he meant to stop itin the bud. what might have happened in the next minuteor two one may speculate about, yet never definitely know, for in theinstant of profound silence
that followed hank's roaring voice, and asthough in answer to it, something went past through the darkness ofthe sky overhead at terrific speed--something of necessity very large,for it displaced much air, while down between the trees there fell afaint and windy cry of a human voice, calling in tones of indescribable anguishand appeal-- "oh, oh! this fiery height! oh, oh! my feetof fire! my burning feet of fire!" white to the very edge of his shirt, hanklooked stupidly about him like a child. dr. cathcart uttered some kind ofunintelligible cry, turning
as he did so with an instinctive movementof blind terror towards the protection of the tent, then halting in theact as though frozen. simpson, alone of the three, retained hispresence of mind a little. his own horror was too deep to allow of any immediatereaction. he had heard that cry before. turning to his stricken companions, he saidalmost calmly-- "that's exactly the cry i heard--the verywords he used!" then, lifting his face to the sky, he criedaloud, "defago, defago! come down here to us! come down--!"
and before there was time for anybody to takedefinite action one way or another, there came the sound of somethingdropping 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!" camefrom hank in a whispering cry half choked, his hand going automaticallytoward the hunting knife in his belt. "and he's coming! he's coming!"he added, with an irrational laugh of horror, as the soundsof heavy footsteps crunching
over the snow became distinctly audible, approachingthrough the blackness towards the circle of light. and while the steps, with their stumblingmotion, moved nearer and nearer upon them, the three men stood roundthat fire, motionless and dumb. dr. cathcart had the appearance of aman 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 picturewas hideous. and, meanwhile, their owner still invisible, thefootsteps came closer,
crunching the frozen snow. it was endless--tooprolonged to be quite real--this measured and pitiless approach.it was accursed. viii then at length the darkness, having thus laboriouslyconceived, brought forth--a figure. it drew forward into thezone of uncertain light where fire and shadows mingled, not ten feet away;then halted, staring at them fixedly. the same instant it startedforward 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, theyperceived then that--it was
a man; and apparently that this man was--defago. something like a skin of horror almost perceptiblydrew down in that moment over every face, and three pairs ofeyes shone through it as though they saw across the frontiers of normalvision into the unknown. defago advanced, his tread faltering and uncertain;he made his way straight up to them as a group first, thenturned sharply and peered close into the face of simpson. the soundof a voice issued from his lips-- "here i am, boss simpson. i heered someonecalling me." it was a faint,
dried up voice, made wheezy and breathlessas 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'sface. but that laugh started the machinery of thegroup of waxwork figures with the wax-white skins. hank immediatelysprang forward with a stream of oaths so farfetched that simpson did notrecognize them as english at all, but thought he had lapsed into indianor some other lingo. he only realized that hank's presence, thrust thusbetween them, was welcome--uncommonly welcome. dr. cathcart,though more calmly and
leisurely, advanced behind him, heavily stumbling. simpson seems hazy as to what was actuallysaid and done in those next few seconds, for the eyes of that detestableand blasted visage peering at such close quarters into his own utterlybewildered his senses at first. he merely stood still. he said nothing.he had not the trained will of the older men that forced them intoaction in defiance of all emotional stress. he watched them moving asbehind a glass that half destroyed their reality; it was dreamlike;perverted. yet, through the torrent of hank's meaningless phrases, heremembers hearing his uncle's
tone of authority--hard and forced--sayingseveral things about food and warmth, blankets, whisky and the rest ... and,further, that whiffs of that penetrating, unaccustomed odor, vileyet sweetly bewildering, assailed his nostrils during all that followed. it was no less a person than himself, however--lessexperienced and adroit than the others though he was--whogave instinctive utterance to the sentence that brought a measure of reliefinto the ghastly situation by expressing the doubt and thought in eachone's heart. "it _is_--you, isn't it, defago?" he askedunder his breath, horror
breaking his speech. and at once cathcart burst out with the loudanswer before the other had time to move his lips. "of course it is! ofcourse 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 theothers. the overemphasis alone proved that. and continually, whilehe spoke and acted, he held a handkerchief to his nose. that odor pervadedthe whole camp. for the "defago" who sat huddled by the bigfire, wrapped in blankets,
drinking hot whisky and holding food in wastedhands, was no more like the guide they had last seen alive than thepicture of a man of sixty is like a daguerreotype of his early youth inthe costume of another generation. nothing really can describe thatghastly caricature, that parody, masquerading there in the firelightas defago. from the ruins of the dark and awful memories he still retains,simpson declares that the face was more animal than human, the featuresdrawn about into wrong proportions, the skin loose and hanging, asthough he had been subjected to extraordinary pressures and tensions. itmade him think vaguely of
those bladder faces blown up by the hawkerson ludgate hill, that change their expression as they swell, and as theycollapse emit a faint and wailing imitation of a voice. both face andvoice suggested some such abominable resemblance. but cathcart longafterwards, seeking to describe the indescribable, asserts that thusmight have looked a face and body that had been in air so rarifiedthat, the weight of atmosphere being removed, the entire structure threatenedto fly asunder and become--_incoherent_.... it was hank, though all distraught and shakingwith 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 littledistance from the fire, apparently so that the light should not dazzlehim too much, and shading his eyes for a moment with both hands, shoutedin 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 withhis eyes. "an' if it is i'll swab the floor of hell with a wad of cottonwool on a toothpick, s'help
me the good gawd!" he added, with a violentfling of horror and disgust. it was impossible to silence him. he stoodthere shouting like one possessed, horrible to see, horrible to hear--_becauseit was the truth_. he repeated himself in fifty differentways, each more outlandish than the last. the woods rang withechoes. at one time it looked as if he meant to fling himself upon"the intruder," for his hand continually jerked towards the long huntingknife in his belt. but in the end he did nothing, and the wholetempest completed itself very shortly with tears. hank's voice suddenlybroke, he collapsed on
the ground, and cathcart somehow or otherpersuaded him at last to go into the tent and lie quiet. the remainderof the affair, indeed, was witnessed by him from behind the canvas, hiswhite and terrified face peeping through the crack of the tent doorflap. then dr. cathcart, closely followed by hisnephew who so far had kept his courage better than all of them, wentup with a determined air and stood opposite to the figure of defago huddledover the fire. he looked him squarely in the face and spoke. at firsthis 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 toneof authority, almost of command. and at that point, it _was_ command.at once afterwards, however, it changed in quality, for the figureturned up to him a face so piteous, so terrible and so little likehumanity, that the doctor shrank back from him as from something spirituallyunclean. simpson, watching close behind him, says he got theimpression of a mask that was on the verge of dropping off, and that underneaththey would discover something black and diabolical, revealed inutter nakedness. "out with it, man, out with it!" cathcart cried, terrorrunning neck and neck with
entreaty. "none of us can stand this muchlonger ...!" it was the cry of instinct over reason. and then "defago," smiling _whitely_, answeredin that thin and fading voice that already seemed passing over intoa 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 ittoo--" whether the poor devil would have said more,or whether dr. cathcart would have continued the impossible crossexamination cannot be known,
for at that moment the voice of hank was heardyelling at the top of his voice from behind the canvas that concealedall but his terrified eyes. such a howling was never heard. "his feet! oh, gawd, his feet! look at hisgreat changed--feet!" defago, shuffling where he sat, had movedin such a way that for the first time his legs were in full light andhis feet were visible. yet simpson had no time, himself, to see properlywhat hank had seen. and hank has never seen fit to tell. that sameinstant, with a leap like that of a frightened tiger, cathcart was uponhim, bundling the folds of
blanket about his legs with such speed thatthe young student caught little more than a passing glimpse of somethingdark 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, defagowas standing upright in front of them, balancing with pain and difficulty,and upon his shapeless and twisted visage an expression so dark and somalicious that it was, in the true sense, monstrous.
"now _you_ seen it too," he wheezed, "youseen 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 interruptedby a sound that was like the roar of wind coming across the lake.the trees overhead shook their tangled branches. the blazing fire bentits flames as before a blast. and something swept with a terrific,rushing noise about the little camp and seemed to surround it entirelyin a single moment of time. defago shook the clinging blankets fromhis body, turned towards
the woods behind, and with the same stumblingmotion that had brought him--was gone: gone, before anyone could movemuscle to prevent him, gone with an amazing, blundering swiftnessthat left no time to act. the darkness positively swallowed him; and lessthan a dozen seconds later, above the roar of the swaying trees and theshout of the sudden wind, all three men, watching and listening withstricken hearts, heard a cry that seemed to drop down upon them from agreat height of sky and distance-- fire ...!" then died away, into untold spaceand silence.
dr. cathcart--suddenly master of himself,and therefore of the others--was just able to seize hank violentlyby the arm as he tried to dash headlong into the bush. "but i want ter know,--you!" shrieked theguide. "i want ter see! that ain't him at all, but some--devil that's shuntedinto his place ...!" somehow or other--he admits he never quiteknew how he accomplished it--he managed to keep him in the tent andpacify him. the doctor, apparently, had reached the stage where reactionhad set in and allowed his own innate force to conquer. certainlyhe "managed" hank admirably.
it was his nephew, however, hitherto so wonderfullycontrolled, who gave him most cause for anxiety, for the cumulativestrain had now produced a condition of lachrymose hysteria which madeit necessary to isolate him upon a bed of boughs and blankets as far removedfrom hank as was possible under the circumstances. and there he lay, as the watches of that hauntednight passed over the lonely camp, crying startled sentences, andfragments of sentences, into the folds of his blanket. a quantity of gibberishabout speed and height and fire mingled oddly with biblical memoriesof the classroom. "people
with broken faces all on fire are coming ata 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 themthat--" until his uncle came across the change the direction of his thoughtsand comfort him. the hysteria, fortunately, proved but temporary.sleep cured him, just as it cured hank. till the first signs of daylight came, soonafter five o'clock, dr. cathcart kept his vigil. his face was thecolor of chalk, and there were
strange flushes beneath the eyes. an appallingterror of the soul battled with his will all through those silenthours. 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 backto the home camp--three perplexed and afflicted men, but each in hisown way having reduced his inner turmoil to a condition of more or lesssystematized order again. ix they talked little, and then only of the mostwholesome and common
things, for their minds were charged withpainful thoughts that clamoured for explanation, though no one daredrefer to them. hank, being nearest to primitive conditions, wasthe 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 whoarranged 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 essentiallyprimitive. something that had survived somehow the advance of humanityhad emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life still monstrousand immature. he envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages,when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts ofmen; when the forces of nature were still untamed, the powers that may havehaunted a primeval universe not yet withdrawn. to this day he thinks ofwhat he termed years later in a sermon "savage and formidable potencieslurking behind the souls of
men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctivelyhostile to humanity as it exists." with his uncle he never discussed the matterin detail, for the barrier between the two types of mind made it difficult.only once, years later, something led them to the frontier of thesubject--of a single detail of the subject, rather-- "can't you even tell me what--_they_ werelike?" 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 hiseyebrows. "odours," he replied, "are not so easy assounds 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 hisexplanations. that was all. at the fall of day, cold, exhausted, famished,the party came to the end of the long portage and dragged themselvesinto a camp that at first glimpse seemed empty. fire there wasnone, and no punk came
forward to welcome them. the emotional capacityof all three was too over-spent to recognize either surprise orannoyance; but the cry of spontaneous affection that burst from thelips of hank, as he rushed ahead of them towards the fire-place, cameprobably as a warning that the end of the amazing affair was not quiteyet. and both cathcart and his nephew confessed afterwards that whenthey saw him kneel down in his excitement and embrace something thatreclined, gently moving, beside the extinguished ashes, they felt intheir very bones that this "something" would prove to be defago--thetrue defago, returned.
and so, indeed, it was. it is soon told. exhausted to the point ofemaciation, the french canadian--what was left of him, that is--fumbledamong the ashes, trying to make a fire. his body crouched there, theweak fingers obeying feebly the instinctive habit of a lifetime with twigsand matches. but there was no longer any mind to direct the simpleoperation. the mind had fled beyond recall. and with it, too, hadfled memory. not only recent events, but all previous life was a blank. this time it was the real man, though incrediblyand horribly shrunken.
on his face was no expression of any kindwhatever--fear, welcome, or recognition. he did not seem to know who itwas that embraced him, or who it was that fed, warmed and spoke to himthe words of comfort and relief. forlorn and broken beyond all reachof 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 thananything they had yet seen--that idiot smile as he drew wads ofcoarse moss from his swollen cheeks and told them that he was "a damnedmoss-eater"; the continued
vomiting of even the simplest food; and, worstof all, the piteous and childish voice of complaint in which hetold them that his feet pained him--"burn like fire"--which was naturalenough when dr. cathcart examined them and found that both were dreadfullyfrozen. beneath the eyes there were faint indications of recentbleeding. the details of how he survived the prolongedexposure, of where he had been, or of how he covered the great distancefrom one camp to the other, including an immense detour of thelake on foot since he had no canoe--all this remains unknown. his memoryhad vanished completely.
and before the end of the winter whose beginningwitnessed this strange occurrence, defago, bereft of mind, memoryand soul, had gone with it. he lingered only a few weeks. and what punk was able to contribute to thestory throws no further light upon it. he was cleaning fish by thelake shore about five o'clock in the evening--an hour, that is, before thesearch party returned--when he saw this shadow of the guide picking itsway weakly into camp. in advance of him, he declares, came the faintwhiff of a certain singular odour.
that same instant old punk started for home.he covered the entire journey of three days as only indian bloodcould have covered it. the terror of a whole race drove him. he knewwhat it all meant. defago had "seen the wendigo."
No comments:
Post a Comment