THE WENDIGO

Algernon Blackwood

1910

I

A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year withoutfinding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, andthe various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective familieswith the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr. Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he broughtinstead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all thebull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, wasinterested in other things besides moose--amongst them the vagaries ofthe human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in hisbook on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confidedonce to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a partin it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole. .. . 

Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson, hisnephew, a divinity student destined for the "Wee Kirk" (then on hisfirst visit to Canadian backwoods), and the latter's guide, Défago. Joseph Défago was a French "Canuck, " who had strayed from his nativeProvince of Quebec years before, and had got caught in Rat Portage whenthe Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who, in addition tohis unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore, could also singthe old _voyageur_ songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into thebargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spellwhich the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved thewild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost toan obsession. The life of the backwoods fascinated him--whence, doubtless, his surpassing efficiency in dealing with their mysteries. 

On this particular expedition he was Hank's choice. Hank knew him andswore by him. He also swore at him, "jest as a pal might, " and since hehad a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless, oaths, theconversation between the two stalwart and hardy woodsmen was often of arather lively description. This river of expletives, however, Hankagreed to dam a little out of respect for his old "hunting boss, " Dr. Cathcart, whom of course he addressed after the fashion of the countryas "Doc, " and also because he understood that young Simpson was alreadya "bit of a parson. " He had, however, one objection to Défago, and oneonly--which was, that the French Canadian sometimes exhibited what Hankdescribed as "the output of a cursed and dismal mind, " meaningapparently that he sometimes was true to type, Latin type, and sufferedfits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing could induce him toutter speech. Défago, that is to say, was imaginative and melancholy. And, as a rule, it was too long a spell of "civilization" that inducedthe attacks, for a few days of the wilderness invariably cured them. 

This, then, was the party of four that found themselves in camp the lastweek in October of that "shy moose year" 'way up in the wilderness northof Rat Portage--a forsaken and desolate country. There was also Punk, anIndian, who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their hunting tripsin previous years, and who acted as cook. His duty was merely to stay incamp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks and coffee at a fewminutes' notice. He dressed in the worn-out clothes bequeathed to him byformer patrons, and, except for his coarse black hair and dark skin, helooked in these city garments no more like a real redskin than a stageNegro looks like a real African. For all that, however, Punk had in himstill the instincts of his dying race; his taciturn silence and hisendurance survived; also his superstition. 

The party round the blazing fire that night were despondent, for a weekhad passed without a single sign of recent moose discovering itself. Défago had sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank, in badhumor, reminded him so often that "he kep' mussing-up the fac's so, thatit was 'most all nothin' but a petered-out lie, " that the Frenchman hadfinally subsided into a sulky silence which nothing seemed likely tobreak. Dr. Cathcart and his nephew were fairly done after an exhaustingday. Punk was washing up the dishes, grunting to himself under thelean-to of branches, where he later also slept. No one troubled to stirthe slowly dying fire. Overhead the stars were brilliant in a sky quitewintry, and there was so little wind that ice was already formingstealthily along the shores of the still lake behind them. The silenceof the vast listening forest stole forward and enveloped them. 

Hank broke in suddenly with his nasal voice. 

"I'm in favor of breaking new ground tomorrow, Doc, " he observed withenergy, looking across at his employer. "We don't stand a dead Dago'schance around here. "

"Agreed, " said Cathcart, always a man of few words. "Think the idea'sgood. "

"Sure pop, it's good, " Hank resumed with confidence. "S'pose, now, youand I strike west, up Garden Lake way for a change! None of us ain'ttouched that quiet bit o' land yet--"

"I'm with you. "

"And you, Défago, take Mr. Simpson along in the small canoe, skip acrossthe lake, portage over into Fifty Island Water, and take a good squintdown that thar southern shore. The moose 'yarded' there like hell lastyear, and for all we know they may be doin' it agin this year jest tospite us. "

Défago, keeping his eyes on the fire, said nothing by way of reply. Hewas still offended, possibly, about his interrupted story. 

"No one's been up that way this year, an' I'll lay my bottom dollar on_that!_" Hank added with emphasis, as though he had a reason forknowing. He looked over at his partner sharply. "Better take the littlesilk tent and stay away a couple o' nights, " he concluded, as though thematter were definitely settled. For Hank was recognized as generalorganizer of the hunt, and in charge of the party. 

It was obvious to anyone that Défago did not jump at the plan, but hissilence seemed to convey something more than ordinary disapproval, andacross his sensitive dark face there passed a curious expression like aflash of firelight--not so quickly, however, that the three men had nottime to catch it. 

"He funked for some reason, _I_ thought, " Simpson said afterwards in thetent he shared with his uncle. Dr. Cathcart made no immediate reply, although the look had interested him enough at the time for him to makea mental note of it. The expression had caused him a passing uneasinesshe could not quite account for at the moment. 

But Hank, of course, had been the first to notice it, and the odd thingwas that instead of becoming explosive or angry over the other'sreluctance, he at once began to humor him a bit. 

"But there ain't no _speshul_ reason why no one's been up there thisyear, " he said with a perceptible hush in his tone; "not the reason youmean, anyway! Las' year it was the fires that kep' folks out, and thisyear I guess--I guess it jest happened so, that's all!" His manner wasclearly meant to be encouraging. 

Joseph Défago raised his eyes a moment, then dropped them again. Abreath of wind stole out of the forest and stirred the embers into apassing blaze. Dr. Cathcart again noticed the expression in the guide'sface, and again he did not like it. But this time the nature of the lookbetrayed itself. In those eyes, for an instant, he caught the gleam of aman scared in his very soul. It disquieted him more than he cared toadmit. 

"Bad Indians up that way?" he asked, with a laugh to ease matters alittle, while Simpson, too sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, movedoff to bed with a prodigious yawn; "or--or anything wrong with thecountry?" he added, when his nephew was out of hearing. 

Hank met his eye with something less than his usual frankness. 

"He's jest skeered, " he replied good-humouredly. "Skeered stiff aboutsome ole feery tale! That's all, ain't it, ole pard?" And he gave Défagoa friendly kick on the moccasined foot that lay nearest the fire. 

Défago looked up quickly, as from an interrupted reverie, a reverie, however, that had not prevented his seeing all that went on about him. 

"Skeered--_nuthin'!_" he answered, with a flush of defiance. "There'snuthin' in the Bush that can skeer Joseph Défago, and don't you forgetit!" And the natural energy with which he spoke made it impossible toknow whether he told the whole truth or only a part of it. 

Hank turned towards the doctor. He was just going to add something whenhe stopped abruptly and looked round. A sound close behind them in thedarkness made all three start. It was old Punk, who had moved up fromhis lean-to while they talked and now stood there just beyond the circleof firelight--listening. 

"'Nother time, Doc!" Hank whispered, with a wink, "when the galleryain't stepped down into the stalls!" And, springing to his feet, heslapped the Indian on the back and cried noisily, "Come up t' the firean' warm yer dirty red skin a bit. " He dragged him towards the blaze andthrew more wood on. "That was a mighty good feed you give us an hour ortwo back, " he continued heartily, as though to set the man's thoughts onanother scent, "and it ain't Christian to let you stand out therefreezin' yer ole soul to hell while we're gettin' all good an' toasted!"Punk moved in and warmed his feet, smiling darkly at the other'svolubility which he only half understood, but saying nothing. Andpresently Dr. Cathcart, seeing that further conversation was impossible, followed his nephew's example and moved off to the tent, leaving thethree men smoking over the now blazing fire. 

It is not easy to undress in a small tent without waking one'scompanion, and Cathcart, hardened and warm-blooded as he was in spite ofhis fifty odd years, did what Hank would have described as "considerableof his twilight" in the open. He noticed, during the process, that Punkhad meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, and that Hank and Défago wereat it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammer and anvil, the little FrenchCanadian being the anvil. It was all very like the conventional stagepicture of Western melodrama: the fire lighting up their faces withpatches of alternate red and black; Défago, in slouch hat and moccasinsin 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 atmosphereof mystery. The doctor smiled as he noticed the details; but at the sametime something deep within him--he hardly knew what--shrank a little, asthough an almost imperceptible breath of warning had touched the surfaceof his soul and was gone again before he could seize it. Probably it wastraceable to that "scared expression" he had seen in the eyes of Défago;"probably"--for this hint of fugitive emotion otherwise escaped hisusually so keen analysis. Défago, he was vaguely aware, might causetrouble somehow . .. He was not as steady a guide as Hank, forinstance . .. Further than that he could not get . .. 

He watched the men a moment longer before diving into the stuffy tentwhere Simpson already slept soundly. Hank, he saw, was swearing like amad African in a New York nigger saloon; but it was the swearing of"affection. " The ridiculous oaths flew freely now that the cause oftheir obstruction was asleep. Presently he put his arm almost tenderlyupon his comrade's shoulder, and they moved off together into theshadows where their tent stood faintly glimmering. Punk, too, a momentlater followed their example and disappeared between his odorousblankets in the opposite direction. 

Dr. Cathcart then likewise turned in, weariness and sleep still fightingin his mind with an obscure curiosity to know what it was that hadscared Défago about the country up Fifty Island Water way, --wondering, too, why Punk's presence had prevented the completion of what Hank hadto say. Then sleep overtook him. He would know tomorrow. Hank would tellhim the story while they trudged after the elusive moose. 

Deep silence fell about the little camp, planted there so audaciously inthe jaws of the wilderness. The lake gleamed like a sheet of black glassbeneath the stars. The cold air pricked. In the draughts of night thatpoured their silent tide from the depths of the forest, with messagesfrom distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze, there layalready the faint, bleak odors of coming winter. White men, with theirdull scent, might never have divined them; the fragrance of the woodfire would have concealed from them these almost electrical hints ofmoss and bark and hardening swamp a hundred miles away. Even Hank andDéfago, subtly in league with the soul of the woods as they were, wouldprobably have spread their delicate nostrils in vain. .. . 

But an hour later, when all slept like the dead, old Punk crept from hisblankets and went down to the shore of the lake like a shadow--silently, as only Indian blood can move. He raised his head and looked about him. The thick darkness rendered sight of small avail, but, like the animals, he possessed other senses that darkness could not mute. Helistened--then sniffed the air. Motionless as a hemlock stem he stoodthere. After five minutes again he lifted his head and sniffed, and yetonce again. A tingling of the wonderful nerves that betrayed itself byno outer sign, ran through him as he tasted the keen air. Then, merginghis figure into the surrounding blackness in a way that only wild menand animals understand, he turned, still moving like a shadow, and wentstealthily back to his lean-to and his bed. 

And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirredgently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising among the farridges of the country beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from thedirection in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleeping campwith a faint and sighing murmur through the tops of the big trees thatwas almost too delicate to be audible. With it, down the desert paths ofnight, though too faint, too high even for the Indian's hair-likenerves, there passed a curious, thin odor, strangely disquieting, anodor of something that seemed unfamiliar--utterly unknown. 

The French Canadian and the man of Indian blood each stirred uneasily inhis sleep just about this time, though neither of them woke. Then theghost of that unforgettably strange odor passed away and was lost amongthe leagues of tenantless forest beyond. 

II

In the morning the camp was astir before the sun. There had been alight fall of snow during the night and the air was sharp. Punk had donehis duty betimes, for the odors of coffee and fried bacon reached everytent. All were in good spirits. 

"Wind's shifted!" cried Hank vigorously, watching Simpson and his guidealready loading the small canoe. "It's across the lake--dead right foryou fellers. And the snow'll make bully trails! If there's any moosemussing around up thar, they'll not get so much as a tail-end scent ofyou with the wind as it is. Good luck, Monsieur Défago!" he added, facetiously giving the name its French pronunciation for once, "_bonnechance!_"

Défago returned the good wishes, apparently in the best of spirits, thesilent mood gone. Before eight o'clock old Punk had the camp tohimself, Cathcart and Hank were far along the trail that led westwards, while the canoe that carried Défago and Simpson, with silk tent and grubfor two days, was already a dark speck bobbing on the bosom of the lake, going due east. 

The wintry sharpness of the air was tempered now by a sun that toppedthe wooded ridges and blazed with a luxurious warmth upon the world oflake and forest below; loons flew skimming through the sparkling spraythat the wind lifted; divers shook their dripping heads to the sun andpopped smartly out of sight again; and as far as eye could reach rosethe leagues of endless, crowding Bush, desolate in its lonely sweep andgrandeur, untrodden by foot of man, and stretching its mighty andunbroken carpet right up to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay. 

Simpson, who saw it all for the first time as he paddled hard in thebows of the dancing canoe, was enchanted by its austere beauty. Hisheart drank in the sense of freedom and great spaces just as his lungsdrank in the cool and perfumed wind. Behind him in the stern seat, singing fragments of his native chanties, Défago steered the craft ofbirch bark like a thing of life, answering cheerfully all hiscompanion's questions. Both were gay and light-hearted. On suchoccasions men lose the superficial, worldly distinctions; they becomehuman beings working together for a common end. Simpson, the employer, and Défago the employed, among these primitive forces, were simply--twomen, the "guider" and the "guided. " Superior knowledge, of course, assumed control, and the younger man fell without a second thought intothe quasi-subordinate position. He never dreamed of objecting whenDéfago dropped the "Mr. , " and addressed him as "Say, Simpson, " or"Simpson, boss, " which was invariably the case before they reached thefarther shore after a stiff paddle of twelve miles against a head wind. He only laughed, and liked it; then ceased to notice it at all. 

For this "divinity student" was a young man of parts and character, though as yet, of course, untraveled; and on this trip--the first timehe had seen any country but his own and little Switzerland--the hugescale of things somewhat bewildered him. It was one thing, he realized, to hear about primeval forests, but quite another to see them. While todwell in them and seek acquaintance with their wild life was, again, aninitiation that no intelligent man could undergo without a certainshifting of personal values hitherto held for permanent and sacred. 

Simpson knew the first faint indication of this emotion when he held thenew. 303 rifle in his hands and looked along its pair of faultless, gleaming barrels. The three days' journey to their headquarters, by lakeand portage, had carried the process a stage farther. And now that hewas about to plunge beyond even the fringe of wilderness where they werecamped into the virgin heart of uninhabited regions as vast as Europeitself, the true nature of the situation stole upon him with an effectof delight and awe that his imagination was fully capable ofappreciating. It was himself and Défago against a multitude--at least, against a Titan!

The bleak splendors of these remote and lonely forests ratheroverwhelmed him with the sense of his own littleness. That stern qualityof the tangled backwoods which can only be described as merciless andterrible, rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon, and revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized hisown utter helplessness. Only Défago, as a symbol of a distantcivilization where man was master, stood between him and a pitilessdeath by exhaustion and starvation. 

It was thrilling to him, therefore, to watch Défago turn over the canoeupon the shore, pack the paddles carefully underneath, and then proceedto "blaze" the spruce stems for some distance on either side of analmost invisible trail, with the careless remark thrown in, "Say, Simpson, if anything happens to me, you'll find the canoe all correc' bythese marks;--then strike doo west into the sun to hit the home campagin, see?"

It was the most natural thing in the world to say, and he said itwithout any noticeable inflexion of the voice, only it happened toexpress the youth's emotions at the moment with an utterance that wassymbolic of the situation and of his own helplessness as a factor in it. He was alone with Défago in a primitive world: that was all. The canoe, another symbol of man's ascendancy, was now to be left behind. Thosesmall yellow patches, made on the trees by the axe, were the onlyindications of its hiding place. 

Meanwhile, shouldering the packs between them, each man carrying his ownrifle, they followed the slender trail over rocks and fallen trunks andacross half-frozen swamps; skirting numerous lakes that fairly gemmedthe forest, their borders fringed with mist; and towards five o'clockfound themselves suddenly on the edge of the woods, looking out across alarge sheet of water in front of them, dotted with pine-clad islands ofall describable shapes and sizes. 

"Fifty Island Water, " announced Défago wearily, "and the sun jest goin'to dip his bald old head into it!" he added, with unconscious poetry;and immediately they set about pitching camp for the night. 

In a very few minutes, under those skilful hands that never made amovement too much or a movement too little, the silk tent stood taut andcozy, the beds of balsam boughs ready laid, and a brisk cooking fireburned with the minimum of smoke. While the young Scotchman cleaned thefish they had caught trolling behind the canoe, Défago "guessed" hewould "jest as soon" take a turn through the Bush for indications ofmoose. "_May_ come across a trunk where they bin and rubbed horns, " hesaid, as he moved off, "or feedin' on the last of the maple leaves"--andhe was gone. 

His small figure melted away like a shadow in the dusk, while Simpsonnoted with a kind of admiration how easily the forest absorbed him intoherself. A few steps, it seemed, and he was no longer visible. 

Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts; the trees stood somewhatapart, well spaced; and in the clearings grew silver birch and maple, spearlike and slender, against the immense stems of spruce and hemlock. But for occasional prostrate monsters, and the boulders of grey rockthat thrust uncouth shoulders here and there out of the ground, it mightwell have been a bit of park in the Old Country. Almost, one might haveseen in it the hand of man. A little to the right, however, began thegreat burnt section, miles in extent, proclaiming its realcharacter--_brulé_, as it is called, where the fires of the previousyear had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps now rose gaunt andugly, bereft of branches, like gigantic match heads stuck into theground, savage and desolate beyond words. The perfume of charcoal andrain-soaked ashes still hung faintly about it. 

The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of thefire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were theonly sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all thatvast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, thewoodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, mightstretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees. In front, through doorways pillared by huge straight stems, lay the stretch ofFifty Island Water, a crescent-shaped lake some fifteen miles from tipto tip, and perhaps five miles across where they were camped. A sky ofrose and saffron, more clear than any atmosphere Simpson had everknown, still dropped its pale streaming fires across the waves, wherethe islands--a hundred, surely, rather than fifty--floated like thefairy barques of some enchanted fleet. Fringed with pines, whose crestsfingered most delicately the sky, they almost seemed to move upwards asthe light faded--about to weigh anchor and navigate the pathways of theheavens instead of the currents of their native and desolate lake. 

And strips of colored cloud, like flaunting pennons, signaled theirdeparture to the stars. .. . 

The beauty of the scene was strangely uplifting. Simpson smoked the fishand burnt his fingers into the bargain in his efforts to enjoy it and atthe same time tend the frying pan and the fire. Yet, ever at the back ofhis thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness: the indifferenceto human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note ofman. The sense of his utter loneliness, now that even Défago had gone, came close as he looked about him and listened for the sound of hiscompanion's returning footsteps. 

There was pleasure in the sensation, yet with it a perfectlycomprehensible alarm. And instinctively the thought stirred in him:"What should I--_could_ I, do--if anything happened and he did not comeback--?"

They enjoyed their well-earned supper, eating untold quantities of fish, and drinking unmilked tea strong enough to kill men who had not coveredthirty miles of hard "going, " eating little on the way. And when it wasover, they smoked and told stories round the blazing fire, laughing, stretching weary limbs, and discussing plans for the morrow. Défago wasin excellent spirits, though disappointed at having no signs of moose toreport. But it was dark and he had not gone far. The _brulé_, too, wasbad. His clothes and hands were smeared with charcoal. Simpson, watchinghim, realized with renewed vividness their position--alone together inthe wilderness. 

"Défago, " he said presently, "these woods, you know, are a bit too bigto feel quite at home in--to feel comfortable in, I mean!. .. Eh?" Hemerely gave expression to the mood of the moment; he was hardly preparedfor the earnestness, the solemnity even, with which the guide took himup. 

"You've hit it right, Simpson, boss, " he replied, fixing his searchingbrown eyes on his face, "and that's the truth, sure. There's no end to'em--no end at all. " Then he added in a lowered tone as if to himself, "There's lots found out _that_, and gone plumb to pieces!"

But the man's gravity of manner was not quite to the other's liking; itwas a little too suggestive for this scenery and setting; he was sorryhe had broached the subject. He remembered suddenly how his uncle hadtold him that men were sometimes stricken with a strange fever of thewilderness, when the seduction of the uninhabited wastes caught them sofiercely that they went forth, half fascinated, half deluded, to theirdeath. And he had a shrewd idea that his companion held something insympathy with that queer type. He led the conversation on to othertopics, on to Hank and the doctor, for instance, and the natural rivalryas to who should get the first sight of moose. 

"If they went doo west, " observed Défago carelessly, "there's sixtymiles between us now--with ole Punk at halfway house eatin' himself fullto bustin' with fish and coffee. " They laughed together over thepicture. But the casual mention of those sixty miles again made Simpsonrealize the prodigious scale of this land where they hunted; sixty mileswas a mere step; two hundred little more than a step. Stories of losthunters rose persistently before his memory. The passion and mystery ofhomeless and wandering men, seduced by the beauty of great forests, swept his soul in a way too vivid to be quite pleasant. He wonderedvaguely whether it was the mood of his companion that invited theunwelcome suggestion with such persistence. 

"Sing us a song, Défago, if you're not too tired, " he asked; "one ofthose old _voyageur_ songs you sang the other night. " He handed histobacco pouch to the guide and then filled his own pipe, while theCanadian, nothing loth, sent his light voice across the lake in one ofthose plaintive, almost melancholy chanties with which lumbermen andtrappers lessen the burden of their labor. There was an appealing andromantic flavor about it, something that recalled the atmosphere of theold pioneer days when Indians and wilderness were leagued together, battles frequent, and the Old Country farther off than it is today. Thesound traveled pleasantly over the water, but the forest at their backsseemed to swallow it down with a single gulp that permitted neither echonor resonance. 

It was in the middle of the third verse that Simpson noticed somethingunusual--something that brought his thoughts back with a rush fromfaraway scenes. A curious change had come into the man's voice. Evenbefore he knew what it was, uneasiness caught him, and looking upquickly, he saw that Défago, though still singing, was peering about himinto the Bush, as though he heard or saw something. His voice grewfainter--dropped to a hush--then ceased altogether. The same instant, with a movement amazingly alert, he started to his feet and stoodupright--_sniffing the air_. Like a dog scenting game, he drew the airinto his nostrils in short, sharp breaths, turning quickly as he did soin all directions, and finally "pointing" down the lake shore, eastwards. It was a performance unpleasantly suggestive and at the sametime singularly dramatic. Simpson's heart fluttered disagreeably as hewatched it. 

"Lord, man! How you made me jump!" he exclaimed, on his feet beside himthe same instant, and peering over his shoulder into the sea ofdarkness. "What's up? Are you frightened--?"

Even before the question was out of his mouth he knew it was foolish, for any man with a pair of eyes in his head could see that the Canadianhad turned white down to his very gills. Not even sunburn and the glareof the fire could hide that. 

The student felt himself trembling a little, weakish in the knees. "What's up?" he repeated quickly. "D'you smell moose? Or anything queer, anything--wrong?" He lowered his voice instinctively. 

The forest pressed round them with its encircling wall; the nearer treestems gleamed like bronze in the firelight; beyond that--blackness, and, so far as he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them a passingpuff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softlydown again without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as if amillion invisible causes had combined just to produce that singlevisible effect. _Other_ life pulsed about them--and was gone. 

Défago turned abruptly; the livid hue of his face had turned to a dirtygrey. 

"I never said I heered--or smelt--nuthin', " he said slowly andemphatically, in an oddly altered voice that conveyed somehow a touch ofdefiance. "I was only--takin' a look round--so to speak. It's always amistake to be too previous with yer questions. " Then he added suddenlywith obvious effort, in his more natural voice, "Have you got thematches, Boss Simpson?" and proceeded to light the pipe he had halffilled just before he began to sing. 

Without speaking another word they sat down again by the fire. Défagochanging his side so that he could face the direction the wind camefrom. For even a tenderfoot could tell that. Défago changed his positionin order to hear and smell--all there was to be heard and smelt. And, since he now faced the lake with his back to the trees it was evidentlynothing in the forest that had sent so strange and sudden a warning tohis marvelously trained nerves. 

"Guess now I don't feel like singing any, " he explained presently of hisown accord. "That song kinder brings back memories that's troublesome tome; I never oughter've begun it. It sets me on t' imagining things, see?"

Clearly the man was still fighting with some profoundly moving emotion. He wished to excuse himself in the eyes of the other. But theexplanation, in that it was only a part of the truth, was a lie, and heknew perfectly well that Simpson was not deceived by it. For nothingcould explain away the livid terror that had dropped over his face whilehe stood there sniffing the air. And nothing--no amount of blazing fire, or chatting on ordinary subjects--could make that camp exactly as it hadbeen before. The shadow of an unknown horror, naked if unguessed, thathad flashed for an instant in the face and gestures of the guide, hadalso communicated itself, vaguely and therefore more potently, to hiscompanion. The guide's visible efforts to dissemble the truth only madethings worse. Moreover, to add to the younger man's uneasiness, was thedifficulty, nay, the impossibility he felt of asking questions, and alsohis complete ignorance as to the cause . .. Indians, wild animals, forestfires--all these, he knew, were wholly out of the question. Hisimagination searched vigorously, but in vain. .. . 

 * * * * *

Yet, somehow or other, after another long spell of smoking, talking androasting themselves before the great fire, the shadow that had sosuddenly invaded their peaceful camp began to shirt. Perhaps Défago'sefforts, or the return of his quiet and normal attitude accomplishedthis; perhaps Simpson himself had exaggerated the affair out of allproportion to the truth; or possibly the vigorous air of the wildernessbrought its own powers of healing. Whatever the cause, the feeling ofimmediate horror seemed to have passed away as mysteriously as it hadcome, for nothing occurred to feed it. Simpson began to feel that he hadpermitted himself the unreasoning terror of a child. He put it downpartly to a certain subconscious excitement that this wild and immensescenery generated in his blood, partly to the spell of solitude, andpartly to overfatigue. That pallor in the guide's face was, of course, uncommonly hard to explain, yet it _might_ have been due in some way toan effect of firelight, or his own imagination . .. He gave it the benefitof the doubt; he was Scotch. 

When a somewhat unordinary emotion has disappeared, the mind alwaysfinds a dozen ways of explaining away its causes . .. Simpson lit a lastpipe and tried to laugh to himself. On getting home to Scotland it wouldmake quite a good story. He did not realize that this laughter was asign that terror still lurked in the recesses of his soul--that, infact, it was merely one of the conventional signs by which a man, seriously alarmed, tries to persuade himself that he is _not_ so. 

Défago, however, heard that low laughter and looked up with surprise onhis face. The two men stood, side by side, kicking the embers aboutbefore going to bed. It was ten o'clock--a late hour for hunters to bestill awake. 

"What's ticklin' yer?" he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely. 

"I--I was thinking of our little toy woods at home, just at thatmoment, " stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated hismind, and startled by the question, "and comparing them to--to allthis, " and he swept his arm round to indicate the Bush. 

A pause followed in which neither of them said anything. 

"All the same I wouldn't laugh about it, if I was you, " Défago added, looking over Simpson's shoulder into the shadows. "There's places inthere nobody won't never see into--nobody knows what lives in thereeither. "

"Too big--too far off?" The suggestion in the guide's manner was immenseand horrible. 

Défago nodded. The expression on his face was dark. He, too, feltuneasy. The younger man understood that in a _hinterland_ of this sizethere might well be depths of wood that would never in the life of theworld be known or trodden. The thought was not exactly the sort hewelcomed. In a loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time forbed. But the guide lingered, tinkering with the fire, arranging thestones needlessly, doing a dozen things that did not really need doing. Evidently there was something he wanted to say, yet found it difficultto "get at. "

"Say, you, Boss Simpson, " he began suddenly, as the last shower ofsparks went up into the air, "you don't--smell nothing, do you--nothingpertickler, I mean?" The commonplace question, Simpson realized, veileda dreadfully serious thought in his mind. A shiver ran down his back. 

"Nothing but burning wood, " he replied firmly, kicking again at theembers. The sound of his own foot made him start. 

"And all the evenin' you ain't smelt--nothing?" persisted the guide, peering at him through the gloom; "nothing extrordiny, and different toanything else you ever smelt before?"

"No, no, man; nothing at all!" he replied aggressively, half angrily. 

Défago's face cleared. "That's good!" he exclaimed with evident relief. "That's good to hear. "

"Have _you?_" asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted thequestion. 

The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He shook his head. "I guessnot, " he said, though without overwhelming conviction. "It must've beenjust that song of mine that did it. It's the song they sing in lumbercamps and godforsaken places like that, when they've skeered theWendigo's somewhere around, doin' a bit of swift traveling. --"

"And what's the Wendigo, pray?" Simpson asked quickly, irritated becauseagain he could not prevent that sudden shiver of the nerves. He knewthat he was close upon the man's terror and the cause of it. Yet arushing passionate curiosity overcame his better judgment, and his fear. 

Défago turned swiftly and looked at him as though he were suddenly aboutto shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open. Yet all he said, or whispered rather, for his voice sank very low, was: "It'snuthin'--nuthin' but what those lousy fellers believe when they've binhittin' the bottle too long--a sort of great animal that lives upyonder, " he jerked his head northwards, "quick as lightning in itstracks, an' bigger'n anything else in the Bush, an' ain't supposed to bevery good to look at--that's all!"

"A backwoods superstition--" began Simpson, moving hastily toward thetent in order to shake off the hand of the guide that clutched his arm. "Come, come, hurry up for God's sake, and get the lantern going! It'stime we were in bed and asleep if we're going to be up with the suntomorrow. .. . "

The guide was close on his heels. "I'm coming, " he answered out of thedarkness, "I'm coming. " And after a slight delay he appeared with thelantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. Theshadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so, and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the wholetent trembled as though a gust of wind struck it. 

The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft balsamboughs, cunningly arranged. Inside, all was warm and cozy, but outsidethe world of crowding trees pressed close about them, marshalling theirmillion shadows, and smothering the little tent that stood there like awee white shell facing the ocean of tremendous forest. 

Between the two lonely figures within, however, there pressed anothershadow that was _not_ a shadow from the night. It was the Shadow cast bythe strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped suddenly uponDéfago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson, as he lay there, watching the darkness through the open flap of the tent, ready to plungeinto the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that unique and profoundstillness of a primeval forest when no wind stirs . .. And when the nighthas weight and substance that enters into the soul to bind a veil aboutit. .. . Then sleep took him. .. . 

III

Thus, it seemed to him, at least. Yet it was true that the lap of thewater, just beyond the tent door, still beat time with his lesseningpulses when he realized that he was lying with his eyes open and thatanother sound had recently introduced itself with cunning softnessbetween the splash and murmur of the little waves. 

And, long before he understood what this sound was, it had stirred inhim the centers of pity and alarm. He listened intently, though at firstin vain, for the running blood beat all its drums too noisily in hisears. Did it come, he wondered, from the lake, or from the woods?. .. 

Then, suddenly, with a rush and a flutter of the heart, he knew that itwas close beside him in the tent; and, when he turned over for a betterhearing, it focused itself unmistakably not two feet away. It was asound of weeping; Défago upon his bed of branches was sobbing in thedarkness as though his heart would break, the blankets evidently stuffedagainst his mouth to stifle it. 

And his first feeling, before he could think or reflect, was the rush ofa poignant and searching tenderness. This intimate, human sound, heardamid the desolation about them, woke pity. It was so incongruous, sopitifully incongruous--and so vain! Tears--in this vast and cruelwilderness: of what avail? He thought of a little child crying inmid-Atlantic. .. . Then, of course, with fuller realization, and thememory of what had gone before, came the descent of the terror upon him, and his blood ran cold. 

"Défago, " he whispered quickly, "what's the matter?" He tried to makehis voice very gentle. "Are you in pain--unhappy--?" There was no reply, but the sounds ceased abruptly. He stretched his hand out and touchedhim. The body did not stir. 

"Are you awake?" for it occurred to him that the man was crying in hissleep. "Are you cold?" He noticed that his feet, which were uncovered, projected beyond the mouth of the tent. He spread an extra fold of hisown blankets over them. The guide had slipped down in his bed, and thebranches seemed to have been dragged with him. He was afraid to pull thebody back again, for fear of waking him. 

One or two tentative questions he ventured softly, but though he waitedfor several minutes there came no reply, nor any sign of movement. Presently he heard his regular and quiet breathing, and putting his handagain gently on the breast, felt the steady rise and fall beneath. 

"Let me know if anything's wrong, " he whispered, "or if I can doanything. Wake me at once if you feel--queer. "

He hardly knew what to say. He lay down again, thinking and wonderingwhat it all meant. Défago, of course, had been crying in his sleep. Somedream or other had afflicted him. Yet never in his life would he forgetthat pitiful sound of sobbing, and the feeling that the whole awfulwilderness of woods listened. .. . 

His own mind busied itself for a long time with the recent events, ofwhich _this_ took its mysterious place as one, and though his reasonsuccessfully argued away all unwelcome suggestions, a sensation ofuneasiness remained, resisting ejection, very deep-seated--peculiarbeyond ordinary. 

IV

But sleep, in the long run, proves greater than all emotions. Histhoughts soon wandered again; he lay there, warm as toast, exceedinglyweary; the night soothed and comforted, blunting the edges of memory andalarm. Half an hour later he was oblivious of everything in the outerworld about him. 

Yet sleep, in this case, was his great enemy, concealing all approaches, smothering the warning of his nerves. 

As, sometimes, in a nightmare events crowd upon each other's heels witha conviction of dreadfulest reality, yet some inconsistent detailaccuses the whole display of incompleteness and disguise, so the eventsthat now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the mindsomehow that the detail which could explain them had been overlooked inthe confusion, and that therefore they were but partly true, the restdelusion. At the back of the sleeper's mind something remains awake, ready to let slip the judgment. "All this is not _quite_ real; when youwake up you'll understand. "

And thus, in a way, it was with Simpson. The events, not whollyinexplicable or incredible in themselves, yet remain for the man who sawand heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold horror, because thelittle piece that might have made the puzzle clear lay concealed oroverlooked. 

So far as he can recall, it was a violent movement, running downwardsthrough the tent towards the door, that first woke him and made himaware that his companion was sitting bolt upright beside him--quivering. Hours must have passed, for it was the pale gleam of the dawn thatrevealed his outline against the canvas. This time the man was notcrying; he was quaking like a leaf; the trembling he felt plainlythrough the blankets down the entire length of his own body. Défago hadhuddled down against him for protection, shrinking away from somethingthat apparently concealed itself near the door flaps of the little tent. 

Simpson thereupon called out in a loud voice some question or other--inthe first bewilderment of waking he does not remember exactly what--andthe man made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare layhorribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult. At first, indeed, he was not sure where he was--whether in one of the earliercamps, or at home in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense of confusion wasvery troubling. 

And next--almost simultaneous with his waking, it seemed--the profoundstillness of the dawn outside was shattered by a most uncommon sound. Itcame without warning, or audible approach; and it was unspeakablydreadful. It was a voice, Simpson declares, possibly a human voice;hoarse yet plaintive--a soft, roaring voice close outside the tent, overhead rather than upon the ground, of immense volume, while in somestrange way most penetratingly and seductively sweet. It rang out, too, in three separate and distinct notes, or cries, that bore in some oddfashion a resemblance, farfetched yet recognizable, to the name of theguide: "_Dé-fa-go!_"

The student admits he is unable to describe it quite intelligently, forit was unlike any sound he had ever heard in his life, and combined ablending of such contrary qualities. "A sort of windy, crying voice, " hecalls it, "as of something lonely and untamed, wild and of abominablepower. .. . "

And, even before it ceased, dropping back into the great gulfs ofsilence, the guide beside him had sprung to his feet with an answeringthough unintelligible cry. He blundered against the tent pole withviolence, shaking the whole structure, spreading his arms outfrantically for more room, and kicking his legs impetuously free of theclinging blankets. For a second, perhaps two, he stood upright by thedoor, his outline dark against the pallor of the dawn; then, with afurious, rushing speed, before his companion could move a hand to stophim, he shot with a plunge through the flaps of canvas--and was gone. And as he went--so astonishingly fast that the voice could actually beheard dying in the distance--he called aloud in tones of anguishedterror that at the same time held something strangely like the frenziedexultation of delight--

"Oh! oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire! Oh! oh! This heightand fiery speed!"

And then the distance quickly buried it, and the deep silence of veryearly morning descended upon the forest as before. 

It had all come about with such rapidity that, but for the evidence ofthe empty bed beside him, Simpson could almost have believed it to havebeen the memory of a nightmare carried over from sleep. He still feltthe warm pressure of that vanished body against his side; there lay thetwisted blankets in a heap; the very tent yet trembled with thevehemence of the impetuous departure. The strange words rang in hisears, as though he still heard them in the distance--wild language of asuddenly stricken mind. Moreover, it was not only the senses of sightand hearing that reported uncommon things to his brain, for even whilethe man cried and ran, he had become aware that a strange perfume, faintyet pungent, pervaded the interior of the tent. And it was at thispoint, it seems, brought to himself by the consciousness that hisnostrils were taking this distressing odor down into his throat, that hefound his courage, sprang quickly to his feet--and went out. 

The grey light of dawn that dropped, cold and glimmering, between thetrees revealed the scene tolerably well. There stood the tent behindhim, soaked with dew; the dark ashes of the fire, still warm; the lake, white beneath a coating of mist, the islands rising darkly out of itlike objects packed in wool; and patches of snow beyond among theclearer spaces of the Bush--everything cold, still, waiting for the sun. But nowhere a sign of the vanished guide--still, doubtless, flying atfrantic speed through the frozen woods. There was not even the sound ofdisappearing footsteps, nor the echoes of the dying voice. He hadgone--utterly. 

There was nothing; nothing but the sense of his recent presence, sostrongly left behind about the camp; _and_--this penetrating, all-pervading odor. 

And even this was now rapidly disappearing in its turn. In spite of hisexceeding mental perturbation, Simpson struggled hard to detect itsnature, and define it, but the ascertaining of an elusive scent, notrecognized subconsciously and at once, is a very subtle operation ofthe mind. And he failed. It was gone before he could properly seize orname it. Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult, for it was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid rather, not unlike the odorof a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not wholly unpleasing, withsomething almost sweet in it that reminded him of the scent of decayinggarden leaves, earth, and the myriad, nameless perfumes that make up theodor of a big forest. Yet the "odor of lions" is the phrase with whichhe usually sums it all up. 

Then--it was wholly gone, and he found himself standing by the ashes ofthe fire in a state of amazement and stupid terror that left him thehelpless prey of anything that chose to happen. Had a muskrat poked itspointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled in that instant downthe bark of a tree, he would most likely have collapsed without more adoand fainted. For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of agreat Outer Horror . .. And his scattered powers had not as yet had timeto collect themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-control. 

Nothing did happen, however. A great kiss of wind ran softly through theawakening forest, and a few maple leaves here and there rustledtremblingly to earth. The sky seemed to grow suddenly much lighter. Simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek and uncovered head; realizedthat he was shivering with the cold; and, making a great effort, realized next that he was alone in the Bush--_and_ that he was calledupon to take immediate steps to find and succor his vanished companion. 

Make an effort, accordingly, he did, though an ill-calculated and futileone. With that wilderness of trees about him, the sheet of water cuttinghim off behind, and the horror of that wild cry in his blood, he didwhat any other inexperienced man would have done in similarbewilderment: he ran about, without any sense of direction, like afrantic child, and called loudly without ceasing the name of the guide:

"Défago! Défago! Défago!" he yelled, and the trees gave him back thename as often as he shouted, only a little softened--"Défago! Défago!Défago!"

He followed the trail that lay a short distance across the patches ofsnow, and then lost it again where the trees grew too thickly for snowto lie. He shouted till he was hoarse, and till the sound of his ownvoice in all that unanswering and listening world began to frighten him. His confusion increased in direct ratio to the violence of his efforts. His distress became formidably acute, till at length his exertionsdefeated their own object, and from sheer exhaustion he headed back tothe camp again. It remains a wonder that he ever found his way. It waswith great difficulty, and only after numberless false clues, that he atlast saw the white tent between the trees, and so reached safety. 

Exhaustion then applied its own remedy, and he grew calmer. He made thefire and breakfasted. Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense andjudgment into him again, and he realized that he had been behaving likea boy. He now made another, and more successful attempt to face thesituation collectedly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to hisassistance, he decided that he must first make as thorough a search aspossible, failing success in which, he must find his way into the homecamp as best he could and bring help. 

And this was what he did. Taking food, matches and rifle with him, and asmall axe to blaze the trees against his return journey, he set forth. It was eight o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the tops ofthe trees in a sky without clouds. Pinned to a stake by the fire he lefta note in case Défago returned while he was away. 

This time, according to a careful plan, he took a new direction, intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or later cut intoindications of the guide's trail; and, before he had gone a quarter of amile he came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow, and besideit the light and smaller tracks of what were beyond question humanfeet--the feet of Défago. The relief he at once experienced was natural, though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simpleexplanation of the whole matter: these big marks had surely been left bya bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, anduttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake wasapparent. Défago, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to thepoint of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the windhours before. His excitement and disappearance were due, of course, to--to his--

Then the impossible explanation at which he grasped faded, as commonsense showed him mercilessly that none of this was true. No guide, muchless a guide like Défago, could have acted in so irrational a way, goingoff even without his rifle . .. ! The whole affair demanded a far morecomplicated elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all--thecry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face of horror when hisnostrils first caught the new odor; that muffled sobbing in thedarkness, and--for this, too, now came back to him dimly--the man'soriginal aversion for this particular bit of country. .. . 

Besides, now that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks ofa bull moose at all! Hank had explained to him the outline of a bull'shoofs, of a cow's or calf s, too, for that matter; he had drawn themclearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were wholly different. Theywere big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs. He wondered for a moment whether bear tracks were like that. There wasno other animal he could think of, for caribou did not come so farsouth at this season, and, even if they did, would leave hoof marks. 

They were ominous signs--these mysterious writings left in the snow bythe unknown creature that had lured a human being away from safety--andwhen he coupled them in his imagination with that haunting sound thatbroke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind, distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the _threatening_ aspect ofit all. And, stooping down to examine the marks more closely, he caughta faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odor that made him instantlystraighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea. 

Then his memory played him another evil trick. He suddenly recalledthose uncovered feet projecting beyond the edge of the tent, and thebody's appearance of having been dragged towards the opening; the man'sshrinking from something by the door when he woke later. The details nowbeat against his trembling mind with concerted attack. They seemed togather in those deep spaces of the silent forest about him, where thehost of trees stood waiting, listening, watching to see what he woulddo. The woods were closing round him. 

With the persistence of true pluck, however, Simpson went forward, following the tracks as best he could, smothering these ugly emotionsthat sought to weaken his will. He blazed innumerable trees as he went, ever fearful of being unable to find the way back, and calling aloud atintervals of a few seconds the name of the guide. The dull tapping ofthe axe upon the massive trunks, and the unnatural accents of his ownvoice became at length sounds that he even dreaded to make, dreaded tohear. For they drew attention without ceasing to his presence and exactwhereabouts, and if it were really the case that something was huntinghimself down in the same way that he was hunting down another--

With a strong effort, he crushed the thought out the instant it rose. It was the beginning, he realized, of a bewilderment utterly diabolicalin kind that would speedily destroy him. 

 * * * * *

Although the snow was not continuous, lying merely in shallow flurriesover the more open spaces, he found no difficulty in following thetracks for the first few miles. They went straight as a ruled linewherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to increase inlength, till it finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutelyimpossible for any ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leapsthey became. One of these he measured, and though he knew that "stretch"of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was at a complete loss tounderstand why he found no signs on the snow between the extreme points. But what perplexed him even more, making him feel his vision had goneutterly awry, was that Défago's stride increased in the same manner, andfinally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as if the greatbeast had lifted him with it and carried him across these astonishingintervals. Simpson, who was much longer in the limb, found that he couldnot compass even half the stretch by taking a running jump. 

And the sight of these huge tracks, running side by side, silentevidence of a dreadful journey in which terror or madness had urged toimpossible results, was profoundly moving. It shocked him in the secretdepths of his soul. It was the most horrible thing his eyes had everlooked upon. He began to follow them mechanically, absentmindedlyalmost, ever peering over his shoulder to see if he, too, were beingfollowed by something with a gigantic tread. .. . And soon it came aboutthat he no longer quite realized what it was they signified--theseimpressions left upon the snow by something nameless and untamed, alwaysaccompanied by the footmarks of the little French Canadian, his guide, his comrade, the man who had shared his tent a few hours before, chatting, laughing, even singing by his side. .. . 

V

For a man of his years and inexperience, only a canny Scot, perhaps, grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have preservedeven that measure of balance that this youth somehow or other did manageto preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two things hepresently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent himheadlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of onlymaking his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while hisheart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its wayto heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change, so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in someundecipherable manner--appalling. 

It was in the bigger tracks he first noticed this, and for a long timehe could not quite believe his eyes. Was it the blown leaves thatproduced odd effects of light and shade, or that the dry snow, driftinglike finely ground rice about the edges, cast shadows and high lights?Or was it actually the fact that the great marks had become faintlycolored? For round about the deep, plunging holes of the animal therenow appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more like an effect oflight than of anything that dyed the substance of the snow itself. Everymark had it, and had it increasingly--this indistinct fiery tinge thatpainted a new touch of ghastliness into the picture. 

But when, wholly unable to explain or to credit it, he turned hisattention to the other tracks to discover if they, too, bore similarwitness, he noticed that these had meanwhile undergone a change that wasinfinitely worse, and charged with far more horrible suggestion. For, inthe last hundred yards or so, he saw that they had grown gradually intothe semblance of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the change had comeabout, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see where the change firstbegan. The result, however, was beyond question. Smaller, neater, morecleanly modeled, they formed now an exact and careful duplicate of thelarger tracks beside them. The feet that produced them had, therefore, also changed. And something in his mind reared up with loathing and withterror as he saw it. 

Simpson, for the first time, hesitated; then, ashamed of his alarm andindecision, took a few hurried steps ahead; the next instant stoppeddead in his tracks. Immediately in front of him all signs of the trailceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for a hundredyards and more, he searched in vain for the least indication of theircontinuance. There was--nothing. 

The trees were very thick just there, big trees all of them, spruce, cedar, hemlock; there was no underbrush. He stood, looking about him, all distraught; bereft of any power of judgment. Then he set to work tosearch again, and again, and yet again, but always with the same result:_nothing_. The feet that printed the surface of the snow thus far hadnow, apparently, left the ground!

And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip ofterror laid its most nicely calculated lash about his heart. It droppedwith deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnervinghim. He had been secretly dreading all the time that it would come--andcome it did. 

Far overhead, muted by great height and distance, strangely thinned andwailing, he heard the crying voice of Défago, the guide. 

The sound dropped upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an effectof dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stoodmotionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, thenstaggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganizedhopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed themost shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so thathis heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a suddendraught. 

"Oh! oh! This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet offire . .. !" ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal thisvoice of anguish down the sky. Once it called--then silence through allthe listening wilderness of trees. 

And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himselfrunning wildly to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots andboulders, and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit afterthe Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion with whichexperience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half-deranged, picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror in his eyes andheart and soul. For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him inthat far voice--the Power of untamed Distance--the Enticement of theDesolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the pains ofsomeone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust andtravail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of Défago, eternallyhunted, driven and pursued across the skiey vastness of those ancientforests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his thoughts . .. 

It seemed ages before he could find anything in the chaos of hisdisorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for amoment, and think . .. 

The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling brought no response;the inscrutable forces of the Wild had summoned their victim beyondrecall--and held him fast. 

 * * * * *

Yet he searched and called, it seems, for hours afterwards, for it waslate in the afternoon when at length he decided to abandon a uselesspursuit and return to his camp on the shores of Fifty Island Water. Eventhen he went with reluctance, that crying voice still echoing in hisears. With difficulty he found his rifle and the homeward trail. Theconcentration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees, and a bitinghunger that gnawed, helped to keep his mind steady. Otherwise, headmits, the temporary aberration he had suffered might have beenprolonged to the point of positive disaster. Gradually the ballastshifted back again, and he regained something that approached his normalequilibrium. 

But for all that the journey through the gathering dusk was miserablyhaunted. He heard innumerable following footsteps; voices that laughedand whispered; and saw figures crouching behind trees and boulders, making signs to one another for a concerted attack the moment he hadpassed. The creeping murmur of the wind made him start and listen. Hewent stealthily, trying to hide where possible, and making as littlesound as he could. The shadows of the woods, hitherto protective orcovering merely, had now become menacing, challenging; and the pageantryin his frightened mind masked a host of possibilities that were all themore ominous for being obscure. The presentiment of a nameless doomlurked ill-concealed behind every detail of what had happened. 

It was really admirable how he emerged victor in the end; men of riperpowers and experience might have come through the ordeal with lesssuccess. He had himself tolerably well in hand, all things considered, and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of thequestion and traveling an unknown trail in the darkness equallyimpracticable, he sat up the whole of that night, rifle in hand, beforea fire he never for a single moment allowed to die down. The severity ofthe haunted vigil marked his soul for life; but it was successfullyaccomplished; and with the very first signs of dawn he set forth uponthe long return journey to the home camp to get help. As before, he lefta written note to explain his absence, and to indicate where he had lefta plentiful _cache_ of food and matches--though he had no expectationthat any human hands would find them!

How Simpson found his way alone by the lake and forest might well make astory in itself, for to hear him tell it is to _know_ the passionateloneliness of soul that a man can feel when the Wilderness holds him inthe hollow of its illimitable hand--and laughs. It is also to admire hisindomitable pluck. 

He claims no skill, declaring that he followed the almost invisibletrail mechanically, and without thinking. And this, doubtless, is thetruth. He relied upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which isinstinct. Perhaps, too, some sense of orientation, known to animals andprimitive men, may have helped as well, for through all that tangledregion he succeeded in reaching the exact spot where Défago had hiddenthe canoe nearly three days before with the remark, "Strike doo westacross the lake into the sun to find the camp. "

There was not much sun left to guide him, but he used his compass to thebest of his ability, embarking in the frail craft for the last twelvemiles of his journey with a sensation of immense relief that the forestwas at last behind him. And, fortunately, the water was calm; he tookhis line across the center of the lake instead of coasting round theshores for another twenty miles. Fortunately, too, the other hunterswere back. The light of their fires furnished a steering point withoutwhich he might have searched all night long for the actual position ofthe camp. 

It was close upon midnight all the same when his canoe grated on thesandy cove, and Hank, Punk and his uncle, disturbed in their sleep byhis cries, ran quickly down and helped a very exhausted and brokenspecimen of Scotch humanity over the rocks toward a dying fire. 

VI

The sudden entrance of his prosaic uncle into this world of wizardryand horror that had haunted him without interruption now for two daysand two nights, had the immediate effect of giving to the affair anentirely new aspect. The sound of that crisp "Hulloa, my boy! And what'sup _now_?" and the grasp of that dry and vigorous hand introducedanother standard of judgment. A revulsion of feeling washed through him. He realized that he had let himself "go" rather badly. He even feltvaguely ashamed of himself. The native hard-headedness of his racereclaimed him. 

And this doubtless explains why he found it so hard to tell that groupround the fire--everything. He told enough, however, for the immediatedecision to be arrived at that a relief party must start at the earliestpossible moment, and that Simpson, in order to guide it capably, mustfirst have food and, above all, sleep. Dr. Cathcart observing the lad'scondition more shrewdly than his patient knew, gave him a very slightinjection of morphine. For six hours he slept like the dead. 

From the description carefully written out afterwards by this student ofdivinity, it appears that the account he gave to the astonished groupomitted sundry vital and important details. He declares that, with hisuncle's wholesome, matter-of-fact countenance staring him in the face, he simply had not the courage to mention them. Thus, all the searchparty gathered, it would seem, was that Défago had suffered in the nightan acute and inexplicable attack of mania, had imagined himself "called"by someone or something, and had plunged into the bush after it withoutfood or rifle, where he must die a horrible and lingering death by coldand starvation unless he could be found and rescued in time. "In time, "moreover, meant _at once_. 

In the course of the following day, however--they were off by seven, leaving Punk in charge with instructions to have food and fire alwaysready--Simpson found it possible to tell his uncle a good deal more ofthe story's true inwardness, without divining that it was drawn out ofhim as a matter of fact by a very subtle form of cross examination. Bythe time they reached the beginning of the trail, where the canoe waslaid up against the return journey, he had mentioned how Défago spokevaguely of "something he called a 'Wendigo'"; how he cried in his sleep;how he imagined an unusual scent about the camp; and had betrayed othersymptoms of mental excitement. He also admitted the bewildering effectof "that extraordinary odor" upon himself, "pungent and acrid like theodor of lions. " And by the time they were within an easy hour of FiftyIsland Water he had let slip the further fact--a foolish avowal of hisown hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards--that he had heard thevanished guide call "for help. " He omitted the singular phrases used, for he simply could not bring himself to repeat the preposterouslanguage. Also, while describing how the man's footsteps in the snow hadgradually assumed an exact miniature likeness of the animal's plungingtracks, he left out the fact that they measured a _wholly_ incredibledistance. It seemed a question, nicely balanced between individual prideand honesty, what he should reveal and what suppress. He mentioned thefiery tinge in the snow, for instance, yet shrank from telling that bodyand bed had been partly dragged out of the tent. .. . 

With the net result that Dr. Cathcart, adroit psychologist that hefancied himself to be, had assured him clearly enough exactly where hismind, influenced by loneliness, bewilderment and terror, had yielded tothe strain and invited delusion. While praising his conduct, he managedat the same time to point out where, when, and how his mind had goneastray. He made his nephew think himself finer than he was by judiciouspraise, yet more foolish than he was by minimizing the value of theevidence. Like many another materialist, that is, he lied cleverly onthe basis of insufficient knowledge, _because_ the knowledge suppliedseemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible. 

"The spell of these terrible solitudes, " he said, "cannot leave any minduntouched, any mind, that is, possessed of the higher imaginativequalities. It has worked upon yours exactly as it worked upon my ownwhen I was your age. The animal that haunted your little camp wasundoubtedly a moose, for the 'belling' of a moose may have, sometimes, avery peculiar quality of sound. The colored appearance of the big trackswas obviously a defect of vision in your own eyes produced byexcitement. The size and stretch of the tracks we shall prove when wecome to them. But the hallucination of an audible voice, of course, isone of the commonest forms of delusion due to mental excitement--anexcitement, my dear boy, perfectly excusable, and, let me add, wonderfully controlled by you under the circumstances. For the rest, Iam bound to say, you have acted with a splendid courage, for the terrorof feeling oneself lost in this wilderness is nothing short of awful, and, had I been in your place, I don't for a moment believe I could havebehaved with one quarter of your wisdom and decision. The only thing Ifind it uncommonly difficult to explain is--that--damned odor. "

"It made me feel sick, I assure you, " declared his nephew, "positivelydizzy!" His uncle's attitude of calm omniscience, merely because he knewmore psychological formulae, made him slightly defiant. It was so easyto be wise in the explanation of an experience one has not personallywitnessed. "A kind of desolate and terrible odor is the only way I candescribe it, " he concluded, glancing at the features of the quiet, unemotional man beside him. 

"I can only marvel, " was the reply, "that under the circumstances it didnot seem to you even worse. " The dry words, Simpson knew, hoveredbetween the truth, and his uncle's interpretation of "the truth. "

 * * * * *

And so at last they came to the little camp and found the tent stillstanding, the remains of the fire, and the piece of paper pinned to astake beside it--untouched. The cache, poorly contrived by inexperiencedhands, however, had been discovered and opened--by musk rats, mink andsquirrel. The matches lay scattered about the opening, but the food hadbeen taken to the last crumb. 

"Well, fellers, he ain't here, " exclaimed Hank loudly after his fashion. "And that's as sartain as the coal supply down below! But whar he's gotto by this time is 'bout as unsartain as the trade in crowns in t'otherplace. " The presence of a divinity student was no barrier to hislanguage at such a time, though for the reader's sake it may be severelyedited. "I propose, " he added, "that we start out at once an' hunt for'mlike hell!"

The gloom of Défago's probable fate oppressed the whole party with asense of dreadful gravity the moment they saw the familiar signs ofrecent occupancy. Especially the tent, with the bed of balsam branchesstill smoothed and flattened by the pressure of his body, seemed tobring his presence near to them. Simpson, feeling vaguely as if hisworld were somehow at stake, went about explaining particulars in ahushed tone. He was much calmer now, though overwearied with the strainof his many journeys. His uncle's method of explaining--"explainingaway, " rather--the details still fresh in his haunted memory helped, too, to put ice upon his emotions. 

"And that's the direction he ran off in, " he said to his two companions, pointing in the direction where the guide had vanished that morning inthe grey dawn. "Straight down there he ran like a deer, in between thebirch and the hemlock. .. . "

Hank and Dr. Cathcart exchanged glances. 

"And it was about two miles down there, in a straight line, " continuedthe other, speaking with something of the former terror in his voice, "that I followed his trail to the place where--it stopped--dead!"

"And where you heered him callin' an' caught the stench, an' all therest of the wicked entertainment, " cried Hank, with a volubility thatbetrayed his keen distress. 

"And where your excitement overcame you to the point of producingillusions, " added Dr. Cathcart under his breath, yet not so low that hisnephew did not hear it. 

 * * * * *

It was early in the afternoon, for they had traveled quickly, and therewere still a good two hours of daylight left. Dr. Cathcart and Hank lostno time in beginning the search, but Simpson was too exhausted toaccompany them. They would follow the blazed marks on the trees, andwhere possible, his footsteps. Meanwhile the best thing he could do wasto keep a good fire going, and rest. 

But after something like three hours' search, the darkness already down, the two men returned to camp with nothing to report. Fresh snow hadcovered all signs, and though they had followed the blazed trees to thespot where Simpson had turned back, they had not discovered the smallestindication of a human being--or for that matter, of an animal. Therewere no fresh tracks of any kind; the snow lay undisturbed. 

It was difficult to know what was best to do, though in reality therewas nothing more they _could_ do. They might stay and search for weekswithout much chance of success. The fresh snow destroyed their onlyhope, and they gathered round the fire for supper, a gloomy anddespondent party. The facts, indeed, were sad enough, for Défago had awife at Rat Portage, and his earnings were the family's sole means ofsupport. 

Now that the whole truth in all its ugliness was out, it seemed uselessto deal in further disguise or pretense. They talked openly of the factsand probabilities. It was not the first time, even in the experience ofDr. Cathcart, that a man had yielded to the singular seduction of theSolitudes and gone out of his mind; Défago, moreover, was predisposed tosomething of the sort, for he already had a touch of melancholia in hisblood, and his fiber was weakened by bouts of drinking that often lastedfor weeks at a time. Something on this trip--one might never knowprecisely what--had sufficed to push him over the line, that was all. And he had gone, gone off into the great wilderness of trees and lakesto die by starvation and exhaustion. The chances against his findingcamp again were overwhelming; the delirium that was upon him would alsodoubtless have increased, and it was quite likely he might do violenceto himself and so hasten his cruel fate. Even while they talked, indeed, the end had probably come. On the suggestion of Hank, his old pal, however, they proposed to wait a little longer and devote the whole ofthe following day, from dawn to darkness, to the most systematic searchthey could devise. They would divide the territory between them. Theydiscussed their plan in great detail. All that men could do they woulddo. And, meanwhile, they talked about the particular form in which thesingular Panic of the Wilderness had made its attack upon the mind ofthe unfortunate guide. Hank, though familiar with the legend in itsgeneral outline, obviously did not welcome the turn the conversation hadtaken. He contributed little, though that little was illuminating. Forhe admitted that a story ran over all this section of country to theeffect that several Indians had "seen the Wendigo" along the shores ofFifty Island Water in the "fall" of last year, and that this was thetrue reason of Défago's disinclination to hunt there. Hank doubtlessfelt that he had in a sense helped his old pal to death byoverpersuading him. "When an Indian goes crazy, " he explained, talkingto himself more than to the others, it seemed, "it's always put thathe's 'seen the Wendigo. ' An' pore old Défaygo was superstitious down tohe very heels . .. !"

And then Simpson, feeling the atmosphere more sympathetic, told overagain the full story of his astonishing tale; he left out no detailsthis time; he mentioned his own sensations and gripping fears. He onlyomitted the strange language used. 

"But Défago surely had already told you all these details of the Wendigolegend, my dear fellow, " insisted the doctor. "I mean, he had talkedabout it, and thus put into your mind the ideas which your ownexcitement afterwards developed?"

Whereupon Simpson again repeated the facts. Défago, he declared, hadbarely mentioned the beast. He, Simpson, knew nothing of the story, and, so far as he remembered, had never even read about it. Even the word wasunfamiliar. 

Of course he was telling the truth, and Dr. Cathcart was reluctantlycompelled to admit the singular character of the whole affair. He didnot do this in words so much as in manner, however. He kept his backagainst a good, stout tree; he poked the fire into a blaze the moment itshowed signs of dying down; he was quicker than any of them to noticethe least sound in the night about them--a fish jumping in the lake, atwig snapping in the bush, the dropping of occasional fragments offrozen snow from the branches overhead where the heat loosened them. Hisvoice, too, changed a little in quality, becoming a shade lessconfident, lower also in tone. Fear, to put it plainly, hovered closeabout that little camp, and though all three would have been glad tospeak of other matters, the only thing they seemed able to discuss wasthis--the source of their fear. They tried other subjects in vain; therewas nothing to say about them. Hank was the most honest of the group; hesaid next to nothing. He never once, however, turned his back to thedarkness. His face was always to the forest, and when wood was needed hedidn't go farther than was necessary to get it. 

VII

A wall of silence wrapped them in, for the snow, though not thick, wassufficient to deaden any noise, and the frost held things pretty tightbesides. No sound but their voices and the soft roar of the flames madeitself heard. Only, from time to time, something soft as the flutter ofa pine moth's wings went past them through the air. No one seemedanxious to go to bed. The hours slipped towards midnight. 

"The legend is picturesque enough, " observed the doctor after one of thelonger pauses, speaking to break it rather than because he had anythingto say, "for the Wendigo is simply the Call of the Wild personified, which some natures hear to their own destruction. "

"That's about it, " Hank said presently. "An' there's no misunderstandin'when you hear it. It calls you by name right 'nough. "

Another pause followed. Then Dr. Cathcart came back to the forbiddensubject with a rush that made the others jump. 

"The allegory _is_ significant, " he remarked, looking about him into thedarkness, "for the Voice, they say, resembles all the minor sounds ofthe Bush--wind, falling water, cries of the animals, and so forth. And, once the victim hears _that_--he's off for good, of course! His mostvulnerable points, moreover, are said to be the feet and the eyes; thefeet, you see, for the lust of wandering, and the eyes for the lust ofbeauty. The poor beggar goes at such a dreadful speed that he bleedsbeneath the eyes, and his feet burn. "

Dr. Cathcart, as he spoke, continued to peer uneasily into thesurrounding gloom. His voice sank to a hushed tone. 

"The Wendigo, " he added, "is said to burn his feet--owing to thefriction, apparently caused by its tremendous velocity--till they dropoff, and new ones form exactly like its own. "

Simpson listened in horrified amazement; but it was the pallor on Hank'sface that fascinated him most. He would willingly have stopped his earsand closed his eyes, had he dared. 

"It don't always keep to the ground neither, " came in Hank's slow, heavydrawl, "for it goes so high that he thinks the stars have set him alla-fire. An' it'll take great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an' run along thetops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an' then droppin' himjest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin'. An' itsfood, of all the muck in the whole Bush is--moss!" And he laughed ashort, unnatural laugh. "It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo, " he added, looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. "Moss-eater, " herepeated, with a string of the most outlandish oaths he could invent. 

But Simpson now understood the true purpose of all this talk. Whatthese two men, each strong and "experienced" in his own way, dreadedmore than anything else was--silence. They were talking against time. They were also talking against darkness, against the invasion of panic, against the admission reflection might bring that they were in anenemy's country--against anything, in fact, rather than allow theirinmost thoughts to assume control. He himself, already initiated by theawful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He hadreached the stage where he was immune. But these two, the scoffing, analytical doctor, and the honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sattrembling in the depths of his being. 

Thus the hours passed; and thus, with lowered voices and a kind of tautinner resistance of spirit, this little group of humanity sat in thejaws of the wilderness and talked foolishly of the terrible and hauntinglegend. It was an unequal contest, all things considered, for thewilderness had already the advantage of first attack--and of a hostage. The fate of their comrade hung over them with a steadily increasingweight of oppression that finally became insupportable. 

It was Hank, after a pause longer than the preceding ones that no oneseemed able to break, who first let loose all this pent-up emotion invery unexpected fashion, by springing suddenly to his feet and lettingout the most ear-shattering yell imaginable into the night. He could notcontain himself any longer, it seemed. To make it carry even beyond anordinary cry he interrupted its rhythm by shaking the palm of his handbefore his mouth. 

"That's for Défago, " he said, looking down at the other two with aqueer, defiant laugh, "for it's my belief"--the sandwiched oaths may beomitted--"that my ole partner's not far from us at this very minute. "

There was a vehemence and recklessness about his performance that madeSimpson, too, start to his feet in amazement, and betrayed even thedoctor into letting the pipe slip from between his lips. Hank's face wasghastly, but Cathcart's showed a sudden weakness--a loosening of all hisfaculties, as it were. Then a momentary anger blazed into his eyes, andhe too, though with deliberation born of habitual self-control, got uponhis feet and faced the excited guide. For this was unpermissible, foolish, dangerous, and he meant to stop it in the bud. 

What might have happened in the next minute or two one may speculateabout, yet never definitely know, for in the instant of profound silencethat followed Hank's roaring voice, and as though in answer to it, something went past through the darkness of the sky overhead at terrificspeed--something of necessity very large, for it displaced much air, while down between the trees there fell a faint and windy cry of a humanvoice, calling in tones of indescribable anguish and appeal--

"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet offire!"

White to the very edge of his shirt, Hank looked stupidly about him likea child. Dr. Cathcart uttered some kind of unintelligible cry, turningas he did so with an instinctive movement of blind terror towards theprotection of the tent, then halting in the act as though frozen. Simpson, alone of the three, retained his presence of mind a little. Hisown horror was too deep to allow of any immediate reaction. He had heardthat cry before. 

Turning to his stricken companions, he said almost calmly--

"That's exactly the cry I heard--the very words he used!"

Then, lifting his face to the sky, he cried aloud, "Défago, Défago! Comedown here to us! Come down--!"

And before there was time for anybody to take definite action one way oranother, there came the sound of something dropping heavily between thetrees, striking the branches on the way down, and landing with adreadful thud upon the frozen earth below. The crash and thunder of itwas really terrific. 

"That's him, s'help me the good Gawd!" came from Hank in a whisperingcry half choked, his hand going automatically toward the hunting knifein his belt. "And he's coming! He's coming!" he added, with anirrational laugh of horror, as the sounds of heavy footsteps crunchingover the snow became distinctly audible, approaching through theblackness towards the circle of light. 

And while the steps, with their stumbling motion, moved nearer andnearer upon them, the three men stood round that fire, motionless anddumb. Dr. Cathcart had the appearance of a man suddenly withered; evenhis eyes did not move. Hank, suffering shockingly, seemed on the vergeagain of violent action; yet did nothing. He, too, was hewn of stone. Like stricken children they seemed. The picture was hideous. And, meanwhile, their owner still invisible, the footsteps came closer, crunching the frozen snow. It was endless--too prolonged to be quitereal--this measured and pitiless approach. It was accursed. 

VIII

Then at length the darkness, having thus laboriously conceived, broughtforth--a figure. It drew forward into the zone of uncertain light wherefire and shadows mingled, not ten feet away; then halted, staring atthem fixedly. The same instant it started forward again with thespasmodic motion as of a thing moved by wires, and coming up closer tothem, full into the glare of the fire, they perceived then that--it wasa man; and apparently that this man was--Défago. 

Something like a skin of horror almost perceptibly drew down in thatmoment over every face, and three pairs of eyes shone through it asthough they saw across the frontiers of normal vision into the Unknown. 

Défago advanced, his tread faltering and uncertain; he made his waystraight up to them as a group first, then turned sharply and peeredclose into the face of Simpson. The sound of a voice issued from hislips--

"Here I am, Boss Simpson. I heered someone calling me. " It was a faint, dried up voice, made wheezy and breathless as by immense exertion. "I'mhavin' a reg'lar hellfire kind of a trip, I am. " And he laughed, thrusting his head forward into the other's face. 

But that laugh started the machinery of the group of waxwork figureswith the wax-white skins. Hank immediately sprang forward with a streamof oaths so farfetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English atall, but thought he had lapsed into Indian or some other lingo. He onlyrealized that Hank's presence, thrust thus between them, waswelcome--uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly andleisurely, advanced behind him, heavily stumbling. 

Simpson seems hazy as to what was actually said and done in those nextfew seconds, for the eyes of that detestable and blasted visage peeringat such close quarters into his own utterly bewildered his senses atfirst. He merely stood still. He said nothing. He had not the trainedwill of the older men that forced them into action in defiance of allemotional stress. He watched them moving as behind a glass that halfdestroyed their reality; it was dreamlike; perverted. Yet, through thetorrent of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing his uncle'stone of authority--hard and forced--saying several things about food andwarmth, blankets, whisky and the rest . .. And, further, that whiffs ofthat penetrating, unaccustomed odor, vile yet sweetly bewildering, assailed his nostrils during all that followed. 

It was no less a person than himself, however--less experienced andadroit than the others though he was--who gave instinctive utterance tothe sentence that brought a measure of relief into the ghastly situationby expressing the doubt and thought in each one's heart. 

"It _is_--YOU, isn't it, Défago?" he asked under his breath, horrorbreaking his speech. 

And at once Cathcart burst out with the loud answer before the other hadtime to move his lips. "Of course it is! Of course it is! Only--can'tyou 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 toconvince himself as much as to convince the others. The overemphasisalone proved that. And continually, while he spoke and acted, he held ahandkerchief to his nose. That odor pervaded the whole camp. 

For the "Défago" who sat huddled by the big fire, wrapped in blankets, drinking hot whisky and holding food in wasted hands, was no more likethe guide they had last seen alive than the picture of a man of sixty islike a daguerreotype of his early youth in the costume of anothergeneration. Nothing really can describe that ghastly caricature, thatparody, masquerading there in the firelight as Défago. From the ruins ofthe dark and awful memories he still retains, Simpson declares that theface was more animal than human, the features drawn about into wrongproportions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had been subjectedto extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely ofthose bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that changetheir expression as they swell, and as they collapse emit a faint andwailing imitation of a voice. Both face and voice suggested some suchabominable resemblance. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking todescribe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a faceand body that had been in air so rarified that, the weight of atmospherebeing removed, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder andbecome--_incoherent_. .. . 

It was Hank, though all distraught and shaking with a tearing volume ofemotion he could neither handle nor understand, who brought things to ahead without much ado. He went off to a little distance from the fire, apparently so that the light should not dazzle him too much, and shadinghis eyes for a moment with both hands, shouted in a loud voice that heldanger and affection dreadfully mingled:

"You ain't Défaygo! You ain't Défaygo at all! I don't give a--damn, butthat ain't you, my ole pal of twenty years!" He glared upon the huddledfigure as though he would destroy him with his eyes. "An' if it is I'llswab the floor of hell with a wad of cotton wool on a toothpick, s'helpme the good Gawd!" he added, with a violent fling of horror and disgust. 

It was impossible to silence him. He stood there shouting like onepossessed, horrible to see, horrible to hear--_because it was thetruth_. He repeated himself in fifty different ways, each moreoutlandish than the last. The woods rang with echoes. At one time itlooked as if he meant to fling himself upon "the intruder, " for his handcontinually jerked towards the long hunting knife in his belt. 

But in the end he did nothing, and the whole tempest completed itselfvery shortly with tears. Hank's voice suddenly broke, he collapsed onthe ground, and Cathcart somehow or other persuaded him at last to gointo the tent and lie quiet. The remainder of the affair, indeed, waswitnessed by him from behind the canvas, his white and terrified facepeeping through the crack of the tent door flap. 

Then Dr. Cathcart, closely followed by his nephew who so far had kepthis courage better than all of them, went up with a determined air andstood opposite to the figure of Défago huddled over the fire. He lookedhim squarely in the face and spoke. At first his voice was firm. 

"Défago, tell us what's happened--just a little, so that we can knowhow best to help you?" he asked in a tone of authority, almost ofcommand. And at that point, it _was_ command. At once afterwards, however, it changed in quality, for the figure turned up to him a faceso piteous, so terrible and so little like humanity, that the doctorshrank back from him as from something spiritually unclean. Simpson, watching close behind him, says he got the impression of a mask that wason the verge of dropping off, and that underneath they would discoversomething black and diabolical, revealed in utter nakedness. "Out withit, man, out with it!" Cathcart cried, terror running neck and neck withentreaty. "None of us can stand this much longer . .. !" It was the cry ofinstinct over reason. 

And then "Défago, " smiling _whitely_, answered in that thin and fadingvoice that already seemed passing over into a sound of quite anothercharacter--

"I seen that great Wendigo thing, " he whispered, sniffing the air abouthim exactly like an animal. "I been with it too--"

Whether the poor devil would have said more, or whether Dr. Cathcartwould have continued the impossible cross examination cannot be known, for at that moment the voice of Hank was heard yelling at the top of hisvoice from behind the canvas that concealed all but his terrified eyes. Such a howling was never heard. 

"His feet! Oh, Gawd, his feet! Look at his great changed--feet!"

Défago, shuffling where he sat, had moved in such a way that for thefirst time his legs were in full light and his feet were visible. YetSimpson had no time, himself, to see properly what Hank had seen. AndHank has never seen fit to tell. That same instant, with a leap likethat of a frightened tiger, Cathcart was upon him, bundling the folds ofblanket about his legs with such speed that the young student caughtlittle more than a passing glimpse of something dark and oddly massedwhere moccasined feet ought to have been, and saw even that but withuncertain vision. 

Then, before the doctor had time to do more, or Simpson time to eventhink a question, much less ask it, Défago was standing upright in frontof them, balancing with pain and difficulty, and upon his shapeless andtwisted visage an expression so dark and so malicious that it was, inthe true sense, monstrous. 

"Now _you_ seen it too, " he wheezed, "you seen my fiery, burning feet!And now--that is, unless you kin save me an' prevent--it's 'bout timefor--"

His piteous and beseeching voice was interrupted by a sound that waslike the roar of wind coming across the lake. The trees overhead shooktheir tangled branches. The blazing fire bent its flames as before ablast. And something swept with a terrific, rushing noise about thelittle camp and seemed to surround it entirely in a single moment oftime. Défago shook the clinging blankets from his body, turned towardsthe woods behind, and with the same stumbling motion that had broughthim--was gone: gone, before anyone could move muscle to prevent him, gone with an amazing, blundering swiftness that left no time to act. Thedarkness positively swallowed him; and less than a dozen seconds later, above the roar of the swaying trees and the shout of the sudden wind, all three men, watching and listening with stricken hearts, heard a crythat seemed to drop down upon them from a great height of sky anddistance--

"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet offire . .. !" then died away, into untold space and silence. 

Dr. Cathcart--suddenly master of himself, and therefore of theothers--was just able to seize Hank violently by the arm as he tried todash headlong into the Bush. 

"But I want ter know, --you!" shrieked the guide. "I want ter see! Thatain't him at all, but some--devil that's shunted into his place . .. !"

Somehow or other--he admits he never quite knew how he accomplishedit--he managed to keep him in the tent and pacify him. The doctor, apparently, had reached the stage where reaction had set in and allowedhis own innate force to conquer. Certainly he "managed" Hank admirably. It was his nephew, however, hitherto so wonderfully controlled, who gavehim most cause for anxiety, for the cumulative strain had now produced acondition of lachrymose hysteria which made it necessary to isolate himupon a bed of boughs and blankets as far removed from Hank as waspossible under the circumstances. 

And there he lay, as the watches of that haunted night passed over thelonely camp, crying startled sentences, and fragments of sentences, intothe folds of his blanket. A quantity of gibberish about speed and heightand fire mingled oddly with biblical memories of the classroom. "Peoplewith broken faces all on fire are coming at a most awful, awful, pacetowards the camp!" he would moan one minute; and the next would sit upand stare into the woods, intently listening, and whisper, "How terriblein the wilderness are--are the feet of them that--" until his uncle cameacross the change the direction of his thoughts and comfort him. 

The hysteria, fortunately, proved but temporary. Sleep cured him, justas it cured Hank. 

Till the first signs of daylight came, soon after five o'clock, Dr. Cathcart kept his vigil. His face was the color of chalk, and there werestrange flushes beneath the eyes. An appalling terror of the soulbattled with his will all through those silent hours. These were some ofthe outer signs . .. 

At dawn he lit the fire himself, made breakfast, and woke the others, and by seven they were well on their way back to the home camp--threeperplexed and afflicted men, but each in his own way having reduced hisinner turmoil to a condition of more or less systematized order again. 

IX

They talked little, and then only of the most wholesome and commonthings, for their minds were charged with painful thoughts thatclamoured for explanation, though no one dared refer to them. Hank, being nearest to primitive conditions, was the first to find himself, for he was also less complex. In Dr. Cathcart "civilization" championedhis forces against an attack singular enough. To this day, perhaps, heis not _quite_ sure of certain things. Anyhow, he took longer to "findhimself. "

Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusionsprobably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surelywitnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something thathad survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life still monstrous and immature. He envisaged itrather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, giganticand uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men; when the forces of naturewere still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universenot yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years laterin a sermon "savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls ofmen, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanityas it exists. "

With his uncle he never discussed the matter in detail, for the barrierbetween the two types of mind made it difficult. Only once, years later, something led them to the frontier of the subject--of a single detail ofthe subject, rather--

"Can't you even tell me what--_they_ were like?" he asked; and the reply, though conceived in wisdom, was not encouraging, "It is far better youshould not try to know, or to find out. "

"Well--that odour. .. ?" persisted the nephew. "What do you make of that?"

Dr. Cathcart looked at him and raised his eyebrows. 

"Odours, " he replied, "are not so easy as sounds and sights of telepathiccommunication. I make as much, or as little, probably, as you doyourself. "

He was not quite so glib as usual with his explanations. That was all. 

 * * * * *

At the fall of day, cold, exhausted, famished, the party came to theend of the long portage and dragged themselves into a camp that atfirst glimpse seemed empty. Fire there was none, and no Punk cameforward to welcome them. The emotional capacity of all three was tooover-spent to recognize either surprise or annoyance; but the cry ofspontaneous affection that burst from the lips of Hank, as he rushedahead of them towards the fire-place, came probably as a warning thatthe end of the amazing affair was not quite yet. And both Cathcart andhis nephew confessed afterwards that when they saw him kneel down inhis excitement and embrace something that reclined, gently moving, beside the extinguished ashes, they felt in their very bones that this"something" would prove to be Défago--the true Défago, returned. 

And so, indeed, it was. 

It is soon told. Exhausted to the point of emaciation, the FrenchCanadian--what was left of him, that is--fumbled among the ashes, tryingto make a fire. His body crouched there, the weak fingers obeying feeblythe instinctive habit of a lifetime with twigs and matches. But therewas no longer any mind to direct the simple operation. The mind hadfled beyond recall. And with it, too, had fled memory. Not only recentevents, but all previous life was a blank. 

This time it was the real man, though incredibly and horribly shrunken. On his face was no expression of any kind whatever--fear, welcome, orrecognition. He did not seem to know who it was that embraced him, orwho it was that fed, warmed and spoke to him the words of comfort andrelief. Forlorn and broken beyond all reach of human aid, the little mandid meekly as he was bidden. The "something" that had constituted him"individual" had vanished for ever. 

In some ways it was more terribly moving than anything they had yetseen--that idiot smile as he drew wads of coarse moss from his swollencheeks and told them that he was "a damned moss-eater"; the continuedvomiting of even the simplest food; and, worst of all, the piteousand childish voice of complaint in which he told them that his feetpained him--"burn like fire"--which was natural enough when Dr. Cathcartexamined them and found that both were dreadfully frozen. Beneath theeyes there were faint indications of recent bleeding. 

The details of how he survived the prolonged exposure, of where he hadbeen, or of how he covered the great distance from one camp to theother, including an immense detour of the lake on foot since he hadno canoe--all this remains unknown. His memory had vanished completely. And before the end of the winter whose beginning witnessed this strangeoccurrence, Défago, bereft of mind, memory and soul, had gone with it. He lingered only a few weeks. 

And what Punk was able to contribute to the story throws no furtherlight upon it. He was cleaning fish by the lake shore about five o'clockin the evening--an hour, that is, before the search party returned--whenhe saw this shadow of the guide picking its way weakly into camp. Inadvance of him, he declares, came the faint whiff of a certain singularodour. 

That same instant old Punk started for home. He covered the entirejourney of three days as only Indian blood could have covered it. Theterror of a whole race drove him. He knew what it all meant. Défagohad "seen the Wendigo. "