The Wendigo

  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. Defago 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: "_De-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:

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

  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 Defago returned while he was away.

  This time, according to a careful plan, he took a new direction,intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or later cut 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 Defago. 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. Defago, 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 Defago, 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 Defago'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....