The Wendigo
the man cried and ran, he had become aware that a strange perfume, faint
yet pungent, pervaded the interior of the tent. And it was at this
point, it seems, brought to himself by the consciousness that his
nostrils were taking this distressing odor down into his throat, that he
found his courage, sprang quickly to his feet--and went out.
The grey light of dawn that dropped, cold and glimmering, between the
trees revealed the scene tolerably well. There stood the tent behind
him, soaked with dew; the dark ashes of the fire, still warm; the lake,
white beneath a coating of mist, the islands rising darkly out of it
like objects packed in wool; and patches of snow beyond among the
clearer spaces of the Bush--everything cold, still, waiting for the sun.
But nowhere a sign of the vanished guide--still, doubtless, flying at
frantic speed through the frozen woods. There was not even the sound of
disappearing footsteps, nor the echoes of the dying voice. He had
gone--utterly.
There was nothing; nothing but the sense of his recent presence, so
strongly left behind about the camp; _and_--this penetrating,
all-pervading odor.
And even this was now rapidly disappearing in its turn. In spite of his
exceeding mental perturbation, Simpson struggled hard to detect its
nature, and define it, but the ascertaining of an elusive scent, not
recognized subconsciously and at once, is a very subtle operation of
the mind. And he failed. It was gone before he could properly seize or
name it. Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult,
for it was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid rather, not unlike the odor
of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not wholly unpleasing, with
something almost sweet in it that reminded him of the scent of decaying
garden leaves, earth, and the myriad, nameless perfumes that make up the
odor of a big forest. Yet the "odor of lions" is the phrase with which
he usually sums it all up.
Then--it was wholly gone, and he found himself standing by the ashes of
the fire in a state of amazement and stupid terror that left him the
helpless prey of anything that chose to happen. Had a muskrat poked its
pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled in that instant down
the bark of a tree, he would most likely have collapsed without more ado
and fainted. For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a
great Outer Horror ... and his scattered powers had not as yet had time
to collect themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-control.
Nothing did happen, however. A great kiss of wind ran softly through the
awakening forest, and a few maple leaves here and there rustled
tremblingly to earth. The sky seemed to grow suddenly much lighter.
Simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek and uncovered head; realized
that he was shivering with the cold; and, making a great effort,
realized next that he was alone in the Bush--_and_ that he was called
upon to take immediate steps to find and succor his vanished companion.
Make an effort, accordingly, he did, though an ill-calculated and futile
one. With that wilderness of trees about him, the sheet of water cutting
him off behind, and the horror of that wild cry in his blood, he did
what any other inexperienced man would have done in similar
bewilderment: he ran about, without any sense of direction, like a
frantic child, and called loudly without ceasing the name of the guide:
"Défago! Défago! Défago!" he yelled, and the trees gave him back the
name as often as he shouted, only a little softened--"Défago! Défago!
Défago!"
He followed the trail that lay a short distance across the patches of
snow, and then lost it again where the trees grew too thickly for snow
to lie. He shouted till he was hoarse, and till the sound of his own
voice in all that unanswering and listening world began to frighten him.
His confusion increased in direct ratio to the violence of his efforts.
His distress became formidably acute, till at length his exertions
defeated their own object, and from sheer exhaustion he headed back to
the camp again. It remains a wonder that he ever found his way. It was
with great difficulty, and only after numberless false clues, that he at
last saw the white tent between the trees, and so reached safety.
Exhaustion then applied its own remedy, and he grew calmer. He made the
fire and breakfasted. Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense and
judgment into him again, and he realized that he had been behaving like
a boy. He now made another, and more successful attempt to face the
situation collectedly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to his
assistance, he decided that he must first make as thorough a search as
possible, failing success in which, he must find his way into the home
camp as best he could and bring help.
And this was what he did. Taking food, matches and rifle with him, and a
small axe to blaze the trees against his return journey, he set forth.
It was eight o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the tops of
the trees in a sky without clouds. Pinned to a stake by the fire he left
a note in case Défago returned while he was away.
This time, according to a careful plan, he took a new direction,
intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or later cut into
indications of the guide's trail; and, before he had gone a quarter of a
mile he came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow, and beside
it the light and smaller tracks of what were beyond question human
feet--the feet of Défago. The relief he at once experienced was natural,
though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple
explanation of the whole matter: these big marks had surely been left by
a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, and
uttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was
apparent. Défago, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the
point of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the wind
hours before. His excitement and disappearance were due, of course,
to--to his--
Then the impossible explanation at which he grasped faded, as common
sense showed him mercilessly that none of this was true. No guide, much
less a guide like Défago, could have acted in so irrational a way, going
off even without his rifle ...! The whole affair demanded a far more
complicated elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all--the
cry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face of horror when his
nostrils first caught the new odor; that muffled sobbing in the
darkness, and--for this, too, now came back to him dimly--the man's
original aversion for this particular bit of country....
Besides, now that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks of
a bull moose at all! Hank had explained to him the outline of a bull's
hoofs, of a cow's or calf's, too, for that matter; he had drawn them
clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were wholly different. They
were big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs.
He wondered for a moment whether bear tracks were like that. There was
no other animal he could think of, for caribou did not come so far
south at this season, and, even if they did, would leave hoof marks.
They were ominous signs--these mysterious writings left in the snow by
the unknown creature that had lured a human being away from safety--and
when he coupled them in his imagination with that haunting sound that
broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind,
distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the _threatening_ aspect of
it all. And, stooping down to examine the marks more closely, he caught
a faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odor that made him instantly
straighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.
Then his memory played him another evil trick. He suddenly recalled
those uncovered feet projecting beyond the edge of the tent, and the
body's appearance of having been dragged towards the opening; the man's
shrinking from something by the door when he woke later. The details now
beat against his trembling mind with concerted attack. They seemed to
gather in those deep spaces of the silent forest about him, where the
host of trees stood waiting, listening, watching to see what he would
do. The woods were closing round him.
With the persistence of true pluck, however, Simpson went forward,
following the tracks as best he could, smothering these ugly emotions
that sought to weaken his will. He blazed innumerable trees as he went,
ever fearful of being unable to find the way back, and calling aloud at
intervals of a few seconds the name of the guide. The dull tapping of
the axe upon the massive trunks, and the unnatural accents of his own
voice became at length sounds that he even dreaded to make, dreaded to
hear. For they drew attention without ceasing to his presence and exact
whereabouts, and if it were really the case that something was hunting
himself down in the same way that he was hunting down another--
With a strong effort, he crushed the thought out the instant it rose.
It was the beginning, he realized, of a bewilderment utterly diabolical
in kind that would speedily destroy him.
* * * * *
Although the snow was not continuous, lying merely in shallow flurries
over the more open spaces, he found no difficulty in following the
tracks for the first few miles. They went straight as a ruled line
wherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to increase in
length, till it finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutely
impossible for any ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps
they became. One of these he measured, and though he knew that "stretch"
of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was at a complete loss to
understand why he found no signs on the snow between the extreme points.
But what perplexed him even more, making him feel his vision had gone
utterly awry, was that Défago's stride increased in the same manner, and
finally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as if the great
beast had lifted him with it and carried him across these astonishing
intervals. Simpson, who was much longer in the limb, found that he could
not compass even half the stretch by taking a running jump.
And the sight of these huge tracks, running side by side, silent
evidence of a dreadful journey in which terror or madness had urged to
impossible results, was profoundly moving. It shocked him in the secret
depths of his soul. It was the most horrible thing his eyes had ever
looked upon. He began to follow them mechanically, absentmindedly
almost, ever peering over his shoulder to see if he, too, were being
followed by something with a gigantic tread.... And soon it came about
that he no longer quite realized what it was they signified--these
impressions left upon the snow by something nameless and untamed, always
accompanied by the footmarks of the little French Canadian, his guide,
his comrade, the man who had shared his tent a few hours before,
chatting, laughing, even singing by his side....
V
For a man of his years and inexperience, only a canny Scot, perhaps,
grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have preserved
even that measure of balance that this youth somehow or other did manage
to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two things he
presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him
headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of only
making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his
heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way
to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change,
so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some