The Wendigo | Page 8

younger man's
uneasiness, was the difficulty, nay, the impossibility he felt of asking
questions, and also his complete ignorance as to the cause ...Indians,
wild animals, forest fires--all these, he knew, were wholly out of the
question. His imagination searched vigorously, but in vain....
* * * * *
Yet, somehow or other, after another long spell of smoking, talking and
roasting themselves before the great fire, the shadow that had so
suddenly invaded their peaceful camp began to shirt. Perhaps Défago's
efforts, or the return of his quiet and normal attitude accomplished this;
perhaps Simpson himself had exaggerated the affair out of all
proportion to the truth; or possibly the vigorous air of the wilderness
brought its own powers of healing. Whatever the cause, the feeling of
immediate horror seemed to have passed away as mysteriously as it had
come, for nothing occurred to feed it. Simpson began to feel that he had
permitted himself the unreasoning terror of a child. He put it down
partly to a certain subconscious excitement that this wild and immense
scenery generated in his blood, partly to the spell of solitude, and partly
to overfatigue. That pallor in the guide's face was, of course,
uncommonly hard to explain, yet it might have been due in some way
to an effect of firelight, or his own imagination ...He gave it the benefit
of the doubt; he was Scotch.
When a somewhat unordinary emotion has disappeared, the mind
always finds a dozen ways of explaining away its causes ...Simpson lit
a last pipe and tried to laugh to himself. On getting home to Scotland it
would make quite a good story. He did not realize that this laughter was
a sign that terror still lurked in the recesses of his soul--that, in fact, it
was merely one of the conventional signs by which a man, seriously
alarmed, tries to persuade himself that he is not so.
Défago, however, heard that low laughter and looked up with surprise
on his face. The two men stood, side by side, kicking the embers about
before going to bed. It was ten o'clock--a late hour for hunters to be still
awake.
"What's ticklin' yer?" he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely.
"I--I was thinking of our little toy woods at home, just at that moment,"
stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated his mind,
and startled by the question, "and comparing them to--to all this," and

he swept his arm round to indicate the Bush.
A pause followed in which neither of them said anything.
"All the same I wouldn't laugh about it, if I was you," Défago added,
looking over Simpson's shoulder into the shadows. "There's places in
there nobody won't never see into--nobody knows what lives in there
either."
"Too big--too far off?" The suggestion in the guide's manner was
immense and horrible.
Défago nodded. The expression on his face was dark. He, too, felt
uneasy. The younger man understood that in a hinterland of this size
there might well be depths of wood that would never in the life of the
world be known or trodden. The thought was not exactly the sort he
welcomed. In a loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time for
bed. But the guide lingered, tinkering with the fire, arranging the stones
needlessly, doing a dozen things that did not really need doing.
Evidently there was something he wanted to say, yet found it difficult
to "get at."
"Say, you, Boss Simpson," he began suddenly, as the last shower of
sparks went up into the air, "you don't--smell nothing, do you--nothing
pertickler, I mean?" The commonplace question, Simpson realized,
veiled a dreadfully serious thought in his mind. A shiver ran down his
back.
"Nothing but burning wood," he replied firmly, kicking again at the
embers. The sound of his own foot made him start.
"And all the evenin' you ain't smelt--nothing?" persisted the guide,
peering at him through the gloom; "nothing extrordiny, and different to
anything else you ever smelt before?"
"No, no, man; nothing at all!" he replied aggressively, half angrily.
Défago's face cleared. "That's good!" he exclaimed with evident relief.
"That's good to hear."
"Have _you?_" asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted
the question.
The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He shook his head. "I guess
not," he said, though without overwhelming conviction. "It must've
been just that song of mine that did it. It's the song they sing in lumber
camps and godforsaken places like that, when they've skeered the
Wendigo's somewhere around, doin' a bit of swift traveling.--"

"And what's the Wendigo, pray?" Simpson asked quickly, irritated
because again he could not prevent that sudden shiver of the nerves. He
knew that he was close upon the man's terror and the cause