The Wendigo

The Wendigo

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wendigo, by Algernon
Blackwood This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost
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Title: The Wendigo
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Release Date: January 31, 2004 [EBook #10897]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE WENDIGO
Algernon Blackwood
1910

I
A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year without
finding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy,
and the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective
families with the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could
suggest. Dr. Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but

he brought instead the memory of an experience which he declares was
worth all the bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of
Aberdeen, was interested in other things besides moose--amongst them
the vagaries of the human mind. This particular story, however, found
no mention in his book on Collective Hallucination for the simple
reason (so he confided once to a fellow colleague) that he himself
played too intimate a part in it to form a competent judgment of the
affair as a whole....
Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson,
his nephew, a divinity student destined for the "Wee Kirk" (then on his
first visit to Canadian backwoods), and the latter's guide, Défago.
Joseph Défago was a French "Canuck," who had strayed from his
native Province of Quebec years before, and had got caught in Rat
Portage when the Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who,
in addition to his unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore,
could also sing the old voyageur songs and tell a capital hunting yarn
into the bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular
spell which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he
loved the wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted
almost to an 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
and swore by him. He also swore at him, "jest as a pal might," and
since he had a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless, oaths,
the conversation between the two stalwart and hardy woodsmen was
often of a rather lively description. This river of expletives, however,
Hank agreed to dam a little out of respect for his old "hunting boss," Dr.
Cathcart, whom of course he addressed after the fashion of the country
as "Doc," and also because he understood that young Simpson was
already a "bit of a parson." He had, however, one objection to Défago,
and one only--which was, that the French Canadian sometimes
exhibited what Hank described as "the output of a cursed and dismal
mind," meaning apparently that he sometimes was true to type, Latin
type, and suffered fits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing
could induce him to utter speech. Défago, that is to say, was
imaginative and melancholy. And, as a rule, it was too long a spell of

"civilization" that induced the attacks, for a few days of the wilderness
invariably cured them.
This, then, was the party of four that found themselves in camp the last
week in October of that "shy moose year" 'way up in the wilderness
north of Rat Portage--a forsaken and desolate country. There was also
Punk, an Indian, who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their
hunting trips in previous years, and who acted as cook. His duty was
merely to stay in camp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks and
coffee at a few minutes' notice. He dressed in the worn-out clothes
bequeathed to him by former patrons, and, except for his coarse black
hair and dark skin, he looked in these city garments no more like a real
redskin than a stage Negro looks like a real African. For all that,
however, Punk had in him still the instincts of his dying race; his
taciturn silence and his endurance survived; also his superstition.
The party round the blazing fire that night were despondent, for a week
had passed without a single sign of recent moose discovering itself.
Défago had sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank, in bad
humor, reminded him so often that "he kep' mussing-up the fac's so,
that it was 'most all nothin' but a petered-out lie," that