The Wendigo | Page 4

he possessed other senses that darkness could not mute. He
listened--then sniffed the air. Motionless as a hemlock stem he stood
there. After five minutes again he lifted his head and sniffed, and yet
once again. A tingling of the wonderful nerves that betrayed itself by
no outer sign, ran through him as he tasted the keen air. Then, merging
his figure into the surrounding blackness in a way that only wild men
and animals understand, he turned, still moving like a shadow, and
went stealthily back to his lean-to and his bed.
And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirred
gently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising among the far
ridges of the country beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from the
direction in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleeping camp
with a faint and sighing murmur through the tops of the big trees that
was almost too delicate to be audible. With it, down the desert paths of
night, though too faint, too high even for the Indian's hair-like nerves,
there passed a curious, thin odor, strangely disquieting, an odor of
something that seemed unfamiliar--utterly unknown.
The French Canadian and the man of Indian blood each stirred uneasily
in his sleep just about this time, though neither of them woke. Then the
ghost of that unforgettably strange odor passed away and was lost
among the leagues of tenantless forest beyond.

II
In the morning the camp was astir before the sun. There had been a
light fall of snow during the night and the air was sharp. Punk had done
his duty betimes, for the odors of coffee and fried bacon reached every

tent. All were in good spirits.
"Wind's shifted!" cried Hank vigorously, watching Simpson and his
guide already loading the small canoe. "It's across the lake--dead right
for you fellers. And the snow'll make bully trails! If there's any moose
mussing around up thar, they'll not get so much as a tail-end scent of
you with the wind as it is. Good luck, Monsieur Défago!" he added,
facetiously giving the name its French pronunciation for once, "_bonne
chance!_"
Défago returned the good wishes, apparently in the best of spirits, the
silent mood gone. Before eight o'clock old Punk had the camp to
himself, Cathcart and Hank were far along the trail that led westwards,
while the canoe that carried Défago and Simpson, with silk tent and
grub for 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 topped
the wooded ridges and blazed with a luxurious warmth upon the world
of lake and forest below; loons flew skimming through the sparkling
spray that the wind lifted; divers shook their dripping heads to the sun
and popped smartly out of sight again; and as far as eye could reach
rose the leagues of endless, crowding Bush, desolate in its lonely sweep
and grandeur, untrodden by foot of man, and stretching its mighty and
unbroken carpet right up to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay.
Simpson, who saw it all for the first time as he paddled hard in the
bows of the dancing canoe, was enchanted by its austere beauty. His
heart drank in the sense of freedom and great spaces just as his lungs
drank in the cool and perfumed wind. Behind him in the stern seat,
singing fragments of his native chanties, Défago steered the craft of
birch bark like a thing of life, answering cheerfully all his companion's
questions. Both were gay and light-hearted. On such occasions men
lose the superficial, worldly distinctions; they become human beings
working together for a common end. Simpson, the employer, and
Défago the employed, among these primitive forces, were simply--two
men, the "guider" and the "guided." Superior knowledge, of course,
assumed control, and the younger man fell without a second thought
into the quasi-subordinate position. He never dreamed of objecting
when Défago dropped the "Mr.," and addressed him as "Say, Simpson,"
or "Simpson, boss," which was invariably the case before they reached

the farther 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 time he
had seen any country but his own and little Switzerland--the huge scale
of things somewhat bewildered him. It was one thing, he realized, to
hear about primeval forests, but quite another to see them. While to
dwell in them and seek acquaintance with their wild life was, again, an
initiation that no