The Wendigo | Page 7

filled his own pipe, while the
Canadian, nothing loth, sent his light voice across the lake in one of
those plaintive, almost melancholy chanties with which lumbermen and
trappers lessen the burden of their labor. There was an appealing and
romantic flavor about it, something that recalled the atmosphere of the
old pioneer days when Indians and wilderness were leagued together,
battles frequent, and the Old Country farther off than it is today. The
sound traveled pleasantly over the water, but the forest at their backs
seemed to swallow it down with a single gulp that permitted neither
echo nor resonance.
It was in the middle of the third verse that Simpson noticed something
unusual--something that brought his thoughts back with a rush from
faraway scenes. A curious change had come into the man's voice. Even
before he knew what it was, uneasiness caught him, and looking up
quickly, he saw that Défago, though still singing, was peering about
him into the Bush, as though he heard or saw something. His voice
grew fainter--dropped to a hush--then ceased altogether. The same
instant, with a movement amazingly alert, he started to his feet and
stood upright--sniffing the air. Like a dog scenting game, he drew the
air into his nostrils in short, sharp breaths, turning quickly as he did so
in all directions, and finally "pointing" down the lake shore, eastwards.
It was a performance unpleasantly suggestive and at the same time
singularly dramatic. Simpson's heart fluttered disagreeably as he
watched it.
"Lord, man! How you made me jump!" he exclaimed, on his feet
beside him the same instant, and peering over his shoulder into the sea
of darkness. "What's up? Are you frightened--?"
Even before the question was out of his mouth he knew it was foolish,
for any man with a pair of eyes in his head could see that the Canadian
had turned white down to his very gills. Not even sunburn and the glare
of the fire could hide that.
The student felt himself trembling a little, weakish in the knees.
"What's up?" he repeated quickly. "D'you smell moose? Or anything
queer, anything--wrong?" He lowered his voice instinctively.
The forest pressed round them with its encircling wall; the nearer tree

stems gleamed like bronze in the firelight; beyond that--blackness, and,
so far as he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them a passing
puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softly down
again without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as if a million
invisible causes had combined just to produce that single visible effect.
Other life pulsed about them--and was gone.
Défago turned abruptly; the livid hue of his face had turned to a dirty
grey.
"I never said I heered--or smelt--nuthin'," he said slowly and
emphatically, in an oddly altered voice that conveyed somehow a touch
of defiance. "I was only--takin' a look round--so to speak. It's always a
mistake to be too previous with yer questions." Then he added suddenly
with obvious effort, in his more natural voice, "Have you got the
matches, Boss Simpson?" and proceeded to light the pipe he had half
filled just before he began to sing.
Without speaking another word they sat down again by the fire. Défago
changing his side so that he could face the direction the wind came
from. For even a tenderfoot could tell that. Défago changed his position
in order to hear and smell--all there was to be heard and smelt. And,
since he now faced the lake with his back to the trees it was evidently
nothing in the forest that had sent so strange and sudden a warning to
his marvelously trained nerves.
"Guess now I don't feel like singing any," he explained presently of his
own accord. "That song kinder brings back memories that's
troublesome to me; I never oughter've begun it. It sets me on t'
imagining things, see?"
Clearly the man was still fighting with some profoundly moving
emotion. He wished to excuse himself in the eyes of the other. But the
explanation, in that it was only a part of the truth, was a lie, and he
knew perfectly well that Simpson was not deceived by it. For nothing
could explain away the livid terror that had dropped over his face while
he stood there sniffing the air. And nothing--no amount of blazing fire,
or chatting on ordinary subjects--could make that camp exactly as it
had been before. The shadow of an unknown horror, naked if
unguessed, that had flashed for an instant in the face and gestures of the
guide, had also communicated itself, vaguely and therefore more
potently, to his companion. The guide's visible efforts to dissemble the

truth only made things worse. Moreover, to add to the