The Wendigo | Page 9

of it. Yet a
rushing passionate curiosity overcame his better judgment, and his fear.
Défago turned swiftly and looked at him as though he were suddenly
about to shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open. Yet all
he said, or whispered rather, for his voice sank very low, was: "It's
nuthin'--nuthin' but what those lousy fellers believe when they've bin
hittin' the bottle too long--a sort of great animal that lives up yonder,"
he jerked his head northwards, "quick as lightning in its tracks, an'
bigger'n anything else in the Bush, an' ain't supposed to be very good to
look at--that's all!"
"A backwoods superstition--" began Simpson, moving hastily toward
the tent in order to shake off the hand of the guide that clutched his arm.
"Come, come, hurry up for God's sake, and get the lantern going! It's
time we were in bed and asleep if we're going to be up with the sun
tomorrow...."
The guide was close on his heels. "I'm coming," he answered out of the
darkness, "I'm coming." And after a slight delay he appeared with the
lantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. The
shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so,
and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole
tent trembled as though a gust of wind struck it.
The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft
balsam boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside, all was warm and cozy, but
outside the world of crowding trees pressed close about them,
marshalling their million shadows, and smothering the little tent that
stood there like a wee white shell facing the ocean of tremendous
forest.
Between the two lonely figures within, however, there pressed another
shadow that was not a shadow from the night. It was the Shadow cast
by the strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped suddenly
upon Défago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson, as he lay there,
watching the darkness through the open flap of the tent, ready to plunge
into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that unique and profound
stillness of a primeval forest when no wind stirs ... and when the night
has weight and substance that enters into the soul to bind a veil about

it.... Then sleep took him....

III
Thus, it seemed to him, at least. Yet it was true that the lap of the water,
just beyond the tent door, still beat time with his lessening pulses when
he realized that he was lying with his eyes open and that another sound
had recently introduced itself with cunning softness between the splash
and murmur of the little waves.
And, long before he understood what this sound was, it had stirred in
him the centers of pity and alarm. He listened intently, though at first in
vain, for the running blood beat all its drums too noisily in his ears. Did
it come, he wondered, from the lake, or from the woods?...
Then, suddenly, with a rush and a flutter of the heart, he knew that it
was close beside him in the tent; and, when he turned over for a better
hearing, it focused itself unmistakably not two feet away. It was a
sound of weeping; Défago upon his bed of branches was sobbing in the
darkness as though his heart would break, the blankets evidently
stuffed against his mouth to stifle it.
And his first feeling, before he could think or reflect, was the rush of a
poignant and searching tenderness. This intimate, human sound, heard
amid the desolation about them, woke pity. It was so incongruous, so
pitifully incongruous--and so vain! Tears--in this vast and cruel
wilderness: of what avail? He thought of a little child crying in
mid-Atlantic.... Then, of course, with fuller realization, and the memory
of what had gone before, came the descent of the terror upon him, and
his blood ran cold.
"Défago," he whispered quickly, "what's the matter?" He tried to make
his voice very gentle. "Are you in pain--unhappy--?" There was no
reply, but the sounds ceased abruptly. He stretched his hand out and
touched him. The body did not stir.
"Are you awake?" for it occurred to him that the man was crying in his
sleep. "Are you cold?" He noticed that his feet, which were uncovered,
projected beyond the mouth of the tent. He spread an extra fold of his
own blankets over them. The guide had slipped down in his bed, and
the branches seemed to have been dragged with him. He was afraid to
pull the body back again, for fear of waking him.
One or two tentative questions he ventured softly, but though he waited

for several