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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 shift. Perhaps Défagos 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 guides 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 oclock a late hour for hunters to be still awake.
Whats ticklin yer? he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely.
II 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 wouldnt laugh about it, if I was you, Défago added, looking over Simpsons shoulder into the shadows. Theres places in there nobody wont never see into nobody knows what lives in there either.
Too big too far off? The suggestion in the guides 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 dont 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 aint 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.
Défagos face cleared. Thats good! he exclaimed with evident relief. Thats 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 mustve been just that song of mine that did it. Its the song they sing in lumber camps and godforsaken places like that, when theyre skeered the Wendigos somewhere around, doin a bit of swift traveling.
And whats 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 mans terror and the cause 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: Its nuthin nuthin but what those lousy fellers believe when theyve 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 biggern anything else in the Bush, an aint supposed to be very good to look at thats 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 Gods sake, and get the lantern going! Its time we were in bed and asleep if were going to be up with the sun tomorrow
The guide was close on his heels. Im coming, he answered out of the darkness, Im 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.