IV

But sleep, in the long run, proves greater than all emotions. His

thoughts soon wandered again; he lay there, warm as toast, exceedingly

weary; the night soothed and comforted, blunting the edges of memory and

alarm. Half an hour later he was oblivious of everything in the outer

world about him.

Yet sleep, in this case, was his great enemy, concealing all approaches,

smothering the warning of his nerves.

As, sometimes, in a nightmare events crowd upon each other's heels with

a conviction of dreadfulest reality, yet some inconsistent detail

accuses the whole display of incompleteness and disguise, so the events

that now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the mind

somehow that the detail which could explain them had been overlooked in

the confusion, and that therefore they were but partly true, the rest

delusion. At the back of the sleeper's mind something remains awake,

ready to let slip the judgment. "All this is not _quite_ real; when you

wake up you'll understand."

And thus, in a way, it was with Simpson. The events, not wholly

inexplicable or incredible in themselves, yet remain for the man who saw

and heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold horror, because the

little piece that might have made the puzzle clear lay concealed or

overlooked.

So far as he can recall, it was a violent movement, running downwards

through the tent towards the door, that first woke him and made him

aware that his companion was sitting bolt upright beside him--quivering.

Hours must have passed, for it was the pale gleam of the dawn that

revealed his outline against the canvas. This time the man was not

crying; he was quaking like a leaf; the trembling he felt plainly

through the blankets down the entire length of his own body. Défago had

huddled down against him for protection, shrinking away from something

that apparently concealed itself near the door flaps of the little tent.

Simpson thereupon called out in a loud voice some question or other--in

the first bewilderment of waking he does not remember exactly what--and

the man made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare lay

horribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult. At first,

indeed, he was not sure where he was--whether in one of the earlier

camps, or at home in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense of confusion was

very troubling.

And next--almost simultaneous with his waking, it seemed--the profound

stillness of the dawn outside was shattered by a most uncommon sound. It

came without warning, or audible approach; and it was unspeakably

dreadful. It was a voice, Simpson declares, possibly a human voice;

hoarse yet plaintive--a soft, roaring voice close outside the tent,

overhead rather than upon the ground, of immense volume, while in some

strange way most penetratingly and seductively sweet. It rang out, too,

in three separate and distinct notes, or cries, that bore in some odd

fashion a resemblance, farfetched yet recognizable, to the name of the

guide: "_Dé-fa-go!_"

The student admits he is unable to describe it quite intelligently, for

it was unlike any sound he had ever heard in his life, and combined a

blending of such contrary qualities. "A sort of windy, crying voice," he

calls it, "as of something lonely and untamed, wild and of abominable

power...."

And, even before it ceased, dropping back into the great gulfs of

silence, the guide beside him had sprung to his feet with an answering

though unintelligible cry. He blundered against the tent pole with

violence, shaking the whole structure, spreading his arms out

frantically for more room, and kicking his legs impetuously free of the

clinging blankets. For a second, perhaps two, he stood upright by the

door, his outline dark against the pallor of the dawn; then, with a

furious, rushing speed, before his companion could move a hand to stop

him, he shot with a plunge through the flaps of canvas--and was gone.

And as he went--so astonishingly fast that the voice could actually be

heard dying in the distance--he called aloud in tones of anguished

terror that at the same time held something strangely like the frenzied

exultation of delight--

"Oh! oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire! Oh! oh! This height

and fiery speed!"

And then the distance quickly buried it, and the deep silence of very

early morning descended upon the forest as before.

It had all come about with such rapidity that, but for the evidence of

the empty bed beside him, Simpson could almost have believed it to have

been the memory of a nightmare carried over from sleep. He still felt

the warm pressure of that vanished body against his side; there lay the

twisted blankets in a heap; the very tent yet trembled with the

vehemence of the impetuous departure. The strange words rang in his

ears, as though he still heard them in the distance--wild language of a

suddenly stricken mind. Moreover, it was not only the senses of sight

and hearing that reported uncommon things to his brain, for even while

the man cried and ran, he had become aware that a strange perfume, faint

yet pungent, pervaded the interior of the tent. And it was at this

point, it seems, brought to himself by the consciousness that his

nostrils were taking this distressing odor down into his throat, that he

found his courage, sprang quickly to his feet--and went out.

The grey light of dawn that dropped, cold and glimmering, between the

trees revealed the scene tolerably well. There stood the tent behind

him, soaked with dew; the dark ashes of the fire, still warm; the lake,

white beneath a coating of mist, the islands rising darkly out of it

like objects packed in wool; and patches of snow beyond among the

clearer spaces of the Bush--everything cold, still, waiting for the sun.

But nowhere a sign of the vanished guide--still, doubtless, flying at

frantic speed through the frozen woods. There was not even the sound of

disappearing footsteps, nor the echoes of the dying voice. He had

gone--utterly.

There was nothing; nothing but the sense of his recent presence, so

strongly left behind about the camp; _and_--this penetrating,

all-pervading odor.

And even this was now rapidly disappearing in its turn. In spite of his

exceeding mental perturbation, Simpson struggled hard to detect its

nature, and define it, but the ascertaining of an elusive scent, not

recognized subconsciously and at once, is a very subtle operation of

the mind. And he failed. It was gone before he could properly seize or

name it. Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult,

for it was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid rather, not unlike the odor

of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not wholly unpleasing, with

something almost sweet in it that reminded him of the scent of decaying

garden leaves, earth, and the myriad, nameless perfumes that make up the

odor of a big forest. Yet the "odor of lions" is the phrase with which

he usually sums it all up.

Then--it was wholly gone, and he found himself standing by the ashes of

the fire in a state of amazement and stupid terror that left him the

helpless prey of anything that chose to happen. Had a muskrat poked its

pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled in that instant down

the bark of a tree, he would most likely have collapsed without more ado

and fainted. For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a

great Outer Horror ... and his scattered powers had not as yet had time

to collect themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-control.

Nothing did happen, however. A great kiss of wind ran softly through the

awakening forest, and a few maple leaves here and there rustled

tremblingly to earth. The sky seemed to grow suddenly much lighter.

Simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek and uncovered head; realized

that he was shivering with the cold; and, making a great effort,

realized next that he was alone in the Bush--_and_ that he was called

upon to take immediate steps to find and succor his vanished companion.

Make an effort, accordingly, he did, though an ill-calculated and futile

one. With that wilderness of trees about him, the sheet of water cutting

him off behind, and the horror of that wild cry in his blood, he did

what any other inexperienced man would have done in similar

bewilderment: he ran about, without any sense of direction, like a

frantic child, and called loudly without ceasing the name of the guide:

"Défago! Défago! Défago!" he yelled, and the trees gave him back the

name as often as he shouted, only a little softened--"Défago! Défago!

Défago!"

He followed the trail that lay a short distance across the patches of

snow, and then lost it again where the trees grew too thickly for snow

to lie. He shouted till he was hoarse, and till the sound of his own

voice in all that unanswering and listening world began to frighten him.

His confusion increased in direct ratio to the violence of his efforts.

His distress became formidably acute, till at length his exertions

defeated their own object, and from sheer exhaustion he headed back to

the camp again. It remains a wonder that he ever found his way. It was

with great difficulty, and only after numberless false clues, that he at

last saw the white tent between the trees, and so reached safety.

Exhaustion then applied its own remedy, and he grew calmer. He made the

fire and breakfasted. Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense and

judgment into him again, and he realized that he had been behaving like

a boy. He now made another, and more successful attempt to face the

situation collectedly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to his

assistance, he decided that he must first make as thorough a search as

possible, failing success in which, he must find his way into the home

camp as best he could and bring help.

And this was what he did. Taking food, matches and rifle with him, and a

small axe to blaze the trees against his return journey, he set forth.

It was eight o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the tops of

the trees in a sky without clouds. Pinned to a stake by the fire he left

a note in case Défago returned while he was away.

This time, according to a careful plan, he took a new direction,

intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or later cut into

indications of the guide's trail; and, before he had gone a quarter of a

mile he came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow, and beside

it the light and smaller tracks of what were beyond question human

feet--the feet of Défago. The relief he at once experienced was natural,

though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple

explanation of the whole matter: these big marks had surely been left by

a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, and

uttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was

apparent. Défago, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the

point of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the wind

hours before. His excitement and disappearance were due, of course,

to--to his--

Then the impossible explanation at which he grasped faded, as common

sense showed him mercilessly that none of this was true. No guide, much

less a guide like Défago, could have acted in so irrational a way, going

off even without his rifle ...! The whole affair demanded a far more

complicated elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all--the

cry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face of horror when his

nostrils first caught the new odor; that muffled sobbing in the

darkness, and--for this, too, now came back to him dimly--the man's

original aversion for this particular bit of country....

Besides, now that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks of

a bull moose at all! Hank had explained to him the outline of a bull's

hoofs, of a cow's or calf's, too, for that matter; he had drawn them

clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were wholly different. They

were big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs.

He wondered for a moment whether bear tracks were like that. There was

no other animal he could think of, for caribou did not come so far

south at this season, and, even if they did, would leave hoof marks.

They were ominous signs--these mysterious writings left in the snow by

the unknown creature that had lured a human being away from safety--and

when he coupled them in his imagination with that haunting sound that

broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind,

distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the _threatening_ aspect of

it all. And, stooping down to examine the marks more closely, he caught

a faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odor that made him instantly

straighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.

Then his memory played him another evil trick. He suddenly recalled

those uncovered feet projecting beyond the edge of the tent, and the

body's appearance of having been dragged towards the opening; the man's

shrinking from something by the door when he woke later. The details now

beat against his trembling mind with concerted attack. They seemed to

gather in those deep spaces of the silent forest about him, where the

host of trees stood waiting, listening, watching to see what he would

do. The woods were closing round him.

With the persistence of true pluck, however, Simpson went forward,

following the tracks as best he could, smothering these ugly emotions

that sought to weaken his will. He blazed innumerable trees as he went,

ever fearful of being unable to find the way back, and calling aloud at

intervals of a few seconds the name of the guide. The dull tapping of

the axe upon the massive trunks, and the unnatural accents of his own

voice became at length sounds that he even dreaded to make, dreaded to

hear. For they drew attention without ceasing to his presence and exact

whereabouts, and if it were really the case that something was hunting

himself down in the same way that he was hunting down another--

With a strong effort, he crushed the thought out the instant it rose.

It was the beginning, he realized, of a bewilderment utterly diabolical

in kind that would speedily destroy him.

* * * * *

Although the snow was not continuous, lying merely in shallow flurries

over the more open spaces, he found no difficulty in following the

tracks for the first few miles. They went straight as a ruled line

wherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to increase in

length, till it finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutely

impossible for any ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps

they became. One of these he measured, and though he knew that "stretch"

of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was at a complete loss to

understand why he found no signs on the snow between the extreme points.

But what perplexed him even more, making him feel his vision had gone

utterly awry, was that Défago's stride increased in the same manner, and

finally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as if the great

beast had lifted him with it and carried him across these astonishing

intervals. Simpson, who was much longer in the limb, found that he could

not compass even half the stretch by taking a running jump.

And the sight of these huge tracks, running side by side, silent

evidence of a dreadful journey in which terror or madness had urged to

impossible results, was profoundly moving. It shocked him in the secret

depths of his soul. It was the most horrible thing his eyes had ever

looked upon. He began to follow them mechanically, absentmindedly

almost, ever peering over his shoulder to see if he, too, were being

followed by something with a gigantic tread.... And soon it came about

that he no longer quite realized what it was they signified--these

impressions left upon the snow by something nameless and untamed, always

accompanied by the footmarks of the little French Canadian, his guide,

his comrade, the man who had shared his tent a few hours before,

chatting, laughing, even singing by his side....

V

For a man of his years and inexperience, only a canny Scot, perhaps,

grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have preserved

even that measure of balance that this youth somehow or other did manage

to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two things he

presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him

headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of only

making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his

heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way

to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change,

so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some

undecipherable manner--appalling.

It was in the bigger tracks he first noticed this, and for a long time

he could not quite believe his eyes. Was it the blown leaves that

produced odd effects of light and shade, or that the dry snow, drifting

like finely ground rice about the edges, cast shadows and high lights?

Or was it actually the fact that the great marks had become faintly

colored? For round about the deep, plunging holes of the animal there

now appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more like an effect of

light than of anything that dyed the substance of the snow itself. Every

mark had it, and had it increasingly--this indistinct fiery tinge that

painted a new touch of ghastliness into the picture.

But when, wholly unable to explain or to credit it, he turned his

attention to the other tracks to discover if they, too, bore similar

witness, he noticed that these had meanwhile undergone a change that was

infinitely worse, and charged with far more horrible suggestion. For, in

the last hundred yards or so, he saw that they had grown gradually into

the semblance of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the change had come

about, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see where the change first

began. The result, however, was beyond question. Smaller, neater, more

cleanly modeled, they formed now an exact and careful duplicate of the

larger tracks beside them. The feet that produced them had, therefore,

also changed. And something in his mind reared up with loathing and with

terror as he saw it.

Simpson, for the first time, hesitated; then, ashamed of his alarm and

indecision, took a few hurried steps ahead; the next instant stopped

dead in his tracks. Immediately in front of him all signs of the trail

ceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for a hundred

yards and more, he searched in vain for the least indication of their

continuance. There was--nothing.

The trees were very thick just there, big trees all of them, spruce,

cedar, hemlock; there was no underbrush. He stood, looking about him,

all distraught; bereft of any power of judgment. Then he set to work to

search again, and again, and yet again, but always with the same result:

_nothing_. The feet that printed the surface of the snow thus far had

now, apparently, left the ground!

And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip of

terror laid its most nicely calculated lash about his heart. It dropped

with deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving

him. He had been secretly dreading all the time that it would come--and

come it did.

Far overhead, muted by great height and distance, strangely thinned and

wailing, he heard the crying voice of Défago, the guide.

The sound dropped upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an effect

of dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stood

motionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, then

staggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganized

hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the

most shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so that

his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden

draught.

"Oh! oh! This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of

fire ...!" ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this

voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called--then silence through all

the listening wilderness of trees.

And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himself

running wildly to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots and

boulders, and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after

the Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion with which

experience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half-deranged,

picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and

heart and soul. For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him in

that far voice--the Power of untamed Distance--the Enticement of the

Desolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the pains of

someone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust and

travail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of Défago, eternally

hunted, driven and pursued across the skiey vastness of those ancient

forests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his thoughts ...

It seemed ages before he could find anything in the chaos of his

disorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for a

moment, and think ...

The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling brought no response;

the inscrutable forces of the Wild had summoned their victim beyond

recall--and held him fast.

* * * * *

Yet he searched and called, it seems, for hours afterwards, for it was

late in the afternoon when at length he decided to abandon a useless

pursuit and return to his camp on the shores of Fifty Island Water. Even

then he went with reluctance, that crying voice still echoing in his

ears. With difficulty he found his rifle and the homeward trail. The

concentration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees, and a biting

hunger that gnawed, helped to keep his mind steady. Otherwise, he

admits, the temporary aberration he had suffered might have been

prolonged to the point of positive disaster. Gradually the ballast

shifted back again, and he regained something that approached his normal

equilibrium.

But for all that the journey through the gathering dusk was miserably

haunted. He heard innumerable following footsteps; voices that laughed

and whispered; and saw figures crouching behind trees and boulders,

making signs to one another for a concerted attack the moment he had

passed. The creeping murmur of the wind made him start and listen. He

went stealthily, trying to hide where possible, and making as little

sound as he could. The shadows of the woods, hitherto protective or

covering merely, had now become menacing, challenging; and the pageantry

in his frightened mind masked a host of possibilities that were all the

more ominous for being obscure. The presentiment of a nameless doom

lurked ill-concealed behind every detail of what had happened.

It was really admirable how he emerged victor in the end; men of riper

powers and experience might have come through the ordeal with less

success. He had himself tolerably well in hand, all things considered,

and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of the

question and traveling an unknown trail in the darkness equally

impracticable, he sat up the whole of that night, rifle in hand, before

a fire he never for a single moment allowed to die down. The severity of

the haunted vigil marked his soul for life; but it was successfully

accomplished; and with the very first signs of dawn he set forth upon

the long return journey to the home camp to get help. As before, he left

a written note to explain his absence, and to indicate where he had left

a plentiful _cache_ of food and matches--though he had no expectation

that any human hands would find them!

How Simpson found his way alone by the lake and forest might well make a

story in itself, for to hear him tell it is to _know_ the passionate

loneliness of soul that a man can feel when the Wilderness holds him in

the hollow of its illimitable hand--and laughs. It is also to admire his

indomitable pluck.

He claims no skill, declaring that he followed the almost invisible

trail mechanically, and without thinking. And this, doubtless, is the

truth. He relied upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which is

instinct. Perhaps, too, some sense of orientation, known to animals and

primitive men, may have helped as well, for through all that tangled

region he succeeded in reaching the exact spot where Défago had hidden

the canoe nearly three days before with the remark, "Strike doo west

across the lake into the sun to find the camp."

There was not much sun left to guide him, but he used his compass to the

best of his ability, embarking in the frail craft for the last twelve

miles of his journey with a sensation of immense relief that the forest

was at last behind him. And, fortunately, the water was calm; he took

his line across the center of the lake instead of coasting round the

shores for another twenty miles. Fortunately, too, the other hunters

were back. The light of their fires furnished a steering point without

which he might have searched all night long for the actual position of

the camp.

It was close upon midnight all the same when his canoe grated on the

sandy cove, and Hank, Punk and his uncle, disturbed in their sleep by

his cries, ran quickly down and helped a very exhausted and broken

specimen of Scotch humanity over the rocks toward a dying fire.