Dr. Creepen's Dungeon - S5 Ep264: Episode 264: The Wendigo

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Use the promo code SUPERBAD for 10% off your t-shirt! https://dr-creepens-vault.creator-spring.com/listing/the-devil-is-in-the-detail Today’s terrifying tale of terror is the classic ‘The Wendigo’, an old-school work work by the wonderful Algernon Blackwood, freely available in the public domain and read here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10897/10897-h/10897

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Welcome to Dr. Creepin's Dungeon. Wendigo's fascinators because they embody the primal fear of hunger, isolation and losing our humanity. Routed in Ancolkian folklore, these gaunt ravenous creatures are said to be born from cannibalism in the frozen wilderness. Humans transformed into monsters by insatiable greed and desperation. The legend speaks to the terror of the winter wilds, where survival hangs by a threat and morality can freeze away with the war. through the fire. The Wendigo is both a supernatural predator and a grim reminder of what we might become when the line between man and beast shatters, as we shall see in tonight's classic feature-length

story. Now, as ever before we begin, a word of caution. Tonight's tale may contain strong language as well as descriptions of violence and horrific imagery. That sounds like your kind of thing. Then let's begin. The Wendigo, by Orgonon Blackwood. Part 1. A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year without finding so much as a fresh trail, for the moose were uncommonly shy, and the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective families with the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr. Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy, but he brought instead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all the bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart of Aberdeen was interested in other things

besides moves, amongst them the vagaries of the human minds. This particular story, however, and no mention in his book on collective hallucination for the simple reason, so he confided once to a fellow colleague, and he himself played too intimate a part in it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole. Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson, his nephew, a divinity student destined for the Wee Kirk, then on his first visit to Canadian backwards, and the latter's guide, De Fargo. Joseph DeFargo was a French Canuck who had strayed from his native province of Quebec years before, and had got caught in rat portage when the Canadian Pacific Railway was a building,

a man who, in addition to his unparalleled knowledge of woodcraft and bushlaw, could also sing the old Voyager songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into the bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spell which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures. He loved the wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to an obsession. The life of the backwards fascinated him, whence came doubtless his surpassing efficiency in dealing with their mysteries. On this particular expedition he was Hank's choice.

Hank knew him and swore by him, while he also swore at him, just as a pal mite. And since he had a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless oaths, the conversation between the two stalwart and Hardy Woodsmen was often of a rather lively description. Through this river of expletives, however, Hank agreed to damn a little out of respect for his old hunting boss, Dr. Cathcart, whom, of course, he addressed after the fashion of the country as Doc, and also because he understood that Young Simpson was already a bit of a person. yet however one objection to defargo and one only which was that the french canadian sometimes exhibited what hank described as the output of a cursed and dismal mind meaning apparently that he was sometimes true to type Latin type and suffered fits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing could induce him to utter speech defargo that is to say was imaginative and melancholy and as a rule he was too long a spell of civilization that induced the attacks, for a few days of the wilderness

invariably cured them. This then was the party of four that found themselves in camp the last Wienicke in October of that shy Moose year, way up in the wilderness north of Radportage, a forsaken and desolate country. There was also punk, an Indian who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their hunting trips in previous years, and who acted as cook. His duty was merely to stay in camp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks and coffee at a few minutes notice. He dressed in worn-out clothes, bequeathed to him by former patrons, and, except for his coarse black hair and dark skin. For all that, however, punk had in him still the instincts of his dying race. His taciturned silence and his endurance survived. Also his superstition.

The party round the blazing fire that night were despondent, for a week had passed without a single sign of recent moose discovering itself. De Fargo had sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank, in bad humor, reminded him so often that he kept messing up the facts, so that was most all nothing but a peter-dow lie, that the Frenchman had finally subsided into a sulky silence which nothing seemed likely to break. Dr. Cathcart and his nephew were fairly done after an exhausting day. Punk was washing up the dishes, grunting, to himself under the lean-to of branches, where he later also slept. No one troubled to stir the slowly dying fire.

Overhead the stars were brilliant in a sky, quite wintry, and there was so little wind that ice was already forming stealthily along the shores of the lake behind them. The silence of the vast listening forest stomp forward and enveloped them. Hank broke in suddenly with his nasal voice. I'm in favour of breaking new ground tomorrow dark. He observed with energy, looking across at his employer. We don't stand a dead Daigo's chance around here. Agreed, said Cathcart.

Always a man of few words. Think the idea's good. Sure, Pop, it's good. Hank resumed with confidence. Suppose now, you and I strike west. I've gone a lake way for a change. None of us ain't touched that quiet bit of land yet. I'm with you.

"'And you, DeFago, take Mr. Simpson along in the small canoe, "'skip across the lake, portage over into fifty island water, "'take a good squint down that northern shore. "'The moose yachted there like, hell, last year, "'and for all we know, they may be doing it again this year, just despite us.' "'DeFargo, keeping his eyes on the fire, "'said nothing by way of reply. "'He was still offended, possibly, about his interrupted story.

"'No one's been up that way this year, I'll lay my bottom dar to that, Hank added, with emphasis, as though he had a reason for knowing. He looked over at his partner sharply. Better take the little silk-tanned and stay away a couple of nights, he concluded, as though the matter were definitely settled. For Hank was recognized as general organiser of the hunt, and in charge of the party. It was obvious to anyone that Deer Fargo did not jump at the plan, but his silence seemed to convey something more than ordinary disapproval, and across his sensitive dark face they passed a curious

expression, like a flash of firelight, not so quickly, however, that the three men had not had time to catch it. Yeah, he fun for some reason, I thought. Simpson said afterwards in the tent he shared with his uncle. Dr. Cathcart made no immediate reply, although the look had interested him enough at the time for him to make a mental note of it. The expression had caused him a passing uneasiness He could not quite account for at the moment But Hank, of course, had been the first to notice it

And the odd thing was that, instead of becoming explosive Orangrier over the other's reluctance He at once began to humour him a bit But there ain't no special reason Where no one's been up there this year He said with a perceptible hush in his tone Not the reason you mean anyway Last year was the fires that kept fog out

and this year I guess I guess it just happened so that's all his man who was clearly meant to be encouraging Joseph Defargo raised his eyes a moment and dropped them again a breath of wind stole out of the forest and stirred the embers into a passing blaze

Dr. Cathgard again noticed the expression in the guide's face and again he did not like it but this time the nature of the look betrayed itself in those eyes for an instant he caught the gleam of a man scared to his very soul. He disquieted him more than he cared to admit. Bad Indians up that way, he asked, with a laugh to ease matters a little,

while Simpson, too sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, moved off to bed with a prodigious yawn. Or anything wrong with the country? He added, when his nephew was out of hearing. Hank met his eye with something less than his usual frankness. "'He's just scared,' he replied, good-humidly. "'Skeared stiff about some old fairy tale. "'That's all, ain't it, all part?'

"'And he gave Defargo a friendly kick on the moccas and foot that lay nearest the fire. "'DeFargo looked up quickly. "'That's from an interrupted reverie. "'A reverie, however, that had not prevented his seeing all that went on about him.' "'Skeared nothing,' he answered, with a flush of defiance. "'There's nothing in the bush. that can scare Joseph Defargo, don't you forget it.

And the natural energy with which he spoke made it impossible to know whether he told the whole truth or only part of it. Hank turned towards the doctor. He was just going to add something when he stopped abruptly and looked her out.

The sound closed behind them and the darkness made all three starts. It was old punk who'd moved up from his lean to while they talked and now stood there just beyond the circle of firelight, listening.

"'Another time, Doc,' Hank whispered with a wink, "'when the gallery ain't stepped down into the stalls. "'He sprang to his feet, he slapped the Indian on the back and cried noisely. "'Come up to the fire and warm your dirty skin a bit. "'He dragged him towards the blaze and threw more wood on. "'And that was a mighty good feed you gave us an hour or two back,' "'he continued heartily, as though to set the man's thoughts on another scent. "'And it ain't Christian to let you stand.

out there freezing your old soul off while we're all getting good and toasted punk moved in and warmed his feet smiling darkly at the other's volubility which he only half understood but saying nothing and presently dr kathgat seeing that further conversation was impossible followed his nephew's example and moved off to the tent leaving the three men smoking over the now blazing fire it's not easy to undress in a small tent without waking one's companion and can't Kathgut, hardened and warm-blooded as he was, in spite of his fifty-odd years, did what Hank would have described as considerable of his twilight in the open. He noticed during the process that punk had meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, and Hank and Defargo were at hammer-and-tongs,

or rather hammer an anvil, the French-Canadian being the anvil. It was all very like the conventional stage picture of Western melodrama, the fire lighting up their faces with patches of alternate red and black. DeFargo and slouch hat and moccasins in the part of the Badlands villain, Hank, open-faced and hatless, with that reckless fling of his shoulders, the honest

and deceived hero. An old punk, eaves dropping in the background, supplying the atmosphere of mystery. The doctor smiled as he noticed the details, but at the same time something deep within him, he hardly knew what, shrank a little,

as though an almost imperceptible breath of warning had touched the surface of his soul, and was gone again before he could seize it. Probably it was traceable to that scared expression he'd seen in the eyes of Defargo. Probably, for this hint of fugitive emotion otherwise escaped his usually so keen analysis. Defargo, he was vaguely aware, might cause trouble somehow. He was not as steadier guide as Hank, for instance, but further than that he couldn't get. We watched the men a moment longer before diving into the stuffy tent where Simpson already slept soundly. Or Hank he saw was swearing like a madman in a New York saloon, but it was the swearing of affection.

The ridiculous oaths flew freely now that the cause of their obstruction was asleep. Presently he put his arm almost tenderly upon his comrade's shoulder, and they moved off together into the shadows where their tent stood faintly glimmering. punk too a moment later followed their example and disappeared between his odorous blankets in the opposite direction lord de kathcart then likewise turned in weariness and sleep still fighting in his mind with an obscure curiosity to know what it was that had scared de fargo about the country up fifty island waterway wondering too why punk's presence had prevented the completion of what hank had to say and then sleep overtook him he would know to-morrow Hank would tell him the story while they trudged after the elusive moose. Deep silence fell about the little camp, planted there so audacelessly in the jaws of the wilderness. The lake gleam like a sheet of black glass beneath the stars. The cold air pricked, in the draughts of night

that poured their silent tide from the depths of the forest with messages from distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze, there lay already the faint, bleak odours of coming winter. White men, with their dull scent, might never have defined them. The fragrance of the wood fire would have concealed from them these almost electrical hints of moss and bark and hardening swamp a hundred miles away. Even Hank and Defargo, subtly in league with the soul of the woods as they were, would probably have spread their delicate nostrils in vain. But an hour later, when all slept like the dead, old punk crept from his blankets and went down to the shore. shore of the lake like a shadow, silently, as only Indian blood can move. He raised his head and looked

about him. The thick darkness rendered sight of smaller veil, but, like the animals, 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 But once again, the 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. 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 trees that was almost too delicate to be audible. With it, down the desert paths of night,

no too faint, too high even for the Indian's hair-like nerves, they passed a curious, thin odour, 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. And the ghost of that unforgettably strange odour passed away and was lost among the leaves of tenantless forest beyond. Bar two.

In the morning the camp was astir before the sun. There been a light fall of snow during the night and the air was sharp. punk had done his duties for the odours of coffee and fried bacon reached every tent all were in good spirits when shifted cried hank vigorously watching simpson and his guide already loading the small canoe it's cross the lake a dead ride for you fellows and the snow will make bully trails if there's any moose muslin around up there then i'll get so much as a tail-end scent of you with the wind as it is good luck monsieur defargo he added facetiously giving the name its French pronunciation for once. Long chance. De Fargo 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. Cathgard and Hank were far along the trail that led westwards, while the canoe that carried DeFarga 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 the 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 chants, Defargo steered at the craft of birch bark like a thing of life, answering cheerfully all his companion's questions. Both were happy 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 Defargo the employed. Among these primitive forces, there 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 DeFargo, had dropped the mister 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 headwind. He only laughed and liked it, and then ceased to notice it at all.

The list divinity student was a young man of parts and character, though as yet, of course, untravelled, 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 wildlife was again an initiation that no intelligent man could undergo without a certain shifting of personal values hitherto held and sacred. Simpson knew the first indication of this emotion, when he held the new 303 rifle in his hands and looked along its pair of fortless, gleaming barrels.

Three days' journey to their headquarters by Lake and Portage had carried the process to stage further, and now that he was about to plunge beyond even the fringe of wilderness, where they were camped into the virgin heart of uninhabited regions as vast as Europe itself, the true nature of the situation stole upon him, with an effect of delight and awe that his imagination was fully capable of appreciating. that it was Defargo and himself against a multitude, well, at least against a titan. The bleak splendors of these remote and lonely forests rather overwhelmed him with a sense of his own littleness. That stern quality of the tangled backwards which can only be described as merciless and terrible rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon and revealed itself.

He understood the silent morning. He realized his own utter helplessness. Only DeFargo, as a symbol of a distant civilization where man was master, stood between him and a pitiless death by exhaustion and starvation. It was thrilling to him, therefore, to watch DeFargo, turn over the canoe upon the shore, pack the paddles carefully underneath, and then proceed to blaze the spruce stems for some distance on either side of an almost invisible trail, with the careless remark thrown in. Say, Simpson, if anything happens to me, you'll find the canoe or comrade. correct by these marks, and strike due west into the sun to hit the camp again, see? It was the most natural thing in the world to say, and he said it without any noticeable inflection

of the voice, only it happened to express the youth's emotions at the moment with an utterance that was symbolic of the situation and of his own helplessness as a factor in it. He was alone with the defargo in a primitive world, and that was all. The canoe, another symbol of man's ascendancy, was now to be left behind. Those small yellow patches, made on the trees by the axe, were the only indications of its hiding place. Meanwhile, shouldering the packs between them, each man carrying his own rifle.

They followed the slender trail over rocks and fallen trunks, and across half-frozen swamps, skirting numerous lakes that fairly gemmed the forest, their borders fringed with mist, and towards five o'clock found themselves suddenly on the edge, edge of the woods, looking out across a large sheet of water in front of them, dotted with pine-clad islands of all describable shapes and sizes. Fifty island water, announced Defargo wearily, and the sun just going to dip his bald head

into it. He added, with unconscious poetry, and immediately they set about pitching camp for the night. In a very few minutes, under those skillful hands that never made a movement too much or a movement too little, the silk tent stood, taught, and cozy. The beds of balsam boughs ready laid, and a brisk cooking fire burned with the minimum of smoke.

While the young Scotsman cleaned the fish they caught trolling behind the canoe, DeFargo guessed he would, just as soon, take a turn through the bush for indications of moose. We come across a trunk where they have been and rubbed horns, he said,

as he moved off, or feeding on the last of the maple leaves. and then he was gone. His small figure melted away like a shadow into the dusk, while Simpson noted with a kind of admiration how easily the forest absorbed him into itself. A few steps, it seems, and he was no longer visible. Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts. A tree stood somewhat apart, well spaced,

and in the clearings grew silver birch and maple, spear-like and slender, against the immense stems of spruce and hemlock. But for the occasional prostrate monsters and the boulders of grey rock that thrust on Cruth's shoulders here and there out of the ground, it might well have been a bit of park in the old country. Almost one might have seen it in the hand of man. A little to the right, however, began the great burnt section, miles in extent, proclaiming its real character, Broulet, as it's called, where the fires of the previous year had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps now arose, gaunt and ugly, bereft of brouquet of broulet,

branches, like gigantic match-heads stuck into the ground, savage and desolate beyond words. The perfume of charcoal and rain-soaked ashes still hung faintly about it. The dusk rapidly deepened. The glades drew dark. The crackling of the fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the only sound audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment it seemed, the woodland gods who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness might stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees. In front, through doorways pillared by huge straight stems,

lay the stretch of fifty island water, a crescent-shaped lakes from fifteen miles from tip to tip, and perhaps five miles across where they were camped. The sky of rose and saffron, more clear than any atmosphere Simpson had ever known, still dropped its pale streaming fires across the waves, where the islands, a hundred surely, rather than fifty, floated like the fairy barks of some enchanted fleet.

Fringed with pines whose crests fingered, most delicately in the sky, they almost seemed to move upwards as the light faded, about to weigh anchor and navigate the pathways of the heavens, instead of the currents of their native and desolate lake. A strips of coloured cloud, like flaunting penance, signalled their departure to the star. The beauty of the scene was strangely uplifting. Simpson smoked the fish and burned his fingers into the bargain

in his efforts to enjoy it, and at the same time tend the frying pan and the fire. Yet, ever at the back of his thoughts, by that other aspect of the wilderness, the indifference to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of man, the sense of his utter loneliness, now that even Defargo had gone,

came close as he looked about him and listened for the sound of his companions returning footsteps. There was pleasure in the sensation, yet with it a perfectly comprehensible alarm, and instinctively the thought stirred in him. What should I, could I do if anything happened, and he didn't come back? They enjoyed their well-earned supper, eating untold quantities of fish, and drinking un-milk tea, strong enough to kill men who had not covered thirty miles of hard-going, eating little on the way. When it was over, they smoked

and told stories around the blazing fire, laughing, stretching weary limbs and discussing plans for the morrow. DeFago was in excellent spirits, though disappointed at having no signs of moose to report. But it was dark, and he'd not gone far. The brulee, too, was bad. His clothes and hands were smeared with charcoal.

Simpson, watching him, realized with renewed vividness, their position, alone together in the wilderness. DeFago, he said presently, these woods, you know, a bit too big to feel quite at home in, to feel comfortable in, I mean, hey? He merely gave expression to the mood of the moment.

He was hardly prepared for the earnestness, the solemnity even with which the guide took him up. You've hit it right, Simpson, boss, he replied, fixing his searching brown eyes on his face. and that's the truth, sure. There's no end to them, no end at all. Then he added in a lower tone as if saying it to himself. There's lots found out that, and gone plumb to pieces.

But the man's gravity of manner was not quite to the other's liking. It was a little too suggestive for this scenery and setting. He was sorry he'd broached the subject. He remembered suddenly how his uncle had told him that the men were sometimes stricken with the strength. fever of the wilderness when the seduction of the uninhabited wastes caught them so fiercely that they went forth half fascinated half deluded to their death and he had a shrewd idea that his companion held something in sympathy with that queer type he led the conversation onto

other topics onto Hank and the doctor for instance and the natural rivalry as to who should get the first sight of moose if they went due west observed defargo carelessly There's 60 miles between us now, with old punk at halfway house, eaten himself full to busting with fish and coffee. They laughed together over the picture, but the casual mention of those 60 miles again made Simpson realize the prodigious scale of this land where they hunted. Sixty miles was a mere step, 200 little more than a step.

Stories of lost hunters rose persistently before this memory. The passion and mystery of homeless and wandering men, seduced by the beauty of great forests, swept his soul in a way too vivid to be quite pleasant. He wondered vaguely whether it was the mood of his companion that invited the unwelcome suggestion with such persistence. Sing us a song, Defago, if you're not too tired, be asked, one of those old Voyagerie songs you sang the other night. He handed his tobacco pouch to the guide and filled his own pipe, while the Canadian, nothing loathe, sent his light voice. He sent his light voice, across the lake in one of those plaintive, almost melancholy chance, with which lumbermen and trappers

lessen the burden of their labour. There was an appealing and romantic flavour about it, something that record the atmosphere of the old pioneer days when Indians and wilderness were leagued together, battle is frequent, and the old country farther off than it is today. The sound travelled 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. He 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 Defargo, though still singing, was peering about him into the bush, as though he'd heard or seen something. His voice grew fainter, dropped to a hush, and 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. Oh, man, how you made me jump? He exclaimed, on his feet beside him at 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. You smell moose or anything queer, anything wrong? He lowered his voice instinctively. The forest pressed around them with its encircling wall. The nearer tree stems gleam like bronze in the firelight. Beyond that, blackness and so far as he could tell, the silence of death.

Just behind them a passing puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it down softly 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 then was gone. DeFargo turned abruptly. The vivid hue of his face had turned to a dirty grey. I never said I heard or smelled nothing. he said slowly and emphatically in an oddly altered voice that conveyed somehow a touch of defiance i was only taking a look around so to speak it's always a mistake to be too previous with your

questions then he added suddenly with obvious effort in his more natural voice oh 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. DeFargo changing his side so that he could face the direction the wind had come from. For even a tenderfoot could tell that. DeFargo changed his position in order to hear and smell all that there was to be heard and smelt. And since he now faced the lake with his bat to the trees, it was evidently nothing in the forest that had sent so strange and sudden a warning to his marvellously trained nerves. I guess now I don't feel like singing any. explained presently of his own accord. That song kind of brings back memories that's troublesome to me.

I never ought to have begun it. It sets me on to imagining things, you 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 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 had flash 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 younger man's uneasiness, was the difficulty, nay, the impossibility he felt of asking questions, and also his complete ignorance as to the cause. Indians, wild animals, forest fires, all these he knew were wholly out of the question. His imagination searched vigorously, but in vain. 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 DeFago's efforts, or the return of his quiet and normal attitude, had 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 over-fatigue. That pallor in the guy's face was, of course, uncommon. commonly hard to explain, yet it might have been due in some way to an effect of firelight

or his own imagination, and he gave it the benefit of the doubt, when he was Scotch. When a somewhat unordinary emotion has disappeared, the mind always finds a dozen ways of explaining away his causes. Simpson lit a last pipe and tried to laugh at himself. Getting home to Scotland, it would make quite a good story. He didn't realise 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 sole. De Fargo, 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 o'clock, a late hour for hunters to still be awake. "'What's tickling you?' he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely. "'I was just thinking about 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 all this, they swept his arm round to indicate the bush. A pause followed in which neither of them said anything. all the same i wouldn't laugh about it if i was you defargo added looking over simpson's shoulder into the shadows his place is in there nobody won't never see into nobody knows what lives in there either too big too far off the suggestion in the guy's manner was immense and horrible defargo 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 the depths of wood that would never in the life of the world be known or trodden. The thought was not exactly the thought 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 felt it difficult to get at. "'Say you, uh, Boss Simpson,' he began suddenly, as the last shower of sparks went up into the air. "'You don't smell nothing, do you? Nothing particular, I mean.' The commonplace question, Simpson realized, felt a dreadfully serious thought in his mind,

and 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 evening you ain't uh you ain't smelt nothing persisted the guide peering at him through the gloom nothing extraordinary and different to anything else you ever smelt before no norman nothing at all he replied aggressively half angrily defargo's face cleared that's good he exclaimed with evident relief that's good to hear of you asked simpson sharply and the same instant regretted that question the Canadian came closer in the darkness he shook his head I guess not he said though without overwhelming conviction it must have just been that song of mine that did it is the song they sing in lumber camps and go for

taken places like that when they're scared the windigo's coming around doing a bit of swift traveling and um what's the wendigo pray simpson asked quickly irritated because again he could not prevent that sudden shiver of his nerves he knew that he was close upon the man's terror and the cause of it yet a rushing passionate curiosity overcame his better judgment and his fear De Fargo turned swiftly and looked at him as though he were suddenly about to shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open. He had all he said, or whispered rather, for his voice sank very low, was, It's nothing.

Nothing but what those lousy fellas believe in when they've been hit in the bottle too long, a sort of great animal that lives up yonder. He jerked his head northwards. Quicker's lightning in its tracks and bigger than anything, else in the bush. It ain't supposed to be very good to look at. That's all. A backward 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 off for God's sake, get the lantern going. It's time we were in bad and asleep we were going to be up with his son tomorrow. The guide was close on his heels. I'm coming.

He whispered out of the darkness. I'm coming. 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 had struck it. The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft balsom boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside all was warm and cosy.

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 forests 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 exercised that had leapt suddenly upon defargo in the middle of his singing And Simpson, as he lay there, watching the darkness through the open flap of the tents, 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. And then, sleep took him. Part three. Thus it seemed to him at least. And it was true that the lap of water just beyond the tent door, he 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. Long before he understood what this sound was, it had stirred in him the centres 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 wandered, 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. Defargo 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. 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? Well, he thought of it. of a little child crying in mid-Atlantic. Then, of course, with further realization

and the memory of what had gone before came the descent of the terror upon him. And his blood rang cold. DeFargo, he whispered quickly. What's the matter? He tried to make his voice sound very gentle. Are you in pain? Unhappy.

There was no reply, but the sound ceased abruptly. He stretched his hand out and touched him. The body did not stir. Are you awake? Brit occurred to him, and the man may be 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. the fear of waking him. One or two tentative questions he ventured softly, but though he waited for several minutes, there came no reply, nor any sign of movement. Presently he heard his regular and quiet breathing, putting his hand again gently on the breast,

at the steady rise and fall beneath. Let me know if anything's wrong, he whispered, or if I can do anything. Wait me at once if you feel strange. Well, he hardly knew what to say. He lay down again, thinking and wondering what it all meant. DeFago, of course, had been crying in his sleep. Some dream or other had afflicted him.

Yet never in his life would he forget that pitiful sound of sobbing and the feeling that the whole awful wilderness of the woods had listened. His own mind busied itself for a long time with the recent events, of which this took its mysterious place as one. and though his reason successfully argued away all unwelcome suggestions the sensation of uneasiness remained resisting ejection very deep-seated peculiar beyond ordinary part four but sleep in the long run ruse 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 is, sometimes, in a nightmare, events crowd upon each other's heels with a conviction of the 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,

that therefore they were but partly true, the rest, delusion. At the back of the sleeper's mind, something remains awake, the detail let slip the judgment. Oh, 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 remained for the man who saw and heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold horror,

because of the little piece that might have made the puzzle clear, lake and sea order 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-up right 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. DeFargo 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 his home in bed at Aberdeen The sense of confusion was very troubling And next Almost simultaneously with his walking it seemed

The profound stillness of the dawn outside Was shattered by a most uncommon sound Came without warning or audible approach And it was unspeakably dreadful It was a voice Simpson declares Possibly a human voice Horse yet plaintive A soft roaring voice close outside the tent

Overheard rather than upon the ground Of immense volume Why 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 far-fetched yet recognisable to the name of the guide. Nefago.

The student is unable to describe it quite unintelligently, for it was unlike any sound he had ever heard in his life and combined a blending of such contrary qualities. A sort of winding. 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 guy 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 too, 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 the 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 anguish 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, this height and fiery speeds. 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 ever, 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 for 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. It was at this point it seems, brought to himself by the consciousness that his nostrils

were taking this distressing odour 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, 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 flow.

lying at frantic speed through the frozen woods. It 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 or perfading odour.

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 recognised subconsciously and at once is a very subtle operation of the mind. And he failed. And 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 odour of a big forest.

Yet the odour of lions is the phrase with which he actually 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 have, 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 fair 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, though. 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 cordobon to make immediate steps to find and succour his vanished companion. And accordingly, make an effort he did, though an ill-calculated and futile one. With that wildness of treacherous and,

about him, a sheet of water cutting him off from 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. Defargo! Defargo! Defargo! he yelled, and the trees gave him back the name as often as he shouted, only a little softened. 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, until 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 the 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 cues 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 breakfast it hot coffee and bacon put a little sense and judgment into him again and he realized that he'd been behaving like a boy he now made another more successful attempt to face the situation collectively and a nature naturally plucking 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 is what he did taking food matches and rifle with him and a small axe to blaze the trees against his return journey he set four 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 state by the fire he left a note in case defargo 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'd gone a quarter of a 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 defargo. 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 it mistake was apparent. De Fargo, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the point of uncanny

perfection, had scented the brook coming down the wind hours before. His excitement and disappearance were due, of course, too. Then the impossible explanation at which he had grasped faded. His common sense showed him mercilessly that none of this was true. No guide, much less a guide like DeFargo, could have acted in such an irrational 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 great face of horror when his nostrils first caught the odour, that muffled sobbing in the darkness, and, for this two 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 hang could explain to him the outline of a bull's hooves of a cowls or calves 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 with no pointed outline as of sharp hooves he wondered for a moment where the bear tracks were like that there was no other animal he could think of for cariboo did not come so far south at this season and even if they did, would leave hoofmarks. These 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 brought the stillness of 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 odour

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 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 in around 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 for 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 even he 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 in the same way that he was hunting down another, well, with a strong effort he crushed the thought out the instant that 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 raw line wherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to be able to. to increasing 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 DeFargo stride increased in the same manner. and finally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as if the great beast had lifted him 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, absent-mindedly almost, ever peering over his shoulder to see if he too were being followed by something with a gigantic dread. And soon it came about that he no longer quite realized what it was they signified. His 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. Part five, for a man of his years and inexperience, only a Kenny Scott, perhaps, grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have preserved even that measure of balance that his 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 weak irk, 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. He 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 around the edges cast shadows and highlights? Or was it actually the fact that the great marks have become faintly coloured, for around 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 died the substance of the snow itself every mark had it and had it increasingly

this indistinct fiery tinge that painted a new touch of ghastinous 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 modelled, They formed now an exact and careful duplicate of the larger tracks beside them. The feat 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, 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 sores spot of all,

completely unnerving him. He'd been secretly dreading all the time that it would come, and come it did. Far overhead, muted by the great height and distance, strangely thinned and wailing. He heard the crying voice of DeFargo, the guide. The sound dropped upon him of that still, wintry sky with an effect of dismay and terror unsurpassed. His rifle fell to his feet. He stood motionless and instant, listening, as it were, with his whole body,

and 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'd ever known, so that his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden draft. Oh, this fiery hides! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of fire! Ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal. This voice of anguish was down the sky, once it called, then silence through all the listening wilderness of trees. And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he'd done, 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 forced lights like a a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and heart and soul. 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 Defargo, eternally hunted, driven and pursued across the sky-y 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 anger 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 returned 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 home would trail. The concentration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees and a biting hunger that gnawed helped to keep his mind steady, otherwise he had met the temporary aberration he'd 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'd 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.

I was really admirable how he emerged victory 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 travelling an unknown trail in the darkness equally impracticable, he sat up the whole of that night rifle in hand before a fight. 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 journey to the camp to get help. As before, he left a written note to explain his absence, and to indicate where he'd left a plentiful cachet 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 his illimitable hand and laughs. It's also to admire his indomitable plot. He claims no skill, declaring that he followed the almost invisible trail mechanically, and without thinking. And this doubtless is the true. He relied upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which is instinct, perhaps do some sense of orientation, known to animals and primitive men, which may have helped as well,

for through all that tangled region he succeeded in reaching the exact spot where Defargo had hidden the canoe nearly three days before with a remark, strike due 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. Unfortunately, the water was calm. He took his line across the centre of the lake instead of coasting around the shores for another

20 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 onto 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. Part 6. The sudden entrance of his prosaic uncle into this world of wizardry and horror that had haunted him without.

interruption now for two days and two nights had the immediate effect of giving to the affair an entirely new aspect the sound of that crisp oh my boy what's up now and the grasp of that dry and vigorous hand introduced another standard of judgment a revulsion of feeling washed through him he realized that he had let himself go rather badly he even felt vaguely ashamed of himself the native hard-headedness of his race and reclaimed him. And this doubtless explains why he found it so hard to tell the group around the fire, everything. He told enough, however, for the immediate decision to be arrived at that a relief party must start at the earliest possible moment, and that Simpson, in order to guide it capably, must first have food and above all sleep. Dr. Cathcart, observing the lad's condition

more shrewdly than his patient knew, gave him a very slight injection of morphine. And for six hours he slept like the dead. From the description carefully written out afterwards by this student of divinity, it appears that the account he gave to the astonished group omitted sundry vital and important details. He declares that, with his uncle's wholesome, matter-of-fact countenance, staring him in the face, he simply had not the courage to mention them. Thus all the search party gathered, it would seem, was that Defargo had suffered in the night an acute and inexplicable attack of mania, and imagined himself called by someone or something,

and had plunged into the bush after it, without food or rifle, where he must die a horrible and lingering death by cold and starvation, unless he could be found and rescued in time. In time, moreover, meant at once. In the course of the following day, however, they were off by seven, leaving Punk in charge, with instructions to have food and fire always ready. Simpson found it possible now to tell his uncle a good deal more of the story's true inwardness, without divining that it was drawn out of him as a matter of fact by a very subtle form of cross-examination. By the time they reached the beginning of the trail,

where the canoe was laid up against the return journey, he had mentioned how DeFargo spoke vaguely of something he called a Wendigo, how he cried in his sleep, how he imagined an unusual scent about the camp and had betrayed other symptoms of mental excitement. He also admitted the bewildering effect of the extraordinary odour upon himself, pungent and acrid like the order of lions. By the time they were within an easy hour of fifty island water,

he had let slip the further fact, a foolish avowal of his own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards, that he had heard the vanished guy call for him, help. He omitted the singular phrases used, for he simply could not bring himself to repeat the preposterous language. Also, while describing how the man's footsteps in the snow were gradually assumed an exact miniature likeness of the animal's plunging tracks, he left out the fact that they measured a wholly incredible distance. It seemed a question, nicely balanced between individual

pride and honesty, what he should reveal and what suppress. He mentioned the fiery tinge in the now, for instance, yet shrank from telling that body in bed had partly been dragged out of the tent, with the net result being that Dr. Cathcart, a droid psychologist that he fancied himself to be, had assured him clearly enough exactly where his mind, influenced by loneliness, bewilderment and terror, had yielded to the strain and invited delusion. While praising his conduct, he managed at the same time to point out where, when, and how his mind had gone astray. He made his nephew think himself finer than he was by judicious praise, yet more foolish than he was by minimizing the value of the evidence. Like many other materialists, that is, he lied cleverly on the basis of insufficient knowledge,

because the knowledge supplied seemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible. The spell of those terrible solitudes, he said. You cannot leave any mind untouched, any mind, that is, possesses. of the higher imaginative qualities. It's worked upon yours exactly as it worked upon my own when I was your age. The animal that haunted your little camp was undoubtedly a moose, for the belling of a moose may have sometimes a very peculiar quality of sound. The coloured appearance of the big tracks may obviously be the effect of your vision in your own eyes

produced by excitement. The size and stretch of the tracks we shall prove when we come to them, but the hallucination of an audible voice, of course, is one of the commonest forms of delusion due to mental excitement. An excitement, my dear boy, perfectly excusable, and, let me add, wonderfully controlled by you under the circumstances. For the rest, I am bound to say, you have acted with splendid courage.

For the terror of feeling oneself lost in this wilderness is nothing sure of awful, and had I been in your place, and I don't for a moment believe I could have behaved with one quarter of your own, wisdom and decision the only thing i find it uncommonly difficult to explain is well that damned odor made me feel sick i assure you declared his nephew positively dizzy his uncle's attitude of calm omniscience mainly because he knew more psychological formula made him slightly defiant it was so easy to be wise in the explanation of experience one has not personally witnessed A kind of desolate and terrible odour is the only way I can describe it, he concluded,

glancing at the features of the quiet, an emotional man beside him. Oh, I can only marvel, was a reply, that under the circumstances it didn't seem to you even worse. These dry words, Simpson knew, hovered between the truth and his uncle's interpretation of the truth. And so at last they came to the little camp, and found out of the truth. the tent still standing, the reins of the fire and the piece of paper pinned to a state beside it, untouched. The cachet, poorly contrived by inexperienced hands, however, had been discovered and opened by muskrats, mink and squirrel. The matches lay scattered about the opening, but the food had been taken to the last crumb. Well, fellas, you ain't here, exclaimed Hank loudly after his

fashion, and that's as certain as the coal supply down below. But where he's got to by this time is about as uncertain as the trading crowns in the other place. The presence of a divinity student was no barrier to his language at such a time, though for the reader's sake it may be severely edited. Well, I propose, he added, and we start out at once and hunt for him like hell. The gloom of Defargo's probable fate oppressed the whole party with a sense of dreadful gravity the moment they saw the familiar signs of recent occupancy,

especially at the tent, with the bed of balsam branches, still smoothed and flattened by the pressure of his body. They seemed to bring his presence near to them. Simpson, feeling vaguely as if his world were somewhere at stake, went about explaining particulars in a hush tone. He was much calmer now, though, over-wearyed with the strain of his many journeys.

His uncle's method of explaining, well, explaining away rather, the detail still fresh in his haunted memory helped too to put ice upon his emotions that's the direction he ran often he said to his two companions pointing in the direction where the guide had vanished that morning in the gray dawn straight down there he ran like a deer in between the birch and the hemlaw hank and dr kathcart exchanged glances it was about two miles down there in a straight line he continued speaking with something of the form a terror in his voice, that I followed his trail to the place where, where it stopped dead. And where you heard him calling, caught the stench and all the rest of the wicked entertainment, cried Hank, with a volubility that betrayed his keen distress. And where your excitement overcame you to the point of producing illusions, added Dr. Cathcart under his breath, he had not so low that his nephew didn't hear it. It was early in the afternoon,

they'd travel quickly and there was still a good two hours of daylight left dr kathcart and hank lost no time in beginning the search but simpson was too exhausted to accompany them they would follow the blazed marks on the trees and where possible his footsteps meanwhile the best thing he could do was to keep a good fire going and rest but after something like three hours search the darkness already down the two men returned to camp with nothing to report fresh snow was covered all signs and though they'd followed the blazed trees to the spot where Simpson had turned back, they'd not discovered the smallest indication of a human being, or for that matter, of an animal. There were no fresh tracks of any kind. The snow lay undisturbed. It was difficult to know what

was best to do, though in reality there was nothing more they could do. They might stay in search for weeks without much chance of success. The fresh snow destroyed their only hope, and they gathered around fire for supper, a gloomy and despondent party. The facts indeed were sad enough, for DeFago had a wife at Rat Portage, and his earnings were the family's sole means of support. Now that the whole truth in all its ugliness was out, it seemed useless to deal in further disguise or pretense. They talked openly of the facts and probabilities. It was not the first time, even the experience of Dr. Cathcart, that a man had yielded to the singular seduction of the solitudes and gone out of his mind. DeFago, moreover, was predisposed to something of the sort,

for he already had a touch of melancholia in his blood, and his fibre was weakened by bouts of drinking that often lasted for weeks at a time. Something on this trip, one might never know precisely what, had sufficed to push him over the line. That was all. And he had gone, gone off into the great wilderness of the trees and lakes to die by starvation and exhaustion. the chances of his finding camp again were overwhelming the delirium that was upon him were also doubtless of increased and it was quite likely he might do violence to himself and so hasten his cruel fate even while they talked indeed the end had probably come on the suggestion of hank his old pal however they proposed to wait a while longer and devote the whole of the following day from dawn to darkness to the most systematic search they could devise They would divide the territory between them. They discussed their plan in great detail.

All that men could do, they would do. And meanwhile, they talked about the particular form in which the singular panic of the wilderness had made its attack upon the mind of the unfortunate guys. Hank, though familiar with the legend in its general outline, obviously did not welcome the turn the conversation had taken. He contributed little, though that little was illuminating, for he admitted that a story ran over all this section of country

to the effect that several Indians had seen the Wendigo along the shores of 50 island water in the fall of last year and that this was the true reason of DeFargo's disinclination to hunt there Hank doubtless felt that he had in a sense helped his old power to death by over-persuading him when an Indian goes crazy he explained talking to himself more than to the others, it seemed. It's always but that he's seen the Wendigo.

Poor old Defaigo was superstitious down to his very heels. And then Simpson, feeling the atmosphere more sympathetic, told over again the story of his astonishing tale. He left out no details this time. He mentioned his own sensations and gripping fears. He only omitted the strange language used. But Defargo surely had... I already told you all these details with the Wendigo legend, my dear felt, insisted the doctor.

I mean, he'd taught about it and thus put it into your mind these ideas which your own excitement afterwards developed. Whereupon Simpson again repeated the facts. De Fargo, he declared, had barely mentioned the beast. He, Simpson, knew nothing of the story and so far as he remembered, had never even read about it. even the word was unfamiliar. Of course he was telling the truth, and Dr. Cathcart was reluctantly compelled

to admit the singular character of the whole affair. He didn't do this in words so much as in manner, however. He kept his back against a good stout tree. He poked the fire into a blaze the moment it showed signs of dying down, and he was quicker than any of them to notice the least sound in the night about them. A fish jumping in the lake, a twig snapping in the bush, the dropping of occasional fragments of frozen snow from the branches overhead

where the heat had loosened them. His voice too changed a little in quality, becoming a shade less confident, lower in tone. Fear, to put it plainly, hovered close about that little camp, and though all three would have been glad to speak of other matters, the only thing they seemed able to discuss was this, the source of their fear. Well, they tried other subjects in vain,

There was nothing to say about them. Hank was the most honest of the group, and he said next to nothing. He never once, however, turned his back to the darkness. His face was always to the forest, and when wood was needed, he didn't go farther than was necessary to get it. Part 7. A wall of silence wrapped them in. For the snow, though, not thick, was sufficient to deaden any noise, and the frost held things pretty tight besides.

no sound but their voices and the soft roar of the flames made itself heard only from time to time something soft as the flutter of a pine-moth's wings went past them through the air no one seemed anxious to go to bed and the hours slipped towards midnight the legend is picturesque enough observed the doctor after one of the longer pauses speaking to break it rather than because he had anything to say for the Wendigo is simply the call of the while personified, which some natures hear to their own destruction. That's about it, Hank said presently, and there's no misunderstanding when you hear it. It calls you by name, Ridener. Another pause followed. Then Dr. Cathcart came back to the forbidden subject with a rush that made the others jump. The allegory is significant, he remarked, looking about

him into the darkness. For the voice, they say, resembles all the minor sounds of the bush, wind, falling water, cries of the animals, and so forth. And once the victim hears that, he's off for good, of course. His most vulnerable points, moreover, are said to be the feet in the eyes. Well, the feet, you see, for the lust of wandering, and the eyes for the lust of beauty. Oh, the poor beggar goes at such a dreadful speed that he bleeds beneath the eyes. and his feet burn. Dr. Cathcart, as he spoke, continued to peer uneasily into the surrounding gloom.

His voice sank to a hushed tone. The Wendigo, he added. He said to burn his feet, under the friction apparently caused by his tremendous velocity, until they drop off and new ones form exactly like it's all. Simpson listened in horrified amazement, but it was the pallor on Hank's, face that fascinated him most. He would willingly have stopped his ears and closed his eyes had he

dead. "'Eh, don't always keep to the ground, neither,' came in Hank's slow, heavy drawl, "'for it goes so high that he thinks the stars have set him all the fire. It'll take a great thumping jump sometimes, and run along the tops of the trees, carrying his partner with it, and then dropping him just as a fish hawk will drop a pickerel to kill it before he'll. and it's food of all the muck in the whole bushes mass they laughed a short unnatural laugh it's a mass eater is the wendigo he added looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions mars eater he repeated with a string of the most outlandish oaths he could invent but simpson now understood the true purpose of all this talk what these two men each strong end experience

in his own way, dreaded more than anything else was, silence. They were talking against time. They were also talking against darkness, against the invasion of panic, against the admission reflection might bring that they were in an enemy's country, against anything, in fact, rather than allow their most inner thoughts to assume control. He himself, already initiated by the awful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He'd reached the stage where he was immune.

But these two, the scoffing, analytical doctor, and the honest and dogged backwoodsmen, each sat trembling in the depths of his being. And thus the hours passed, and thus, with lowered voices in a kind of taught inner resistance of spirit, this little group of humanity sat in the jaws of the wilderness and talked foolishly of the terrible and haunting legend. It was in unequal context.

All things considered, for the wilderness had already the advantage of first attack and of a hostage. The fate of their comrade hung over them with a steadily increasing weight of oppression that finally became unsupportable. It was Hank, after a pause longer than the preceding ones, that no one seemed able to break, who first let loose all his pent-up emotion in very unexpected fashion, by springing suddenly to his feet and letting out the most ear-shattering yell. imaginable into the night. He could not contain himself any longer, it seemed.

To make it carry even beyond an ordinary cry, he interrupted its rhythm by shaking the palm of his hand before his mouth. That's for Defargo, he said, looking down at the other two with a queer, defiant laugh. For it's my belief,

the sandwich oaths may be omitted that my whole partner's not far from us at this very minute. Those of vehemence and recklessness about his performance that made Simpson, too, start to his feet in amazement, and betrayed even the doctor into letting the pipe slip from beneath his lips. Hank's face was ghastly, but Cathcart showed a sudden weakness, a loosening of all his faculties, as it were. Then a momentary anger blazed into his eyes, and he too, though with deliberation

born of habitual self-control, got upon his feet and faced the excited guide. For this was unpermissible, foolish, dangerous, and he meant to stop it in the butt. What might have happened in the next minute or so, one may speculate about, yet never definitely know, for in the instant of profound silence that followed Hank's roaring voice, and as though in answer to it, something went past through the darkness of the sky overhead at terrific speed, something of necessity very large, for it displays much in. air while down between the trees there fell a faint and windy cry of a human voice calling in tones of indescribable anguish and appeal oh oh this fiery hide oh my feet have fire my burning feet of fire

white the very edge of his shirt hank looked stupidly about him like a child dr kathcart uttered some kind of unintelligible cry turning his as he did so with an instinctive movement of blind terror towards the protection of the tent, then halting in the act as though frozen. Simpson, alone of the three, retained his presence of mind a little. His own horror was too deep to allow of any immediate reaction. He'd heard that cry before. Turning to his stricken companions, he said almost calmly.

That's exactly the cry I heard. the very words he used. Then, lifting his face to the sky, he cried aloud. DeFago! DeFargo! Come down here to us. Calm down. Before there was time for anyone to take definite action one way or another, there came the sound of something dropping heavily between the trees,

striking the branches on the way down and landing with a dreadful thud upon the frozen earth below. The crashing thunder of it was really terrific. That's him. So help me, good God, came from Hank in a whispering cry, half choked, his hand going automatically toward the hunting knife in his belt. And he's coming, he's coming, he added, with an irrational laugh of horror, as the sounds of heavy footsteps crunching over the snow became distinctly audible,

approaching through the blackness towards the circle of light. And while the steps, with their stumbling motion, move nearer and nearer upon them, the three men stood around that fire, motionless and dumb. Dr. Cathcart had the appearance of a man suddenly withered. Even his eyes didn't move. Hank, suffering shockingly, seemed on the verge again a violent action, and yet did nothing. He too was hewn of stone. Like stricken children, they seemed.

The picture was hideous, and meanwhile their owner still invisible. The footsteps came closer, crunching the frozen snow. It was endless, too prolonged to be quite real, this measured and pitiless approach. It was accursed, part eight. Then, at length, the darkness, having thus laboriously conceived, brought forth a figure. It drew forward into the zone of uncertain light where fire and shadows mingled,

not ten feet away, and then halted, staring at them fixedly. For the same instant it started forward again with the spasmodic motion as of a thing moved by wires and coming up closer to them, full into the glare of the fire.

They perceived then that it was a man, and apparently that man was, DeFargo Or something like a skin of horror Almost perceptibly drew down In that moment over every face And three pairs of eyes shone through it As though they saw across the frontiers

Of normal vision into the unknown DeFargo advanced His tread faltering and uncertain He made his way straight up to them As a group first Then turned sharply and peer close Into the face of Simpson the sound of a voice issued from his lips.

Here I am, Boss Simpson. I heard someone calling me. It was a faint, dried-up voice, made wheezy and breathless as by immense exertion. I'm having a regular health for a kind of a trip I am. And then he laughed, trusting his head forward into the other's face. But that laugh started the machinery of the group of waxwork. figures with the wax white skins. Hank immediately sprang forward with a stream of oath so far-fetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English at all, but thought he'd lapsed into an Indian or

some other lingo. He only realized that Hank's presence thrust thus between them was welcome, uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly and leisurely, advanced behind him, heavily stumbling. Simpson seemed hazy as to what was actually said and done in those next few seconds. For the eyes of that detestable and blasted visage, peering at such close quarters into his own, utterly bewildered his senses at first. He merely stood still. He said nothing.

He had not the trained will of the older men that forced them into action in defiance of all emotional stress. He watched them moving as behind a glass that half destroyed their reality. It was dreamlike, perverted. Yet through the torrent of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembered hearing his uncle's tone of authority, hard and forced, saying several things about food and warmth, blankets, whiskey, and the rest.

And further, the whiffs of that penetrating, unaccustomed odour, vile yet sweetly bewildering, assailed his nostrils during all that followed. It was no less a person than himself, however, less experienced in a dwight than the others, though he was, who gave instinctive utterance to the sentence that brought a measure of relief into the ghastly situation by expressing the doubt and thought in each one's hearts.

It is you, isn't it, DeFargo? He asked under his breath, horror breaking his speech. And at once Kath Kath Karp burst out with a loud answer before the other had time to move his lips. Of course it is. Of course it is. is only can't you see he's nearly dead with exhaustion cold and terror isn't that enough to change a man beyond all recognition it was said in order to convince himself as much as to convince the others

the over-emphasis alone proved that and continually what he spoke and acted he held a handkerchief to his nose that odour pervaded the whole camp for the de fagull go who sat huddled by the big fire, wrapped in blankets, drinking hot whiskey, and holding food in wasted hands, was no more like the guide they'd seen alive, than the picture of a man of 60 is like a de garrero type of his early youth

in the costume of another generation. Nothing really can describe that ghastly caricature, that parody masquerading there in the firelight as DeFargole. From the ruins of the dark and awful memories, he still retains, Simpson declares that the face, was more animal than human the features drawn about into wrong proportions the skin loose and hanging as though he'd been subjected to extraordinary pressures and tensions

it made him think vaguely of those bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Luggate Hill that changed their expression as they swell and as they collapse emit a faint and wailing imitation of a voice both face and voice suggested some such abominable resemblance but Cathcart, long afterwards, seeking to describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a face and body that had been in air, so rarefied that the weight of atmosphere being removed, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder and become incoherent. It was Hank, though all distraught and shaking, with a tearing volume of emotion he could

neither handle nor understand, who brought things to a head without much ado. He went off to a little distance from the fire, apparently so that the light should not dazzle him too much, and shedding his eyes for a moment with both hands, shouted in a loud voice that held anger and affection dreadfully mingled. You ain't Defigo, you ain't DeFago at all. I don't give a damn, but that ain't you, my old pal of twenty years. He glared upon the huddled figures, though.

He would destroy him with his own eye. and if it is i'll swap the floor of hell with a white cotton wall on a toothpick so help me good god he added with a violent fling of horror and disgust it was impossible to silence him he stood there shouting like one possessed horrible to see horrible to hear because well it was the truth he repeated himself in fifty different ways each more outlandish than last the words rang with echoes at one time it looked as if he meant to fling himself upon the intruder, for his hand continually jerked towards the long hunting knife in his belt. But in the end, he did nothing, and the whole tempest completed itself very shortly with tears. Hank's voice suddenly broke. He collapsed on the ground,

and Cathcart somehow or other persuaded him at last to go into the tent and lie quiet. The remainder of the affair, indeed, was witnessed by him from behind the captain, canvas, his white and terrified face peeping through the crack of the tent door flat. Then Dr. Cathcart, closely followed by his nephew, who so far had kept his courage better than all of them, went up with a determined air and stood opposite to the figure of Defargo huddled over the fire. He looked him squarely in the face and spoke. At first, his voice was firm. DeFargo, tell us what's happened. Just a little so we can know how best to help you. He asked in a tone of authority, almost of command. And at that point,

it was command. The once afterwards, however, it changed in quality, for the figure turned up to him, a face so piteous, so terrible, and so little like humanity, that the doctor shrank back from him as from something spiritually unclean. Simpson, watching clothes behind him, says he got the impression of a mask that was on the verge of dropping off. and that underneath they would discover something black and diabolical, revealed in utter nakedness. Out with the man! Out with it! Cathcart cried, terror running neck and neck with untreaty. None of us can stand this much longer. It was the cry of instinct over reason.

And then, DeFargo, smiling wightly, answered in that thin and failing voice that already seemed passing over into a sound. of quite another character. I've seen that great Wendigo thing, he whispered, sniffing the air about him exactly like an animal. I've been with it too. Whether the poor devil would have said more, or whether Dr. Cathcart would have continued the impossible cross-ignamination cannot be known. For at that moment, the voice of Hank was heard yelling at the top of his voice from behind

the canvas that concealed all but his terrified eyes. such a howling as was never hurt. His feet, oh God, his feet, look at his great changed feet. DeFargo, shuffling where he sat, had moved in such a way that for the first time his legs were in full light and his feet were visible. Yet Simpson had no time himself

to properly see what Hank had seen, and Hank has never seen fit to tell. That same instant, with a leap like that of a frightened tiger, Cathcart was upon him, bundling the folds of blanket about his legs with such speed that the young student caught little more than a passing glimpse of something dark and oddly masked, where moccas and feet ought to have been, and saw even that but with uncertain vision.

Then, before the doctor had time to do more, or Simpson time to even think of a question, much less to ask it. DeFargo was standing upright in front of them, balancing with pain and difficulty, and upon his shapeless and twisted visage was an expression so dark and so malicious that, in the true sense, it was monstrous. Now you've seen it too, he weased. You've seen my fiery burning feet. And now, that is, unless you can save me and prevent, well, it's about time. time for her. His piteous and beseeching voice was interrupted by a sound that was like a roar of wind coming across the lake. The trees overhead shook their tangled branches. The blazing fire bent its flames as before a blast. And something swept with a terrific rushing noise about the little

camp and seemed to surround it entirely in a single moment of time. DeFago shook the clinging blankets from his body, turned towards the woods behind, with the same stumbling motion that had brought him, was gone. Gone before anyone could move a muscle to prevent him, gone with an amazing, blundering swiftness that left no time to act. The darkness positively swallowed him, and less than a dozen seconds later, above the roar of the swaying trees and the shout of the sudden wind. All three men, watching and listening with stricken hearts, heard a cry that seemed to drop down upon them from a great height to sky and distance. Oh, this fiery hide, oh, my feet of fire, my burning feet of fire.

Then died away into untold space and silence. Dr. Cathcart, suddenly master of himself and there four of the others, was just able to seize hang violently by the arm as he tried to dash headlong into the bush. But I want to know. You, shriek the guide, I want to see. That ain't him at all, but some, oh God, some devil that shunted into his place. Somehow or other, he admits he never quite knew how he accomplished it. He managed to keep him in the tent and pacify him.

The doctor apparently had reached the stage where reaction had set in and allowed his own innate force to conquer. Certainly he managed Hank admirably. It was his nephew, however, hitherto so wonderfully controlled, who gave him most cause for anxiety. For the cumulative strain had now produced a condition of lacrimose hysteria, which made it necessary to isolate him upon a bed of boughs and blankets as far removed from Hank as was possible under the circumstances. And there he lay, as the watches of that haunted night passed over the lonely camp. crying startled sentences and fragments of sentences into the folds of his blanket a quantity of gibberish about speed and height and fire mingled oddly with biblical memories of the classroom people with broken

faces all on fire coming at the most awful awful pace towards the camp who had mourned one minute and then the next would sit up and stare into the woods intently listening and whisper how terribly in the wilderness are on the feet of them that until his uncle came across to change the direction of his thoughts and comfort him the hysteria fortunately proved to be temporary sleep cured him just as it cured Hank till the first signs of daylight came soon after five o'clock dr kathcart kept his vigil his face was the color of chalk and there were strange flushes beneath the eyes an appalling terror of the soul battled with his will all through those silent alice

while these were some of the outer signs at dawn he lit the fire himself made breakfast and woke the others and by seven they were well on their way back to the home camp three perplexed and afflicted men but each in his own way having reduced his inner turmoil to a condition of more or less systematized order again

but nigh they taught little and then only of the most wholesome and common things, for their minds were charged with painful thoughts that clamoured for explanation, though no one dared refer to them. Hank, being nearest to primitive conditions, was the first to find himself, but he was also less complex. In Dr. Cathcart, civilization championed his forces against an attack singular enough. Even to this day, perhaps, he's not quite sure of certain things.

Anyhow, he took longer to find himself. Simpson, the student of divinity, it was, who arranged his conclusions probably were the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they'd surely witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive, something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity, and had emerged terrifically betraying a scale of life still monstrous and image. mature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men, when the forces of nature were still untamed,

the powers that may have haunted a primeval universe not yet withdraw. And to this day he thinks of what he termed years later in a sermon, savage and formidable potencies lurking behind the sobs of men. Not evil, perhaps, in themselves, yet instinctively. hostile to humanity as it exists. With his uncle, he never discussed the matter in detail, for the barrier between the two types of mind made it difficult. Only once, years later, something led them to the frontier of the subject,

of a single detail of the subject, rather. Can't you even tell me what? They were like, he asked, and the reply, though, conceived in wisdom, was not encouraging. It's far better you should not try to know or to find out. Well, that odour persisted the nephew. What do you make of that?

Dr. Cathcart looked to him and raised his eyebrows. Odors, he replied, are not so easy as sounds and sights of telepathic communication. I make as much or as little probably as you do yourself. It was not quite so glib as usual with you. his explanations. That was all. At the fall of day, cold, exhausted, famished, the party came to the end of the long portage and dragged themselves into camp that at first glimpse seemed empty. Fire there was none, and no punk came forward to welcome them. The emotional capacity of all three was too

overspent to recognize either surprise or annoyance, but the cry of spontaneous affections that bursts from the lips of Hank as he rushed ahead of them towards the fireplace, came probably as a warning that the end of the amazing affair was not quite yet. And both Cathcart and his nephew confessed afterwards that, when they saw him kneel down in his excitement and embraced something that was reclined, gently moving beside the extinguished ashes, they felt in their very bones that this something would prove to be Defargo, the true DeFago returned.

And so indeed it was. And it's soon told. Exhausted to the point of emaciation, the French-Canadian, what was left of him, that is, fumbled among the ashes, trying to make a fire. His body crouched there, the weak fingers obeying feebly

the instinctive habit of a lifetime with twigs and matches. But there was no longer any mind to direct the simple operation. The mind had fled beyond recall, and with it too had fled memory, not only of recent events, but all previous life was a blank. This time it was the real man, though incredibly and horribly shrunken. On his face was no expression of any kind whatever, fear, welcome, or even recognition. He didn't seem to know who it was that embraced him, or who it was that fed, warmed and spoke to him, the words of comfort and relief. Forlorn and broken beyond all reach of human aid,

the little man did meekly as he was bidden. The something that had constituted him, individual, had vanished forever. In some ways it was more terribly moving than anything they'd yet seen. That idiot smile as he drew wads of coarse moss from his swollen cheeks and told them that he was a damned Moss-eater. The continued vomiting of even the simplest,

food, and, worst of all, the piteous and childish voice of complaint in which he told them that his feet pained him and burned like fire, which was natural enough when Dr. Cathcart examined them, and found that both were dreadfully frozen. Beneath the eyes, there were faint indications of recent bleeding. The details of how he survived the prolonged exposure, of where he'd been, or of how he covered the great distance from one camp to the other, including an in every. immense detour of the lake on foot since he had no canoe. All of this remains unknown. His memory had vanished completely, and before the end of the Winter who's beginning witnessed this strange occurrence, DeFargo, bereft of mind, memory and soul, had gone with it.

He lingered only a few weeks, and what punk was able to contribute to the story throws no further light upon it. He was cleaning fish by the lake shore at about five o'clock in the evening, an hour that is, before the search party returned, when he saw this shadow of the guide picking its way weakly into camp. In advance of him, he declares, came the faint whiff of a certain singular odour. On that same instant old punk started for home. He covered the entire journey of three days as only Indian blood could have covered it. The terror of a whole race drove him. He knew what it all meant.

DeFargo had seen the Wendigo. And so once again, we reach the end of tonight's podcast. My thanks as always to the authors of those wonderful stories, and to you for taking the time to listen. Now, I'd ask one small favour of you. Wherever you get your podcast wrong, please write a few nice words and leave a five-star. review as it really helps the podcast. That's it for this week, but I'll be back again same time,

same place, and I do so hope you'll join me once more. Until next time, sweet dreams and bye-bye.