The Wendigo

lay there, warm as toast, exceedingly weary; the night soothed and comforted, blunting the edges

at enemy, concealing all approaches,

so the events that now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the mind somehow that the detail which could explain them had been overlooked in the confusion, and that therefore they

emselves, yet remain for the man who saw and heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold hor

. 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 throug

man made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare lay horribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult. At first, indee

l. It was a voice, Simpson declares, possibly a human voice; hoarse yet plaintive-a soft, roaring voice close outside the tent, overhead rather than upon the ground, of immense volume, while in some strange way most

had ever heard in his life, and combined a blending of such contrary qualities. "A sort of windy,

more room, and kicking his legs impetuously free of the clinging blankets. For a second, perhaps two, he stood upright by the door, his outline dark against the pallor of the dawn; then, with a furious, rushing speed, before his companion could move a hand to stop him, he shot with

burning feet of fire! Oh! oh!

and the deep silence of very early morn

tent yet trembled with the vehemence of the impetuous departure. The strange words rang in his ears, as though he still heard them in the distance-wild language of a suddenly stricken mind. Moreover, it was not only the senses of sight and hearing that reported uncommon things to his brain, for even while the man cried a

hite 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 no

recent presence, so strongly left behind about t

operation of the mind. And he failed. It was gone before he could properly seize or name it. Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult, for it was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid rather, not unlike the odor of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not

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

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, m

cutting him off behind, and the horror of that wild cry in his blood, he did what any other inexperienced man would have done in similar

es gave him back the name as often as he shouted

ering and listening world began to frighten him. His confusion increased in direct ratio to the violence of his efforts. His distress became formidably acute, till at length his exertions defeated their own object, and from sheer exha

zed that he had been behaving like a boy. He now made another, and more successful attempt to face the situation collectedly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to his assi

s return journey, he set forth. It was eight o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the tops of the trees

acks of what were beyond question human feet-the feet of Défago. The relief he at once experienced was natural, though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple explanation of the whole matter: these big marks had surely been left by a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon

way, going off even without his rifle ...! The whole affair demanded a far more complicated elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all-the cry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face of

atter; he had drawn them clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were wholly different. They were big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs. He wondered for a m

h that haunting sound that broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind, distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the threatening aspect of it all. And, st

d towards the opening; the man's shrinking from something by the door when he woke later. The details now beat against his trembling mind with concerted attack. They seemed to

nable to find the way back, and calling aloud at intervals of a few seconds the name of the guide. The dull tapping of the axe upon the massive trunks, and the unnatural accents of his own voice became at length sounds that he even

it rose. It was the beginning, he realized, of a bewilderme

e 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

had ever looked upon. He began to follow them mechanically, absentmindedly almost, ever peering over his shoulder to see if he, too, were being followed by something with a gigantic tread.... And soon it came about that he no longer quite realized what it was they sig