Algernon Blackwood

The Wendigo

Algernon Blackwood

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I

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 or 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 moose — amongst them

the vagaries of the human mind. This particular story, however, found

no mention in his book on Collective Hallucination for the simple

reason (so he confided once to a fellow colleague) that he himself

played too intimate a part in it to form a competent judgement 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 backwoods), and the latter’s guide, Defago.

Joseph Defago 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 bush-lore, could also sing

the old voyageur 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, and he loved the

wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to

an obsession. The life of the backwoods fascinated him — whence,

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. He also swore at him, “jest as a pal might,” 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. This river of expletives,

however, Hank agreed to dam 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 parson.” He had, however, one

objection to Defago, 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 sometimes was true

to type, Latin type, and suffered fits of a kind of silent moroseness

when nothing could induce him to utter speech. Defago, that is to say,

was imaginative and melancholy. And, as a rule, it 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 week in October of that “shy moose year” ‘way up in the wilderness

north of Rat Portage — 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 the worn-out clothes

bequeathed to him by former patrons, and except for his coarse black

hair and dark skin, he looked in these city garments no more like a

real redskin than a stage negro looks like a real African. For all

that, however, Punk had in him still the instincts of his dying race;

his taciturn 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. Defago had sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank, in

bad humour, reminded him so often that “he kep’ mussing-up the fac’s

so, that it was ‘most all nothin’ but a petred-out 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 still lake

behind them. The silence of the vast listening forest stole forward and

enveloped them.

Hank broke in suddenly with his nasal voice.