The younger man understood that in a hinterland of this size

there might well be depths of wood that would never in the life of the

world be known or trodden. The thought was not exactly the sort he

welcomed. In a loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time

for bed. But the guide lingered, tinkering with the fire, arranging the

stones needlessly, doing a dozen things that did not really need doing.

Evidently there was something he wanted to say, yet found it difficult

to “get at.”

“Say, you, Boss Simpson,” he began suddenly, as the last shower of

sparks went up into the air, “you don’t — smell nothing, do you -nothing pertickler, I mean?” The commonplace question, Simpson

realized, veiled a dreadfully serious thought in his mind. A shiver ran

down his back.

“Nothing but this burning wood,” he replied firmly, kicking again

at the embers. The sound of his own foot made him start.

“And all the evenin’ you ain’t smelt — nothing?” persisted the

guide, peering at him through the gloom; “nothing extraordiny, and

different to anything else you ever smelt before?”

“No, no, man; nothing at all!” he replied aggressively, half

angrily.

Defago’s face cleared. “That’s good!” he exclaimed with evident

relief. “That’s good to hear.”

“Have you?” asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted

the question.

The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He shook his head. “I

guess not,” he said, though without overwhelming conviction. “It

must’ve been jest that song of mine that did it. It’s the song they

sing in lumber-camps and god-forsaken places like that, when they’re

skeered the Wendigo’s somewhere around, doin’ a bit of swift travellin’

— ”

“And what’s the Wendigo, pray?” Simpson asked quickly, irritated

because again he could not prevent that sudden shiver of the nerves. He

knew that he was close upon the man’s terror and the cause of it. Yet a

rushing passionate curiosity overcame his better judgement, and his

fear.

Defago turned swiftly and looked at him as though he were suddenly

about to shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open. Yet all

he said, or whispered rather, for his voice sank very low, was —

“It’s nuthin’ — nuthin’ but what those lousy fellers believe when

they’ve bin hittin’ the bottle too long — a sort of great animal that

lives up yonder,” he jerked his head northwards, “quick as lightning in

its tracks, an’ bigger’n anything else in the Bush, an’ ain’t supposed

to be very good to look at — that’s all!”

“A backwoods’ superstition — ” began Simpson, moving hastily

towards the tent in order to shake off the hand of the guide that

clutched his arm. “Come, come, hurry up for God’s sake, and get the

lantern going! It’s time we were in bed and asleep if we’re to be up

with the sun to-morrow … .”

The guide was close on his heels. “I’m coming,” he answered out of

the darkness, “I’m coming.” And after a slight delay he appeared with

the lantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. The

shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so,

and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole

tent trembled as though a gust of wind struck it.

The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft

balsam boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside, all was warm and 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

forest.

Between the two lonely figures within, however, there pressed

another shadow that was not a shadow from the night. It was the Shadow

cast by the strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped

suddenly upon Defago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson, as he

lay there, watching the darkness through the open flap of the tent,

ready to plunge into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that

unique and profound stillness of a primeval forest when no wind stirs .