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Page 11
Exhaustion then applied its own remedy, and he grew calmer. He made the
fire and breakfasted. Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense and
judgment into him again, and he realized that he had been behaving like
a boy. He now made another, and more successful attempt to face the
situation collectedly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to his
assistance, he decided that he must first make as thorough a search as
possible, failing success in which, he must find his way into the home
camp as best he could and bring help.
And this was what he did. Taking food, matches and rifle with him, and a
small axe to blaze the trees against his return journey, he set forth.
It was eight o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the tops of
the trees in a sky without clouds. Pinned to a stake by the fire he left
a note in case D�fago returned while he was away.
This time, according to a careful plan, he took a new direction,
intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or later cut into
indications of the guide's trail; and, before he had gone a quarter of a
mile he came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow, and beside
it the light and smaller tracks of what were beyond question human
feet--the feet of D�fago. The relief he at once experienced was natural,
though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple
explanation of the whole matter: these big marks had surely been left by
a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, and
uttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was
apparent. D�fago, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the
point of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the wind
hours before. His excitement and disappearance were due, of course,
to--to his--
Then the impossible explanation at which he grasped faded, as common
sense showed him mercilessly that none of this was true. No guide, much
less a guide like D�fago, could have acted in so irrational a way, going
off even without his rifle ...! The whole affair demanded a far more
complicated elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all--the
cry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face of horror when his
nostrils first caught the new odor; that muffled sobbing in the
darkness, and--for this, too, now came back to him dimly--the man's
original aversion for this particular bit of country....
Besides, now that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks of
a bull moose at all! Hank had explained to him the outline of a bull's
hoofs, of a cow's or calf s, too, for that matter; he had drawn them
clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were wholly different. They
were big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs.
He wondered for a moment whether bear tracks were like that. There was
no other animal he could think of, for caribou did not come so far
south at this season, and, even if they did, would leave hoof marks.
They were ominous signs--these mysterious writings left in the snow by
the unknown creature that had lured a human being away from safety--and
when he coupled them in his imagination with that haunting sound that
broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind,
distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the _threatening_ aspect of
it all. And, stooping down to examine the marks more closely, he caught
a faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odor that made him instantly
straighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.
Then his memory played him another evil trick. He suddenly recalled
those uncovered feet projecting beyond the edge of the tent, and the
body's appearance of having been dragged towards the opening; the man's
shrinking from something by the door when he woke later. The details now
beat against his trembling mind with concerted attack. They seemed to
gather in those deep spaces of the silent forest about him, where the
host of trees stood waiting, listening, watching to see what he would
do. The woods were closing round him.
With the persistence of true pluck, however, Simpson went forward,
following the tracks as best he could, smothering these ugly emotions
that sought to weaken his will. He blazed innumerable trees as he went,
ever fearful of being unable to find the way back, and calling aloud at
intervals of a few seconds the name of the guide. The dull tapping of
the axe upon the massive trunks, and the unnatural accents of his own
voice became at length sounds that he even dreaded to make, dreaded to
hear. For they drew attention without ceasing to his presence and exact
whereabouts, and if it were really the case that something was hunting
himself down in the same way that he was hunting down another--
With a strong effort, he crushed the thought out the instant it rose.
It was the beginning, he realized, of a bewilderment utterly diabolical
in kind that would speedily destroy him.
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