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Page 17
Of course he was telling the truth, and Dr. Cathcart was reluctantly
compelled to admit the singular character of the whole affair. He did
not 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; 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 loosened them. His
voice, too, changed a little in quality, becoming a shade less
confident, lower also 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. They tried other subjects in vain; there
was nothing to say about them. Hank was the most honest of the group; 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.
VII
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. 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 Wild personified,
which some natures hear to their own destruction."
"That's about it," Hank said presently. "An' there's no misunderstandin'
when you hear it. It calls you by name right 'nough."
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 and the eyes; the
feet, you see, for the lust of wandering, and the eyes for the lust of
beauty. 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, "is said to burn his feet--owing to the
friction, apparently caused by its tremendous velocity--till they drop
off, and new ones form exactly like its own."
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 dared.
"It 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
a-fire. An' it'll take great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an' run along the
tops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an' then droppin' him
jest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin'. An' its
food, of all the muck in the whole Bush is--moss!" And he laughed a
short, unnatural laugh. "It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo," he added,
looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. "Moss-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 and "experienced" 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
inmost thoughts to assume control. He himself, already initiated by the
awful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He had
reached the stage where he was immune. But these two, the scoffing,
analytical doctor, and the honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sat
trembling in the depths of his being.
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