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Page 7
When a somewhat unordinary emotion has disappeared, the mind always
finds a dozen ways of explaining away its causes ...Simpson lit a last
pipe and tried to laugh to himself. On getting home to Scotland it would
make quite a good story. He did not realize that this laughter was a
sign that terror still lurked in the recesses of his soul--that, in
fact, it was merely one of the conventional signs by which a man,
seriously alarmed, tries to persuade himself that he is _not_ so.
D�fago, however, heard that low laughter and looked up with surprise on
his face. The two men stood, side by side, kicking the embers about
before going to bed. It was ten o'clock--a late hour for hunters to be
still awake.
"What's ticklin' yer?" he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely.
"I--I was thinking of our little toy woods at home, just at that
moment," stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated his
mind, and startled by the question, "and comparing them to--to all
this," and he swept his arm round to indicate the Bush.
A pause followed in which neither of them said anything.
"All the same I wouldn't laugh about it, if I was you," D�fago added,
looking over Simpson's shoulder into the shadows. "There's places in
there nobody won't never see into--nobody knows what lives in there
either."
"Too big--too far off?" The suggestion in the guide's manner was immense
and horrible.
D�fago nodded. The expression on his face was dark. He, too, felt
uneasy. 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 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 extrordiny, and different to
anything else you ever smelt before?"
"No, no, man; nothing at all!" he replied aggressively, half angrily.
D�fago'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
just that song of mine that did it. It's the song they sing in lumber
camps and godforsaken places like that, when they've skeered the
Wendigo's somewhere around, doin' a bit of swift traveling.--"
"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 judgment, and his fear.
D�fago 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!"
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