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THE WENDIGO

Algernon Blackwood

1910




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 of 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 judgment 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 wood-craft 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
<DW64> 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
humor, reminded him so often that "he kep' mussing-up the fac's so, that
it was'most all nothin' but a petered-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.

"I'm in favor of breaking new ground tomorrow, Doc," he observed with
energy, looking across at his employer. "We don't stand a dead <DW55>'s
chance around here."

"Agreed," said Cathcart, always a man of few words. "Think the idea's
good."

"Sure pop, it's good," Hank resumed with confidence. "S'pose, now, you
and I strike west, up Garden Lake way for a change! None of us ain't
touched that quiet bit o' land yet--"

"I'm with you."

"And you, Defago,