Chương Chương 5 · 第5章

For a man of his years and inexperience, only a canny Scot, perhaps,

grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have preserved

even that measure of balance that this youth somehow or other did manage

to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two things he

presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him

headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of only

making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his

heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way

to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change,

so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some

undecipherable manner--appalling.

It was in the bigger tracks he first noticed this, and for a long time

he could not quite believe his eyes. Was it the blown leaves that

produced odd effects of light and shade, or that the dry snow, drifting

like finely ground rice about the edges, cast shadows and high lights?

Or was it actually the fact that the great marks had become faintly

colored? For round about the deep, plunging holes of the animal there

now appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more like an effect of

light than of anything that dyed the substance of the snow itself. Every

mark had it, and had it increasingly--this indistinct fiery tinge that

painted a new touch of ghastliness into the picture.

But when, wholly unable to explain or to credit it, he turned his

attention to the other tracks to discover if they, too, bore similar

witness, he noticed that these had meanwhile undergone a change that was

infinitely worse, and charged with far more horrible suggestion. For, in

the last hundred yards or so, he saw that they had grown gradually into

the semblance of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the change had come

about, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see where the change first

began. The result, however, was beyond question. Smaller, neater, more

cleanly modeled, they formed now an exact and careful duplicate of the

larger tracks beside them. The feet that produced them had, therefore,

also changed. And something in his mind reared up with loathing and with

terror as he saw it.

Simpson, for the first time, hesitated; then, ashamed of his alarm and

indecision, took a few hurried steps ahead; the next instant stopped

dead in his tracks. Immediately in front of him all signs of the trail

ceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for a hundred

yards and more, he searched in vain for the least indication of their

continuance. There was--nothing.

The trees were very thick just there, big trees all of them, spruce,

cedar, hemlock; there was no underbrush. He stood, looking about him,

all distraught; bereft of any power of judgment. Then he set to work to

search again, and again, and yet again, but always with the same result:

_nothing_. The feet that printed the surface of the snow thus far had

now, apparently, left the ground!

And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip of

terror laid its most nicely calculated lash about his heart. It dropped

with deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving

him. He had been secretly dreading all the time that it would come--and

come it did.

Far overhead, muted by great height and distance, strangely thinned and

wailing, he heard the crying voice of Défago, the guide.

The sound dropped upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an effect

of dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stood

motionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, then

staggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganized

hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the

most shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so that

his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden

draught.

"Oh! oh! This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of

fire ...!" ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this

voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called--then silence through all

the listening wilderness of trees.

And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himself

running wildly to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots and

boulders, and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after

the Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion with which

experience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half-deranged,

picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and

heart and soul. For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him in

that far voice--the Power of untamed Distance--the Enticement of the

Desolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the pains of

someone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust and

travail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of Défago, eternally

hunted, driven and pursued across the skiey vastness of those ancient

forests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his thoughts ...

It seemed ages before he could find anything in the chaos of his

disorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for a

moment, and think ...

The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling brought no response;

the inscrutable forces of the Wild had summoned their victim beyond

recall--and held him fast.

* * * * *

Yet he searched and called, it seems, for hours afterwards, for it was

late in the afternoon when at length he decided to abandon a useless

pursuit and return to his camp on the shores of Fifty Island Water. Even

then he went with reluctance, that crying voice still echoing in his

ears. With difficulty he found his rifle and the homeward trail. The

concentration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees, and a biting

hunger that gnawed, helped to keep his mind steady. Otherwise, he

admits, the temporary aberration he had suffered might have been

prolonged to the point of positive disaster. Gradually the ballast

shifted back again, and he regained something that approached his normal

equilibrium.

But for all that the journey through the gathering dusk was miserably

haunted. He heard innumerable following footsteps; voices that laughed

and whispered; and saw figures crouching behind trees and boulders,

making signs to one another for a concerted attack the moment he had

passed. The creeping murmur of the wind made him start and listen. He

went stealthily, trying to hide where possible, and making as little

sound as he could. The shadows of the woods, hitherto protective or

covering merely, had now become menacing, challenging; and the pageantry

in his frightened mind masked a host of possibilities that were all the

more ominous for being obscure. The presentiment of a nameless doom

lurked ill-concealed behind every detail of what had happened.

It was really admirable how he emerged victor in the end; men of riper

powers and experience might have come through the ordeal with less

success. He had himself tolerably well in hand, all things considered,

and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of the

question and traveling an unknown trail in the darkness equally

impracticable, he sat up the whole of that night, rifle in hand, before

a fire he never for a single moment allowed to die down. The severity of

the haunted vigil marked his soul for life; but it was successfully

accomplished; and with the very first signs of dawn he set forth upon

the long return journey to the home camp to get help. As before, he left

a written note to explain his absence, and to indicate where he had left

a plentiful _cache_ of food and matches--though he had no expectation

that any human hands would find them!

How Simpson found his way alone by the lake and forest might well make a

story in itself, for to hear him tell it is to _know_ the passionate

loneliness of soul that a man can feel when the Wilderness holds him in

the hollow of its illimitable hand--and laughs. It is also to admire his

indomitable pluck.

He claims no skill, declaring that he followed the almost invisible

trail mechanically, and without thinking. And this, doubtless, is the

truth. He relied upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which is

instinct. Perhaps, too, some sense of orientation, known to animals and

primitive men, may have helped as well, for through all that tangled

region he succeeded in reaching the exact spot where Défago had hidden

the canoe nearly three days before with the remark, "Strike doo west

across the lake into the sun to find the camp."

There was not much sun left to guide him, but he used his compass to the

best of his ability, embarking in the frail craft for the last twelve

miles of his journey with a sensation of immense relief that the forest

was at last behind him. And, fortunately, the water was calm; he took

his line across the center of the lake instead of coasting round the

shores for another twenty miles. Fortunately, too, the other hunters

were back. The light of their fires furnished a steering point without

which he might have searched all night long for the actual position of

the camp.

It was close upon midnight all the same when his canoe grated on the

sandy cove, and Hank, Punk and his uncle, disturbed in their sleep by

his cries, ran quickly down and helped a very exhausted and broken

specimen of Scotch humanity over the rocks toward a dying fire.