WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 179 



a sombre land, where death ever lurks behind 

 the traveller. To the Indian its recesses are 

 haunted by dread beings malevolent to man. 

 Around the camp-fires, when the frosts of fall 

 were heavy, I have heard the Indians talk of the 

 oncoming winter and of things seen at twilight 

 and sensed after nightfall by the trapper or be 

 lated wayfarer when the cold that gripped the 

 body began also to grip the heart. They told 

 of the windigoes which leaped and flew through 

 the frozen air, and left huge footprints on the 

 snow, and drove to madness and death men 

 by lonely camp-fires. They told of the snow- 

 walkers; how once a moose hunter, on webbed 

 snow-shoes, bound campward in the late after 

 noon saw a dim figure walking afar off on the 

 crust of the snow parallel to him among the 

 tree trunks; how as the afternoon waned the 

 figure came gradually nearer, until he saw that 

 it was shrouded in some garment which wrapped 

 even its head; how in the gray dusk that fol 

 lowed the sunset it came always closer, until he 

 could see that what should have been its face 

 was like the snout of a wolf, and that through a 

 crack left bare by the shroud its eyes burned 

 evil, baleful; how his heart was palsied with 

 the awful terror of the unknown, of the dead 

 that was not dead; and how suddenly he came 



