A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year withoutfinding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, andthe various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective familieswith the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr.Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he broughtinstead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all thebull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, wasinterested in other things besides moose—amongst them the vagaries ofthe human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in hisbook on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confidedonce to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a partin it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole....
Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson, hisnephew, a divinity student destined for the "Wee Kirk" (then on hisfirst visit to Canadian backwoods), and the latter's guide, Défago.Joseph Défago was a French "Canuck," who had strayed from his nativeProvince of Quebec years before, and had got caught in Rat Portage whenthe Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who, in addition tohis unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore, could also singthe old voyageur songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into thebargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spellwhich the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved thewild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost toan 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 andswore by him. He also swore at him, "jest as a pal might," and since hehad a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless, oaths, theconversation between the two stalwart and hardy woodsmen was often of arather lively description. This river of expletives, however, Hankagreed to dam a little out of respect for his old "hunting boss," Dr.Cathcart, whom of course he addressed after the fashion of the countryas "Doc," and also because he understood that young Simpson was alreadya "bit of a parson." He had, however, one objection to Défago, and oneonly—which was, that the French Canadian sometimes exhibited what Hankdescribed as "the output of a cursed and dismal mind," meaningapparently that he sometimes was true to type, Latin type, and sufferedfits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing could induce him toutter speech. Défago, that is to say, was imaginative and melancholy.And, as a rule, it was too long a spell of "civilization" that inducedthe attacks, for a few days of the wilderness invariably cured them.
This, then, was the party of four that found themselves in camp the lastweek in October of that "shy moose year" 'way up in the wilderness northof Rat Portage—a forsaken and desolate country. There was also Punk, anIndian, who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their hunting tripsin previous years, and who acted as cook. His duty was merely to stay incamp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks and coffee at a fewminutes' notice. He dressed in the worn-out clothes bequeathed to him byformer patrons, and, except for his coarse black hair and dark skin, helooked in these city garments no more like a real redskin than a stageNegro looks like a real African. For all that, however, Punk had in himstill the instincts of his dying race; his taciturn silence and hisendurance survived; also his superstition.
The party round the blazing fire