“Defago!  Defago!  Defago!” he yelled, and the trees gave him back the name as often as he shouted, only a little softened—­“Defago!  Defago!  Defago!”

He followed the trail that lay a short distance across the patches of snow, and then lost it again where the trees grew too thickly for snow to lie.  He shouted till he was hoarse, and till the sound of his own voice in all that unanswering and listening world began to frighten him.  His confusion increased in direct ratio to the violence of his efforts.  His distress became formidably acute, till at length his exertions defeated their own object, and from sheer exhaustion he headed back to the camp again.  It remains a wonder that he ever found his way.  It was with great difficulty, and only after numberless false clues, that he at last saw the white tent between the trees, and so reached safety.

Exhaustion then applied its own remedy, and he grew calmer.  He made the fire and breakfasted.  Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense and judgment into him again, and he realized that he had been behaving like a boy.  He now made another, and more successful attempt to face the situation collectedly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to his assistance, he decided that he must first make as thorough a search as possible, failing success in which, he must find his way into the home camp as best he could and bring help.

And this was what he did.  Taking food, matches and rifle with him, and a small axe to blaze the trees against his return journey, he set forth.  It was eight o’clock when he started, the sun shining over the tops of the trees in a sky without clouds.  Pinned to a stake by the fire he left a note in case Defago returned while he was away.

This time, according to a careful plan, he took a new direction, intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or later cut into indications of the guide’s trail; and, before he had gone a quarter of a mile he came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow, and beside it the light and smaller tracks of what were beyond question human feet—­the feet of Defago.  The relief he at once experienced was natural, though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple explanation of the whole matter:  these big marks had surely been left by a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, and uttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was apparent.  Defago, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the point of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the wind hours before.  His excitement and disappearance were due, of course, to—­to his—­

Then the impossible explanation at which he grasped faded, as common sense showed him mercilessly that none of this was true.  No guide, much less a guide like Defago, could have acted in so irrational a way, going off even without his rifle ...!  The whole affair demanded a far more complicated elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all—­the cry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face of horror when his nostrils first caught the new odor; that muffled sobbing in the darkness, and—­for this, too, now came back to him dimly—­the man’s original aversion for this particular bit of country....