THE LEGENDARY STORY
THE LEGENDARY STORY
By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
(1869—). An English author and journalist. He is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. For a time he was on the staff of theNew York Sun,and of theNew York Times.He is the author ofThe Lost Valley; Paris Garden; A Prisoner in Fairyland; The Starlight Express.He writes with strongly suggestive power.
(1869—). An English author and journalist. He is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. For a time he was on the staff of theNew York Sun,and of theNew York Times.He is the author ofThe Lost Valley; Paris Garden; A Prisoner in Fairyland; The Starlight Express.He writes with strongly suggestive power.
The legend and its origin and development, are well illustrated in the story ofRunning Wolf. Some hundred years before the story begins, so the author says, certain tragic events had occurred in the Canadian backwoods. From those events had grown beliefs held by all who lived within the region. The author very cleverly makes his story a continuation of the legend.Running Wolfdeals not only with the beliefs of a primitive people but also with the supernatural. It suggests an unhappy, wandering spirit unable to escape from the chains of earth. In its treatment of the supernatural the story is surpassingly powerful. It gains every effect through the power of suggestion. At no time does the story, in so many words, say that the supernatural is present. Instead, it places the reader in a position where it is natural to infer something beyond the ordinary. In other words, the story does what life does: it presents facts and leaves people to draw their own conclusions.Over the entire story hangs an atmosphere entirely in keeping with the events narrated. The reader feels drawn into the solemn silence of the vast forest; he knows the loneliness of little-visited lakes, and the black terror that surrounds a wilderness camp-fire at night.The story is rich with foreshadowing, sentence after sentence pointing toward the climax and emphasizing the single effect that is produced.Because of its hauntingly suggestive powerRunning Wolfis a remarkable story of the supernatural.“Loneliness in a backwoods camp brings charm, pleasure, and a happy sense of calm until, and unless, it comes too near. Once it has crept within short distance, however, it may easily cross the narrow line between comfort and discomfort.”
The legend and its origin and development, are well illustrated in the story ofRunning Wolf. Some hundred years before the story begins, so the author says, certain tragic events had occurred in the Canadian backwoods. From those events had grown beliefs held by all who lived within the region. The author very cleverly makes his story a continuation of the legend.
Running Wolfdeals not only with the beliefs of a primitive people but also with the supernatural. It suggests an unhappy, wandering spirit unable to escape from the chains of earth. In its treatment of the supernatural the story is surpassingly powerful. It gains every effect through the power of suggestion. At no time does the story, in so many words, say that the supernatural is present. Instead, it places the reader in a position where it is natural to infer something beyond the ordinary. In other words, the story does what life does: it presents facts and leaves people to draw their own conclusions.
Over the entire story hangs an atmosphere entirely in keeping with the events narrated. The reader feels drawn into the solemn silence of the vast forest; he knows the loneliness of little-visited lakes, and the black terror that surrounds a wilderness camp-fire at night.
The story is rich with foreshadowing, sentence after sentence pointing toward the climax and emphasizing the single effect that is produced.
Because of its hauntingly suggestive powerRunning Wolfis a remarkable story of the supernatural.
“Loneliness in a backwoods camp brings charm, pleasure, and a happy sense of calm until, and unless, it comes too near. Once it has crept within short distance, however, it may easily cross the narrow line between comfort and discomfort.”
The man who enjoys an adventure outside the general experience of the race, and imparts it to others, must not besurprised if he is taken for either a liar or a fool, as Malcolm Hyde, hotel clerk on a holiday, discovered in due course. Nor is “enjoy” the right word to use in describing his emotions; the word he chose was probably “survive.”
When he first set eyes on Medicine Lake he was struck by its still, sparkling beauty, lying there in the vast Canadian backwoods; next, by its extreme loneliness; and, lastly—a good deal later, this—by its combination of beauty, loneliness, and singular atmosphere, due to the fact that it was the scene of his adventure.
“It 's fairly stiff with big fish,” said Morton of the Montreal Sporting Club. “Spend your holiday there—up Mattawa way, some fifteen miles west of Stony Creek. You'll have it all to yourself except for an old Indian who's got a shack there. Camp on the east side—if you'll take a tip from me.” He then talked for half an hour about the wonderful sport; yet he was not otherwise very communicative, and did not suffer questions gladly, Hyde noticed. Nor had he stayed there very long himself. If it was such a paradise as Morton, its discoverer and the most experienced rod in the province, claimed, why had he himself spent only three days there?
“Ran short of grub,” was the explanation offered; but to another friend he had mentioned briefly, “flies,” and to a third, so Hyde learned later, he gave the excuse that his half-breed “took sick,” necessitating a quick return to civilization.
Hyde, however, cared little for the explanations; his interest in these came later. “Stiff with fish” was the phrase he liked. He took the Canadian Pacific train to Mattawa, laid in his outfit at Stony Creek, and set off thence for the fifteen-mile canoe-trip without a care in the world.
Traveling light, the portages did not trouble him; the water was swift and easy, the rapids negotiable; everything came his way, as the saying is. Occasionally he saw big fish making for the deeper pools, and was sorely tempted to stop; but he resisted. He pushed on between the immense world of forests that stretched for hundreds of miles, known to deer, bear, moose, and wolf, but strange to any echoof human tread, a deserted and primeval wilderness. The autumn day was calm, the water sang and sparkled, the blue sky hung cloudless over all, ablaze with light. Toward evening he passed an old beaver-dam, rounded a little point, and had his first sight of Medicine Lake. He lifted his dripping paddle; the canoe shot with silent glide into calm water. He gave an exclamation of delight, for the loveliness caught his breath away.
Though primarily a sportsman, he was not insensible to beauty. The lake formed a crescent, perhaps four miles long, its width between a mile and half a mile. The slanting gold of sunset flooded it. No wind stirred its crystal surface. Here it had lain since the red-skin's god first made it; here it would lie until he dried it up again. Towering spruce and hemlock trooped to its very edge, majestic cedars leaned down as if to drink, crimson sumachs shone in fiery patches, and maples gleamed orange and red beyond belief. The air was like wine, with the silence of a dream.
It was here the red men formerly “made medicine,” with all the wild ritual and tribal ceremony of an ancient day. But it was of Morton, rather than of Indians, that Hyde thought. If this lonely, hidden paradise was really stiff with big fish, he owed a lot to Morton for the information. Peace invaded him, but the excitement of the hunter lay below.
He looked about him with quick, practised eye for a camping-place before the sun sank below the forests and the half-lights came. The Indian's shack, lying in full sunshine on the eastern shore, he found at once; but the trees lay too thick about it for comfort, nor did he wish to be so close to its inhabitant. Upon the opposite side, however, an ideal clearing offered. This lay already in shadow, the huge forest darkening it toward evening; but the open space attracted. He paddled over quickly and examined it. The ground was hard and dry, he found, and a little brook ran tinkling down one side of it into the lake. This outfall, too, would be a good fishing spot. Also it was sheltered. A few low willows marked the mouth.
An experienced camper soon makes up his mind. It was a perfect site, and some charred logs, with traces of former fires, proved that he was not the first to think so. Hyde was delighted. Then, suddenly, disappointment came to tinge his pleasure. His kit was landed, and preparations for putting up the tent were begun, when he recalled a detail that excitement had so far kept in the background of his mind—Morton's advice. But not Morton's only, for the storekeeper at Stony Creek had reinforced it. The big fellow with straggling mustache and stooping shoulders, dressed in shirt and trousers, had handed him out a final sentence with the bacon, flour, condensed milk, and sugar. He had repeated Morton's half-forgotten words:
“Put yer tent on the east shore. I should,” he had said at parting.
He remembered Morton, too, apparently. “A shortish fellow, brown as an Indian and fairly smelling of the woods. Traveling with Jake, the half-breed.” That assuredly was Morton. “Didn't stay long, now, did he?” he added in a reflective tone.
“Going Windy Lake way, are yer? Or Ten Mile Water, maybe?” he had first inquired of Hyde.
“Medicine Lake.”
“Is that so?” the man said, as though he doubted it for some obscure reason. He pulled at his ragged mustache a moment. “Is that so, now?” he repeated. And the final words followed him down-stream after a considerable pause—the advice about the best shore on which to put his tent.
All this now suddenly flashed back upon Hyde's mind with a tinge of disappointment and annoyance, for when two experienced men agreed, their opinion was not to be lightly disregarded. He wished he had asked the storekeeper for more details. He looked about him, he reflected, he hesitated. His ideal camping-ground lay certainly on the forbidden shore. What in the world, he wondered, could be the objection to it?
But the light was fading; he must decide quickly one way or the other. After staring at his unpacked dunnage andthe tent, already half erected, he made up his mind with a muttered expression that consigned both Morton and the storekeeper to less pleasant places. “They must have some reason,” he growled to himself; “fellows like that usually know what they're talking about. I guess I'd better shift over to the other side—for to-night, at any rate.”
He glanced across the water before actually reloading. No smoke rose from the Indian's shack. He had seen no sign of a canoe. The man, he decided, was away. Reluctantly, then, he left the good camping-ground and paddled across the lake, and half an hour later his tent was up, firewood collected, and two small trout were already caught for supper. But the bigger fish, he knew, lay waiting for him on the other side by the little outfall, and he fell asleep at length on his bed of balsam boughs, annoyed and disappointed, yet wondering how a mere sentence could have persuaded him so easily against his own better judgment. He slept like the dead; the sun was well up before he stirred.
But his morning mood was a very different one. The brilliant light, the peace, the intoxicating air, all this was too exhilarating for the mind to harbor foolish fancies, and he marveled that he could have been so weak the night before. No hesitation lay in him anywhere. He struck camp immediately after breakfast, paddled back across the strip of shining water, and quickly settled in upon the forbidden shore, as he now called it, with a contemptuous grin. And the more he saw of the spot, the better he liked it. There was plenty of wood, running water to drink, an open space about the tent, and there were no flies. The fishing, moreover, was magnificent; Morton's description was fully justified, and “stiff with big fish” for once was not an exaggeration.
The useless hours of the early afternoon he passed dozing in the sun, or wandering through the underbrush beyond the camp. He found no sign of anything unusual. He bathed in a cool, deep pool; he reveled in the lonely little paradise. Lonely it certainly was, but the loneliness was part of its charm; the stillness, the peace, the isolation of this beautiful backwoods lake delighted him. The silence was divine. He was entirely satisfied.
After a brew of tea, he strolled toward evening along the shore, looking for the first sign of a rising fish. A faint ripple on the water, with the lengthening shadows, made good conditions.Plopfollowedplop, as the big fellows rose, snatched at their food, and vanished into the depths. He hurried back. Ten minutes later he had taken his rods and was gliding cautiously in the canoe through the quiet water.
So good was the sport, indeed, and so quickly did the big trout pile up in the bottom of the canoe that, despite the growing lateness, he found it hard to tear himself away. “One more,” he said, “and then I really will go.” He landed that “one more,” and was in the act of taking it off the hook, when the deep silence of the evening was curiously disturbed. He became abruptly aware that some one watched him. A pair of eyes, it seemed, were fixed upon him from some point in the surrounding shadows.
Thus, at least, he interpreted the odd disturbance in his happy mood; for thus he felt it. The feeling stole over him without the slightest warning. He was not alone. The slippery big trout dripped from his fingers. He sat motionless, and stared about him.
Nothing stirred; the ripple on the lake had died away; there was no wind; the forest lay a single purple mass of shadow; the yellow sky, fast fading, threw reflections that troubled the eye and made distances uncertain. But there was no sound, no movement; he saw no figure anywhere. Yet he knew that some one watched him, and a wave of quite unreasoning terror gripped him. The nose of the canoe was against the bank. In a moment, and instinctively, he shoved it off and paddled into deeper water. The watcher, it came to him also instinctively, was quite close to him upon that bank. But where? And who? Was it the Indian?