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 Défago, 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....

Besides, now that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks of
a bull moose at all! Hank had explained to him the outline of a bull's
hoofs, of a cow's or calf s, too, for that matter; he had drawn them
clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were wholly different. They
were big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs.
He wondered for a moment whether bear tracks were like that. There was
no other animal he could think of, for caribou did not come so far
south at this season, and, even if they did, would leave hoof marks.

They were ominous signs--these mysterious writings left in the snow by
the unknown creature that had lured a human being away from safety--and
when he coupled them in his imagination with that haunting sound that
broke the stillness of the dawn, a momentary dizziness shook his mind,
distressing him again beyond belief. He felt the _threatening_ aspect of
it all. And, stooping down to examine the marks more closely, he caught
a faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odor that made him instantly
straighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.

Then his memory played him another evil trick. He suddenly recalled