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And at last he settled back in the snow and turned his head straight up to the spruce-tops, and the wolf came out of him in a long mournful cry which quivered through the still night for miles. For a long time he sat and listened after that howl. He had found voice a voice with a strange new note in it, and it gave him still greater confidence. He had expected an answer, but none came.
He leaned against a great rock, resting his elbows in a carpet of moss, and his eyes turned into the mystery of those distances. The sea of spruce-tops that rose out of the ragged valley at his feet whispered softly in the night wind; from out of their depths trembled the low hoot of an owl; over the vaster desolation beyond hovered a weird and unbroken silence.
There was a low moaning of the wind in the spruce-tops as Kazan slunk off into the blackness and mystery of the forest. For hours he lay near the camp, his red and blistered eyes gazing steadily at the tent wherein the terrible thing had happened a little while before. He knew now what death was. He could tell it farther than man. He could smell it in the air.
And now, as he stood for a moment listening to the low sweep of the wind in the spruce-tops, it seemed to him that the night was filled with whispering voices of that long-ago and he shivered, and held his breath. A cloud had drifted under the moon. For a few moments it was pitch dark. The fingers of his hand dug into the rough bark of a spruce. He did not move.
Pierre Radisson lay on his balsam bed, with nothing over him now but the gray sky and the spruce-tops. Kazan stood stiff-legged and sniffed the air. His spine bristled when Joan went back slowly and kneeled beside the blanket-wrapped object. When she returned to him her face was white and tense, and now there was a strange and terrible look in her eyes as she stared out across the barren.
"Where it comes from I don't know, nor what to do with it. It's in my garden; and I can't get rid of it. It beats me." About "pusley" the guide had no theory and no hope. A feeling of awe came over me, as we lay there at midnight, hushed by the sound of the stream and the rising wind in the spruce-tops. Then man can go nowhere that "pusley" will not attend him.
As Phillips turned away big raindrops began to drum upon the near- by tent roofs, the spruce-tops overhead bent low, limbs threshed as the gusty night wind beat upon them. But he heard none of it, felt none of it, for in his ears rang the music of the spheres and on his face lingered the warmth of a woman's lips, the first love kiss that he had ever known.
A feeling of awe came over me, as we lay there at midnight, hushed by the sound of the stream and the rising wind in the spruce-tops. Then man can go nowhere that "pusley" will not attend him. Though he camp on the Upper Au Sable, or penetrate the forest where rolls the Allegash, and hear no sound save his own allegations, he will not escape it.
He stood up again, and Peter saw the old smile on his master's lips as Jolly Roger looked up into the swirling black canopy of the spruce-tops. And the wailing of the storm seemed no longer to hold menace and taunt, but in it he heard the whisper of fierce, strong voices urging upon him the conviction that had already swept indecision from his heart.
"Are we to sleep in the tent, Grant?" "Yes." "What will we do if it rains?" "Stay in the tent." "But we'll get wet, won't we?" "No; we'll be upon the spruce-tops; the water will run under us." "Aren't there animals in the wood?" "Yes." "What will you do if they come about?" "I think I'll kiss you." The Empress of the World did not seem to fully enter into the spirit of his carelessness.
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