Nor was the short day and long weary night in such a region without effect upon the men. A feeling of superstitious uneasiness seized upon Nick. He said nothing, he was possibly too ashamed of it to do so, but the dread steadily grew, and no effort of his seemed to have power to dispel it. As he moved along beside his dogs he would shoot swift, fearful glances at the heights above, or back over the trail, or on ahead to some deep, dark gorge they might be approaching. He grew irritable. The darkness of the woods would sometimes hold his attention for hours, while the expression of his eyes would tell of the strange thoughts passing behind them. And Ralph, though more unemotional than his brother, was scarcely less affected. It was startling in such men, yet was it hardly to be wondered at in so overpowering a waste.
It was still the morning of the second day. Nick’s whip had been silent for a long time. His eyes were gazing out afar. Sometimes up at the lowering sky, where the peaks were lost in a sea of dark cloud, sometimes down, with a brooding fire, into the forest depths. Ralph had observed the change in his brother and sympathy prompted him to draw up alongside him.
“What’s ailin’ ye?” he asked.
Nick shook his head; he could not say that anything ailed him.
“Thought, maybe ther’ was somethin’ amiss,” went on his brother, half-apologetically. He felt himself that he must talk.
Then Nick was seized with a desire to confide in the only lifelong friend he had ever known.
“Ther’ ain’t nothin’ amiss, zac’ly,” he said. And he got no farther.
“Hah!”
Ralph looked round sharply. It seemed as if something were stirring about him. He waited expectantly. There was nothing unusual in sight. A wild panorama of snowy grandeur; mountain and valley and wood, that was all.
They traipsed on in silence, but now they journeyed side by side. Both men were strangely moved. Both had heard of the “Dread of the Wild,” but they would have scoffed at the idea of its assailing them. But the haunting clung, and at each step they felt that the next might be the signal for a teeming spirit life to suddenly break up the dreadful calm.