The Wolf Hunters by James Oliver Curwood — Read

A chilling loneliness now crept over the young adventurer. Even as he ate he tried to peer out into the mysterious darkness. A sound from up the chasm, made by some wild prowler of the night, sent a nervous tremor through him. He was not afraid; he would not have confessed to that. But still, the absolute, almost gruesome silence between the two mountains, the mere knowledge that he was alone in a place where the foot of man had not trod for more than half a century, was not altogether quieting to his nerves. What mysteries might not these grim walls hold? What might not happen here, where everything was so strange, so weird, and so different from the wilderness world just over the range?

Rod tried to laugh away his nervousness, but the very sound of his own voice was distressing. It rose in unnatural shivering echoes -- a low, hollow mockery of a laugh beating itself against the walls; a ghost of a laugh, Rod thought, and that very thought made him hunch closer to the fire. The young hunter was not superstitious, or at least he was not unnaturally so; but what man or boy is there in this whole wide world of ours who does not, at some time, inwardly cringe from something in the air -- something that does not exist and never did exist, but which holds a peculiar and nameless fear for the soul of a human being?