Post there. Too rough a country. Even the Indians
won't live in it." He was silent for a moment, as if reflecting deeply.
"Old Towaskook and his tribe are on the Kwadocha," he added, as if
seeing a glimmer of hope. "_He might._ But I doubt it. They're a lazy
lot of mongrels, Towaskook's people, who carve things out of wood, to
worship. Still, he _might_. I'll send up a good man with you to
influence him, and you'd better take along a couple hundred dollars in
supplies as a further inducement."

The man was a half-breed. Three days later they left Hudson's Hope, with
Baree riding amidships. The mountains loomed up swiftly after this, and
the second day they were among them. After that it was slow work
fighting their way up against the current of the Finly. It was
tremendous work. It seemed to David that half their time was spent amid
the roar of rapids. Twenty-seven times within five days they made
portages. Later on it took them two days to carry their canoe and
supplies around a mountain. Fifteen days were spent in making eighty
miles. Easier travel followed then. It was the twentieth of June when
they made their last camp before reaching the Kwadocha. The sun was
still up; but they were tired, utterly exhausted. David looked at his
map and at the figures in the notebook he carried. He had come close to
fifteen hundred miles since that day when he and Father Roland and
Mukoki had set out for the Cochrane. Fifteen hundred miles! And he had
less than a hundred more to go! Just over those mountains--somewhere
beyond them. It looked easy. He would not be afraid to go alone, if old
Towaskook refused to help him. Yes, alone. He would find his way,
somehow, he and Baree. He had unbounded confidence in Baree. Together
they could fight it out. Within a week or two they would find the Girl.

And then...?

He looked at the picture a long time in the glow of the setting sun.

CHAPTER XVI

It was the week of the Big Festival when David and his half-breed
arrived at Towaskook's village. Towaskook was the "farthest east" of the
totem-worshippers, and each of his forty or fifty people reminded David
of the devil chaser on the canvas of the Snow Fox's tepee. They were
dressed up, as he remarked to the half-breed, "like fiends." On the day
of David's arrival Towaskook himself was disguised in a huge bear head
from which protruded a pair of buffalo horns that had somehow drifted up
there from the western prairies, and it was