That night Jacques carefully made up the two shoulder packs which David
and Kio were to carry, for thereafter their travel would be entirely
afoot. David's burden, with his rifle, was fifty pounds. Jacques saw
them off, shouting a last warning for David to "keep a watch on that
devil-eyed Kio."

Kio was not like his eyes. He turned out, very shortly, to be a
communicative and rather likable young fellow. He was ignorant of the
white man's talk. But he was a master of gesticulation; and when, in
climbing their first mountain, David discovered muscles in his legs and
back that he had never known of before, Kio laughingly sympathized with
him and assured him in vivid pantomime that he would soon get used to
it. Their first night they camped almost at the summit of the mountain.
Kio wanted to make the warmth of the valley beyond, but those new
muscles in David's legs and back declared otherwise. Strawberries were
ripening in the deeper valleys, but up where they were it was cold. A
bitter wind came off the snow on the peaks, and David could smell the
pungent fog of the clouds. They were so high that the scrub twigs of
their fire smouldered with scarcely sufficient heat to fry their bacon.
David was oblivious of the discomfort. His blood ran warm in hope and
anticipation. He was almost at the end of his journey. It had been a
great fight, and he had won. There was no doubt in his mind now. After
this he could face the world again.

Day after day they made their way westward. It was tremendous, this
journey over the backbone of the mountains. It gave one a different
conception of men. They like ants on these mountains, David
thought--insignificant, crawling ants. Here was where one might find a
soul and a religion if he had never had one before. One's littleness, at
times, was almost frightening. It made one think, impressed upon one
that life was not much more than an accident in this vast scale of
creation, and that there was great necessity for a God. In Kio's eyes,
as he sometimes looked down into the valleys, there was this thing; the
thought which perhaps he couldn't analyze, the great truth which he
couldn't understand, but felt. It made a worshipper of him--a devout
worshipper of the totem. And it occurred to David that perhaps the
spirit of God was in that totem even as much as in finger-worn rosaries
and the ivory crosses on women's breasts.

Early on the eleventh day they came to the confluence of the Pitman a