Jacques repeated it all to him after Towaskook, sighing deeply, had risen from his squatting posture, and left them.  It was a terrible journey over those mountains, Towaskook had said.  He had been on the Stikine once.  He had split with his tribe, and had started eastward with many followers, but half of them had died—­died because they would not leave their precious totems behind—­and so had been caught in a deep snow that came early.  It was a ten-day journey over the mountains.  You went up above the clouds—­many times you had to go above the clouds.  He would never make the journey again.  There was one chance—­just one.  He had a young bear hunter, Kio, his face was still smooth.  He had not won his spurs, so to speak, and he was anxious to perform a great feat, especially as he was in love with his medicine man’s daughter Kwak-wa-pisew (the Butterfly).  Kio might go, to prove his valour to the Butterfly.  Towaskook had gone for him.  Of course, on a mission of this kind, Kio would accept no pay.  That would go to Towaskook.  The two hundred dollars’ worth of supplies satisfied him.

A little later Towaskook returned with Kio.  He was exceedingly youthful, slim-built as a weazel, but with a deep-set and treacherous eye.  He listened.  He would go.  He would go as far as the confluence of the Pitman and the Stikine, if Towaskook would assure him the Butterfly.  Towaskook, eyeing greedily the supplies which Jacques had laid out alluringly, nodded an agreement to that.  “The next day,” Kio said, then, eager now for the adventure.  “The next day they would start.”

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.