"It was a fearful thing to them that he should come back from being
dead. Besides, the hair was burned half off his head, and he was
streaked raw all down one side where the fire had bitten him. He stood
blinking, trying to pick up their meaning with his eyes. His maiden
looked up from her mother's lap where she wept for him, and fled
shrieking.

"'Dead, go back to the dead!' cried the Head Man, but he did not stop to
see whether Howkawanda obeyed him, for by this time the whole pack was
squealing down the creek to Hidden-under-the-Mountain. Howkawanda looked
at his maiden running fast with the strength of the portion he had saved
for her; looked at the empty camp and the bare hillside; looked once at
the high Wall of the Pyweack, and laughed as much as his burns would
let him.

"'If we two be dead men, Brother,' he said, 'it may be we shall have
luck on a Dead Man's Journey.'

"It would have been better if they could have set out at once, for rain
in the Country of Dry Washes means snow on the Mountain. But they had to
wait for the healing of Howkawanda's burns, and to plump themselves
out a little on the meat--none too fat--that came down on its
own feet before the Rains. They lay in the half-ruined huts and
heard, in the intervals of the storm, the beating of tom-toms at
Hidden-under-the-Mountain to keep off the evil influences of one who had
been taken for dead and was alive again.

"By the time they were able to climb to the top of Knife-Cut Canon the
snow lay over the mountains like a fleece, and at every turn of the wind