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.
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