84 THE HUPA. 
Nish-Fang set out to ascend the first mountain. No man might behold her 
countenance during those nine days, and as she journeyed she buried 
her face in her hands. Wearily she toiled up the great steep, along the 
rugged and devious trail, often sitting down to rest. When she became 
so exhausted that she could no longer hold up her arms, her young com- 
panions bore them up, lest some man should behold her face and be stricken 
with sudden death. By slow stages they struggled on among the gigantic 
redwood roots where the sure-footed mules had trodden out steps knee- 
deep; through vast, silent forests, where no living thing was visible save 
the enormous leather-colored trunks of the redwoods, heaving their majestic 
crowns against the sky, shutting out the sunlight; then down into deep 
and narrow canons where the overshadowing foliage turned the daylight 
into darkness, where the owl gibbered at noonday, and the cougar and the 
coyote shrieked and coughed through the black, pulseless night. Every 
night they encamped on the ground, safe under the impenetrable foliage of 
the redwoods from the immodest scrutiny of the prurient stars. Long pack- 
trains passed them by day, urged on in their winding trail among the red- 
woods by the clamorous drivers who looked and wondered if this woman 
had been stricken blind; but though these were the hereditary enemies of 
her race and she might have destroyed them by a single glance, she lifted 
not her hands from her face. 
At last they found themselves moiling up the yet steeper and higher 
slope of the second mountain-chain, through tangled thickets of the huckle- 
berry, the wild rose, the silvery-leafed manzanita, and the yellowing 
ferns, with here and there a stalk of dry fennel amid the coarse, rasping 
erasses, filling the hot mountain air with a faint aroma. Near the summit 
there is a spring, where the trail turns aside to a camping ground beneath 
a wide-branching fir-tree that stands solitary on the arid southern slope. 
Here they rested and drank of the cool waters. Then they rose to descend 
into the valley. But Nish-Fang could go no farther ; she sank in a swoon 
upon the ground. And yet, with the instinct of her savage superstition 
ever strong upon her, though insensible, her hands still covered her face. 
Then her companions lifted her in their arms and bore her down the long 
