He was checking his small trail pack on the fourth day after they had settled on the plateau when Buck and Jil-Lee hunkered down beside him. "You go to hunt--?" Buck broke the silence first. "Not for meat." "What do you fear? That _ndendai_--enemy people--have marked this as their land?" Jil-Lee questioned. "That may be true, but now I hunt for what this world was at one time, the reason why the ancient star men marked it as their own." "And this knowledge may be of value to us?" Jil-Lee asked slowly. "Will it bring food to our mouths, shelter for our bodies--mean life for us?" "All that is possible. It is the unknowing which is bad." "True. Unknowing is always bad," Buck agreed. "But the bow which is fitted to one hand and strength of arm, may not be suited to another. Remember that, younger brother. Also, do you go alone?" "With Naginlta and Nalik'ideyu I am not alone." "Take Tsoay with you also. The four-footed ones are indeed _ga-n_ for the service of those they like, but it is not good that man walks alone from his kind." There it was again, the feeling of clan solidarity which Travis did not always share. On the other hand, Tsoay would not be a hindrance. On other scouts the boy had proved to have a keen eye for the country and a liking for experimentation which was not a universal attribute even among those of his own age. "I would go to find a path through the mountains; it may be a long trail," Travis half protested. "You believe what you seek may lie to the north?" Travis shrugged. "I do not know. How can I? But it will be another way of seeking." "Tsoay shall go. He keeps silent before older warriors as is proper for the untried, but his thoughts fly free as do yours," Buck replied. "It is in him also, this need to see new places." "There is this," Jil-Lee got to his feet, "--do not go so far, brother, that you may not easily find a way to return. This is a wide land, and within it we are but a handful of men alone----" "That, too, I know." Travis thought he could read more than one kind of warning in Jil-Lee's words. * * * * * They were the second day away from the plateau camp, and climbing, when they chanced upon the pass Travis had hoped might exist. Before them lay an abrupt descent to what appeared to be open plains country cloaked in a dusky amber Travis now knew was the thick grass found in the southern valleys. Tsoay pointed with his chin. "Wide land--good for horses, cattle, ranches...." But all those lay far beyond the black space surrounding them. Travis wondered if there was any native animal which could serve man in place of the horse. "Do we go down?" Tsoay asked. From this point Travis could sight no break far out on the amber plain, no sign of any building or any disturbance of its smooth emptiness. Yet it drew him. "We go," he decided.