"Those sound like yak grunts," declared Chuba. "Good and bad. They don't want to go along, but anyway, they go."
"That is right," stated Chandra, who had caught the meaning of the speech. "Tikse says they have to go along because they can't go back, as there is no bridge across the gorge."
That night, the porters pitched their tents much closer together when they camped. There was another light snow, and in the morning Hurdu found new Yeti tracks beside a rocky slope nearby. Charles Keene was frankly skeptical about them.
"Anybody could have made them with a piece of brushwood," Biff's uncle declared, "or in half a dozen other ways. But I guess Tikse can't convince his crowd of that."
"Tikse thinks they are Yeti tracks himself," returned Barma Shah. "That is the real trouble."
All day the Ladakhi porters kept watching the barren ground above the tree line, for that was the high altitude at which the Yeti supposedly dwelled. They quickened their pace and reached the next campsite well before dusk. There, trouble seemed over, for this was a valley where two trails crossed, and already a nomadic tribe was camped there. They greeted the party from Leh and gladly sold them fresh provisions.
That night, there was music and mirth around the campfires. The morning dawned crisp but pleasant, for there was no sign of any snow. Nor was there any sign of Tikse and his Ladakhi porters. They had pulled out at dawn, taking the other trail the long way back to Leh, leaving only Hurdu and a dozen others who were not Ladakhi.
That automatically promoted Hurdu to chief guide, and when he suggested hiring some of the nomad tribesmen as porters, Barma Shah favored the idea, but asked for approval from Charles Keene, as joint leader of the expedition. Biff's uncle was all for Hurdu's suggestion.
"They look to me like Sherpas," he declared. "Like those friendly chaps we met in the valley where we landed our plane."
"They are not Sherpas," put in Chuba politely. "I listen to their talk, Sahib Keene. They call themselves Changpas. They do not come from the south, but from the north."