Wilderness Trek by Zane Grey

Day after day the great trek crept across the wilderness that Leslie had called the purple land. Day after day the smoke signals of the aborigines arose and drifted away over the horizon. Friday grew mysterious and reticent, answering queries with a puzzling: "Might be." Sterl, grown wise from his long experience with the American Indians, knew better than to question the black about his people.

Stanley Dann had no fear of blacks or endless trek or flood or heat or drought. As the difficulties imperceptibly increased so did his cheer and courage and faith. On Sundays he held a short religious service which all were importuned to attend. Sterl noted, as the spell of the wilderness worked upon the minds of the trekkers, that the attendance gradually decreased. Faith had not failed Stanley Dann, but it had lost its hold on the others, who retrograded toward the primitive.