Wilderness Trek by Zane Grey

The trek plodded on, day after day. And more and more Sterl felt himself back to the level of the unconscious savage as represented so strikingly in the black man Friday, who had mental processes it was true, but was almost wholly guided by his instincts and his emotions. It was a good thing, he reflected. It made for survival. Thrown against the background of the live and inanimate forces of the earth, man had to go back. He discussed his mood sometimes with his companions of his campfires. Slyter laughed, "We call it 'gone bush.' I would say it denoted weak mentality!" Leslie gave proof to his theory by flashing, "Sterl, you make me think. And I don't want to think!" Stanley Dann said, "Undoubtedly a trek like this would be a throwback for most white men; unless they found their strength in God." Well, he himself had a job to do--to deal with Ormiston. When that was finished, he could revert to the savage!

Stanley Dann eventually arrived at the conclusion that any one of several streams they had crossed might have been Cooper Creek, famed in the annals of exploration. But he admitted that he had expected a goodly stream of running water. Long ago, Sterl thought, Dann should have been warned by a sun growing almost imperceptibly hotter that water would grow scarcer. Still, always in the blue distance, mountain ranges lent hope. Through this bush, the endless monotony of which wore so strangely on the trekkers that desert country would have been welcome, they never made an average of five miles a day. Dry camps occurred more and more often; two-day stays at waterholes further added to the delay.