What were those tales Tayoga had been telling about men going a week or ten days without food?
They were clearly incredible.

He had been less than two days without it, and his tortures were those of a man at the stake.
Willet's eyes, from natural keenness and long training, were able to pierce the dusk and he showed the way, steep and slippery though it was, with infallible certainty.

They were on a lower slope, where by some freak of the weather there was snow instead of slush, when he bent down and examined the path with critical and anxious eyes.

Robert and Tayoga waited in silence, until the hunter straightened up again.
Then he said: "A war party has gone down the pass ahead of us.

There were about twenty men in it, and it's not more than two hours beyond us.