to me
when a boy, with her two long, shining black braids and her face that
was almost as beautiful to me as my mother's. My mother loved her, and
she loved my mother, and I loved Yellow Bird, just as a child loves a
fairy. And always Yellow Bird has been my fairy, Peter. I guess child
worship is the one thing that lasts through life, always remaining
ideal, and never forgotten. Years after my mother's death, when I was a
young man, and had been down to Montreal and Ottawa and Quebec, I went
back to Yellow Bird's tribe. And it was starving, _Pied-Bot_. Starving to
death!"

Reminiscent tenderness and humor were gone from McKay's voice. It was
hard and flinty.

"It was winter," he continued, "the dead of winter. And cold. So cold
that even the wolves and foxes had buried themselves in. No fish that
autumn, no game in the deep snows, and the Indians were starving.
_Pied-Bot_, my heart went dead when I saw Yellow Bird. There didn't seem
to be anything left of her but her eyes and her hair--those two great,
shining braids, and eyes that were big and deep and dark, like
beautiful pools. Boy, you never saw an Indian--an Indian like Yellow
Bird--cry. They don't cry very much. But when that childhood fairy of
mine first saw me she just stood there, swaying in her weakness, and
the tears filled those big, wide-open eyes and ran down her thin
cheeks. She had married Slim Buck. Two of their three children had died
within a fortnight. Slim Buck was dying of hunger and exhaustion. And
Yellow Bird's heart was broken, and her soul was crying out for God to
let her lie down beside Slim Buck and die with him--when I happened
along.

"Peter--" Jolly Roger leaned over in the thickening dusk, and his eyes
gleamed. "Peter, if there's a God, an' He thinks I did wrong then, let
Him strike me dead right here! I'm willin'. I found out what the
trouble was. There was a new Indian Agent, a cur. And near the tribe
was a Free Trader, another cur. The two got together. The Agent sent up
the Treaty Money, and along with it--underground, mind you--he sent a
lot of whiskey to the Free Trader. Inside of five days the whiskey got
the Treaty Money from the Indians. Then came winter. Everything went
bad, When I came--and found out what had happened--eighteen out of
sixty had died, and inside of another two weeks half the others would
follow. _Pied-Bot_, away back--somewhere--there must have been a pirate
before me--mebby a great-grandfather of mine. I s