y in his breast, and he stood alone even after Slim
Buck had stretched himself out in the soft sand to sleep. He was not
superstitious. Yet it was equally a part of his philosophy and his
creed to believe in the overwhelming power of the mind. "If you have
faith enough, and think hard enough, you can think anything until it
comes true," he had told himself more than once. And he knew Yellow
Bird possessed that illimitable faith, and that behind her divination
lay generations and centuries of an unbreakable certainty in the power
of mind over matter. He realized his own limitations, but a mysterious
voice in the still night seemed whispering to him that in the crude
wisdom of Yellow Bird's brain lay the secret to strange achievement,
and that on this night her mind might perform for him what he, in his
greater wisdom, would call a miracle. He had seen things like that
happen. And he sat down in the sand, sleepless, and with Peter at his
feet waited for Yellow Bird to stir.

He could see the dull shimmer of starlight in her hair, but the rest of
her was a shadow that gave no sign of life. The camp was asleep. Even
the dogs were buried in their wallows of sand, and the last red spark
of the fires had died out. The hour passed, and another hour followed,
and the lids of Jolly Roger's eyes grew heavier as the fading stars
seemed to be sinking deeper into infinity. At last he slept, with his
back leaning against a sand-dune the children had made. He dreamed, and
was flying through the air with Yellow Bird. She was traveling swift
and straight, like an arrow, and he had difficulty in keeping up with
her, and at last he cried out for her to wait--that he could go no
farther. The cry roused him. He opened his eyes, and found cool, gray
dawn in the sky. Peter, alert, was muzzling his hand. Slim Buck lay in
the sand, still asleep. There was no stir in the camp. And then, with a
sudden catch in his breath, he looked toward Yellow Bird's tepee.

Yellow Bird still sat in the sand. Through the hours of fading
starlight and coming dawn she had not moved. Slowly McKay rose to his
feet. When he came to her, making no sound, she looked up. The shimmer
of glistening dew was in her hair. Her long lashes were wet with it.
Her face was very pale, and her eyes so large and dark that for a
moment they startled him. She was tired. Exhaustion was in her slim,
limp body.

A sigh came from her lips, and her shoulders swayed a little.

"Sit down