ed. "I cannot hear or see, but they are
coming!"

Her fingers tightened.

"And they are near," she cried softly.

"You are nervous, Yellow Bird," he said, thinking of the two days and
three nights of her conjuring, when she had neither slept nor taken
food, that she might more successfully commune with the spirits. "There
is no danger. The night is a hard one for sleep. It has frightened you."

"It has warned me," she persisted, standing as motionless as a statue
at his side. "Neekewa, the spirits do not forget. They have not
forgotten that winter when you came, and my people were dying of famine
and sickness--when I dreaded to see little Sun Cloud close her eyes
even in sleep, fearing she would never open them again. They have not
forgotten how all that winter you robbed the white people over on the
Des Chenes, that we might live. If they remember those things, and lie,
I would not be afraid to curse them. But they do not lie."

Jolly Roger McKay did not answer. Deep down in him that strange
something was at work again, compelling him to believe Yellow Bird. She
did not look at him, but in her low Cree voice, soft as the mellow
notes of a bird, she was saying:

"You will be going very soon, Neekewa, and I shall not see you again
for a long time. Do not forget what I have told you. And you must
believe. Somewhere there is this place called the Country Beyond. The
spirits have said so. And it is there you will find your Oo-Mee the
Pigeon--and happiness. But if you go back to the place where you left
The Pigeon when you fled from the red-coated men of the law, you will
find only blackness and desolation. Believe, and you shall be guided.
If you disbelieve--"

She stopped.

"You heard that, Neekewa? It was not the wing of a duck, nor was it the
croak of a loon far up the shore, or a fish leaping in the still water.
_It was a paddle_!"

In the star-gloom Jolly Roger McKay bowed his head, and listened.

"Yes, a paddle," he said, and his voice sounded strange to him.
"Probably it is one of your people returning to camp, Yellow Bird."

She turned toward him, and stood very near. Her hands reached out to
him. Her hair and eyes were filled with the velvety glow of the stars,
and for an instant he saw the tremble of her parted lips.

"Goodby, Neekewa," she whispered.

And then, without letting her hands touch him, she was gone. Swiftly
she ran to Slim Buck's tepee, and entered, and very soon she came out
again wi