onviction that
what Yellow Bird would tell him would be true. He noted the calm and
dignified stiffness with which Slim Buck greeted the day. The young
chief passed quietly among his people. A word traveled in whispers,
voices and footsteps were muffled and before the sun was an hour high
there was no tepee standing but one on that white strip of beach. And
the one tepee was Yellow Bird's,

Not until the camp was gone, leaving her alone, did Yellow Bird come
out into the day. She saw the food placed at her tepee door. She saw
the empty places where the homes of her people had stood, and in the wet
sand of the beach the marks of their missing canoes. Then she turned her
pale face and tired eyes to the sun, and unbraided her hair so that it
streamed glistening all about her and covered the white sand when she
sat down again in front of the smoke-darkened canvas that had become her
conjurer's house.

Two miles up the beach Slim Buck's people made another camp. But Slim
Buck and Jolly Roger remained in the cover of a wooded headland only
half a mile from Yellow Bird. They saw her when she came out. They
watched for an hour after she sat down in the sand. And then Slim Buck
grunted, and with a gesture of his hands said they would go. Jolly Roger
protested. It was not safe for Yellow Bird to remain entirely beyond
their protection. There were bears prowling about. And human beasts
occasionally found their way through the wilderness. But Slim Buck's
face was like a bronze carving in its faith and pride.

"Yellow Bird only goes with the good spirits," he assured Jolly Roger.
"She does not do witchcraft with the bad. And no harm can come while the
good spirits are with her. It is thus she has brought us happiness and
prosperity since the days of the famine, Neekewa!"

He spoke these words in Cree, and McKay answered him in Cree as they
turned in the direction of the camp. Half way, Sun Cloud came to meet
them, with Peter at her side. She put a brown little hand in Jolly
Roger's. It was quite new and pleasant to be kissed as Jolly Roger had
kissed her, and she held up her mouth to him again. Then she ran ahead,
with Peter yipping foolishly and happily at her moccasined heels.

And Jolly Roger said,

"I wish I was your brother, Slim Buck, and Nada was Yellow Bird's
sister--and that I had many like her," and his eyes followed Sun Cloud
with hungry yearning.

And as he said these words, Yellow Bird sat with bowed head and cl