to me," she importuned him in Cree. "The spirits
have made this night heavy with warning. I could not sleep. Sun Cloud
twitches and moans. Slim Buck whispers to himself. You were crying out
the name of Nada--Oo-Mee the Pigeon--when I came to you. I know. It is
danger. It is very near. And it is danger for you."

"And only a short time ago you were confident happiness and peace were
coming to me, Yellow Bird," reminded Jolly Roger. "The spirits, you
said, promised the law should never get me, and I would find Nada again
in that strange place you called the Country Beyond. Have the spirits
changed their message, because the night is heavy?"

Yellow Bird's eyes were staring into darkness.

"No, they have not changed," she whispered. "They have spoken the truth.
They want to tell me more, but for some reason it is impossible. They
have tried to tell me where lies this place they call the Country
Beyond--where you will again find Oo-Mee the Pigeon. But a cloud always
comes between. And they are trying to tell me what the danger is off
there--in the darkness." Suddenly she caught his arm. "Nee-kewa, DID YOU
HEAR?"

"A fish leaping in the still water, Yellow Bird."

He heard a low whimper in Peter's throat, and looking down he saw
Peter's muzzle pointing toward the thick cloud of gloom over the lake.

"What is it, Pied-Bot?" he asked.

Peter whimpered again.

Jolly Roger touched the cold hand that rested on his arm.

"Go back to your bed, Yellow Bird. There is only one danger for me--the
red-coated police. And they do not travel in the dark hours of a night
like this."

"They are coming," she replied. "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,
tha