“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 closed eyes, with the soft tress of Nada’s hair in her hands.  It was the physical union between them, and all that day, and the night that followed, Yellow Bird held it in her hand or against her breast as she struggled to send out the soul that was in her on its mission to Oo-Mee the Pigeon.  In darkness she buried the food that was left her, and stamped on it with her feet.  The sacrifice of her body had begun, and for two days thereafter Jolly Roger and Slim Buck saw no movement of life about the lone tepee in the sand.

But the third morning they saw the smoke of a little greenwood fire rising straight up from in front of it.

Slim Buck drew in a deep breath.  It was the signal fire.

“She knows,” he said, pointing for Jolly Roger to go.  “She is calling you!”

The tenseness was gone from the bronze muscles of his face.  He was lonely without Yellow Bird, and the signal fire meant she would be with him again soon.  Jolly Roger walked swiftly over the white beach.  Again he tried to tell himself what folly it all was, and that he was answering the signal-fire only to humor Yellow Bird and Slim Buck.  But words, even spoken half aloud, did not quiet the eager beating of his heart.

Not until he was very near did Yellow Bird come out of the tepee.  And it was then Jolly Roger stopped short, a gasp on his lips.  She was changed.  Her radiant hair was still down, polished smooth; but her face was whiter than he had ever seen it, and drawn and pinched almost as in the days of the famine.  For two days and two nights she had taken no food, and for two days and two nights she had not slept.  But there was triumph in her big, wide-open eyes, and Jolly Roger felt something strange rising up in his breast.

Yellow Bird held out her hands toward him.