“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, 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.