To Peter, in the first night of this storm, it seemed as though all the people in the world were shrieking and wailing and sobbing in the blackness outside.  Jolly Roger sat smoking his pipe at intervals in the gloom, though there was little pleasure in smoking a pipe in darkness.  The storm did not oppress him, but filled him with an odd sense of security and comfort.  The wind shrieked and lashed itself about his snow-dune, but it could not get at him.  Its mightiest efforts to destroy only beat more snow upon him, and made him safer and warmer.  In a way, there was something of humor as well as tragedy in its wild frenzy, and Peter heard him laugh softly in the darkness.  More and more frequently he had heard that laugh since those warm days of autumn when they had last met the red-headed man, Terence Cassidy, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and his master had shot him on the white shore of Wollaston.

“You see,” said McKay, caressing Peter’s hairy neck in the gloom.  “Everything is turning out right for us, and I’m beginning to believe more and more what Yellow Bird told us, and that in the end we’re going to be happy—­somewhere—­with Nada.  What do you think, Pied-Bot?  Shall we take a chance, and go back to Cragg’s Ridge in the spring?”

Peter wriggled himself in answer, as a wild shriek of wind wailed over the huge snow-dune.

Jolly Roger’s fingers tightened at Peter’s neck.

“Well, we’re going,” he said, as though he was telling Peter something new.  “I’m believing Yellow Bird, Pied-Bot.  I’m believing her—­now.  What she told us was more than fortune-telling.  It wasn’t just Indian sorcery.  When she shut herself up and starved for those three days and nights in her little conjurer’s house, just for you and me—­something happened. Didn’t it?  Wouldn’t you say something happened?”

Peter swallowed and his teeth clicked as he gave evidence of understanding.

“She told us a lot of truth,” went on Jolly Roger, with deep faith in his voice “And we must believe, Pied-Bot.  She told us Cassidy was coming after us, and he came.  She said the spirits promised her the law would never get us, and we thought it looked bad when Cassidy had us covered with his gun on the shore at Wollaston.  But something more than luck was with us, and we shot him.  Then we brought him back to life and lugged him to a cabin, and the little stranger girl took him, and nursed him, and Cassidy fell in love with her—­and married her.  So Yellow Bird was right again, Pied-Bot.  We’ve got to believe her.  And she says everything is coming out right for us, and that we are going back to Nada, and be happy—­”

Jolly Roger’s pipe-bowl glowed in the blackness.

“I’m going to light the alcohol lamp,” he said.  “We can’t sleep.  And I want a good smoke.  It isn’t fun when you can’t see the smoke.  Too bad God forgot to make you so you could use a pipe, Peter.  You don’t know what you are missing—­in times like these.”