Days of new hope and gladness followed in the camp of Yellow Bird and
Slim Buck. It was as if McKay, after a long absence, had come back to
his own people. The tenderness of mother and sister lay warm in Yellow
Bird's breast. Slim Buck loved him as a brother. The wrinkled faces of
the old softened when he came near and spoke to them; little children
followed him, and at dusk and dawn Sun Cloud held up her mouth to be
kissed. For the first time in years McKay felt as if he had found home.
The northland Indian Summer held the world in its drowsy arms, and the
sun-filled days and the starry nights seemed overflowing with the
promise of all time. Each day he put off his going until tomorrow, and
each day Slim Buck urged him to remain with them always.
But in Yellow Bird's eyes was a strange, quiet mystery, and she did not
urge. Each day and night she was watching--and waiting.
And at last that for which she watched and waited came to pass.
It was night, a dark, still night with a creeping restlessness in it.
This restlessness was like the ghostly pulse of a great living body,
still for a time, then moving, hiding, whispering between the clouds in
the sky and the deeper shadowed earth below. A night of uneasiness, of
unseen forces chained and stifled, of impending doubt and oppressive
lifelessness.
There was no wind, yet under the stars gray masses of cloud sped as if
in flight.
There was no breeze in the treetops, yet they whispered and sighed.
In the strange spell of this midnight, heavy with its unrest, the
wilderness lay half asleep, half awake, with the mysterious stillness
of death enshrouding it.
At the edge of the white sands of Wollaston, whose broad water was like
oil tonight, stood the tepees of Yellow Bird's people. Smoke-blackened
and seasoned by wind and rain they were dark blotches sentineling the
shore of the big lake. Behind them, beyond the willows, were the Indian
dogs. From them came an occasional whine, a deep sigh, the snapping of
a jaw, and in the gloom their bodies moved restlessly. In the tepees
was the spell of this same unrest. Sleep was never quite sure of
itself. Men, women and little children twisted and rolled, or lay
awake, and weird and distorted shapes and fancies came in dreams.
In her tepee Yellow Bird lay with her eyes wide open, staring at the
gray blur of the smoke hole above. Her husband was asleep. Sun Cloud,
tossing on her blankets, had flung one of her long braids so that it
lay across her mother's breast. Yellow Bird's slim fingers played with
its silken strands as she looked straight up into nothingness. Wide
awake, she was thinking--thinking as Slim Buck--would never be able to
think, back to the days when a white woman had been her goddess, and
when a little white boy--the woman's son--had called Yellow Bird “my
fairy.”
In the gloom, with foreboding eating at her heart, Yellow Bird's red
lips parted in a smile as those days came back to her, for they were
pleasing days to think about. But after that the years sped swiftly in
her mind until the day when the little boy--a man grown--came to save
her tribe, and her own life, and the life of Sun Cloud, and of Slim
Buck her husband. Since then prosperity and happiness had been her lot.
The spirits had been good. They had not let her grow old, but had kept
her still beautiful. And Sun Cloud, her little daughter, was beautiful,
and Slim Buck was more than ever her god among men, and her people were
happy. And all this she owed to the man who was sleeping under the
gloom of the sky outside, the hunted man, the outlaw, “the little boy
grown up”--Jolly Roger McKay.
As she listened, and stared up at the smoke hole, strange spirits were
whispering to her, and Yellow Bird's blood ran a little faster and her
eyes grew bigger and brighter in the darkness. They seemed to be
accusing her. They told her it was because of her that Roger McKay had
come in that winter of starvation and death, and had robbed and almost
killed, that she and Slim Buck and little Sun Cloud might live. That
was the beginning, and the thrill of it had got into the blood of
Neekewa, her “little white brother grown up.” And now he was out there,
alone with his dog in the night--and the red-coated avengers of the law
were hunting him. They wanted him for many things, but chiefly for the
killing of a man.
Yellow Bird sat up, her little hands clenched about the thick braid of
Sun Cloud's hair. She had conjured with the spirits and had let the
soul go out of her body that she might learn the future for Neekewa,
her white brother. And they had told her that Roger McKay had done
right to think of killing.
Their voices had whispered to her that he would not suffer more than he
had already suffered--and that in the Country Beyond he would find Nada
the white girl, and happiness, and peace. Yellow Bird did not
disbelieve. Her faith was illimitable. The spirits would not lie. But
the unrest of the night was eating at her heart. She tried to lift
herself to the whisperings above the tepee top. But they were
unintelligible, like many voices mingling, and with them came a dull
fear into her soul.
She put out a hand, as if to rouse Slim Buck. Then she drew it back,
and placed Sun Cloud's braid away from her. She rose to her feet so
quietly that even in their restlessness they did not fully awake.
Through the tepee door she went, and stood up straight in the night, as
if now she might hear more clearly, and understand.
For a space she breathed in the oppressive something that was in the
air, and her eyes went east and west for sign of storm. But there was
no threat of storm. The clouds were drifting slowly and softly, with
starlight breaking through their rifts, and there was no moan of
thunder or wail of wind far away. Her heart, for a little, seemed to
stop its beating, and her hands clasped tightly at her breast. She
began to understand, and a strange thrill crept into her. The spirits
had put a great burden upon the night so that it might drive sleep from
her eyes. They were warning her. They were telling her of danger,
approaching swiftly, almost impending. And it was peril for the white
man who was sleeping somewhere near.
Swiftly she began seeking for him, her naked little brown feet making
no sound in the soft white sands of Wollaston.
And as she sought, the clouds thinned out above, and the stars shone
through more clearly, as if to make easier for her the quest in the
gloom.
Where he had made his bed of blankets in the sand, close beside a flat
mass of water-washed sandstone, Jolly Roger lay half asleep. Peter was
wide awake. His eyes gleamed brightly and watchfully. His lank and bony
body was tense and alert. He did not whine or snap his jaws, though he
heard the Indian dogs occasionally doing so. The comradeship of a
fugitive, ever on the watch for his fellow men, had made him silent and
velvet-footed, and had sharpened his senses to the keenness of knives.
He, too, felt the impelling force of an approaching menace in this
night of stillness and mystery, and he watched closely the restless
movements of his master's body, and listened with burning eyes to the
name which he had spoken three times in the last five minutes of his
sleep.
It was Nada's name, and as Jolly Roger cried it out softly in the old
way, as if Nada was standing before them, he reached out, and his hands
struck the sandstone rock. His eyes opened, and slowly he sat up. The
sky had cleared of clouds, and there was starlight, and in that
starlight Jolly Roger saw a figure standing near him in the sand. At
first he thought it was Sun Cloud, for Peter stood with his head raised
to her. Then he saw it was Yellow Bird, with her beautiful eyes looking
at him steadily and strangely as he awakened.
He got upon his feet and went to her, and took one of her hands. It was
cold. He felt the shiver that ran through her slim body, and suddenly
her eyes swept from him out into the night.
“Listen, Neekewa!”
Her fingers tightened in his hand. For a space he could hear the
beating of her heart.
“Twice I have heard it,” she whispered then. “Neekewa, you must go!”
“Heard what?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Something--I don't know what. But it tells me there is danger. And I
saw danger over the tepee top, and I have heard whisperings of it all
about me. It is coming. It is coming slowly and cautiously. It is very
near. Hark, Neekewa! Was that not a sound out on the water?”
“I think it was the wing of a duck, Yellow Bird.”
“And THAT!” she cried swiftly, her fingers tightening still more. “That
sound--as if wood strikes on wood!”
“The croak of a loon far up the shore, Yellow Bird.”
She drew her hand away.
“Neekewa, listen 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, 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.
And then, without letting her hands touch him, she was gone. Swiftly
she ran to Slim Buck's tepee, and entered, and very soon she came out
again with Slim Buck beside her. Jolly Roger did not move, but watched
as Yellow Bird and her husband went down to the edge of the lake, and
stood there, waiting for the strange canoe to pass--or come in. It was
approaching. Slowly it came up, an indistinct shadow at first, but
growing clearer, until at last he could see the silhouette of it
against the star-silvered water beyond. There were two people in it.
Before the canoe reached the shore Slim Buck stood out knee-deep in the
water and hailed it.
A voice answered. And at the sound of that voice McKay dropped like a
shot beside Peter, and Peter's lips curled up, and he snarled. His
master's hand warned him, and together they slipped back into the
shadows, and from under a piece of canvas Jolly Roger dragged forth his
pack, and quietly strapped it over his shoulders while he waited and
listened.
And then, as he heard the voice again, he grinned, and chuckled softly.
“It's Cassidy, Pied-Bot! We can't lose that redheaded fox, can we?”
A good humored deviltry lay in his eyes, and Peter--looking up--thought
for a moment his master was laughing. Then Jolly Roger made a megaphone
of his hands, and called very clearly out into the night.
“Ho, Cassidy! Is that you, Cassidy?”
Peter's heart was choking him as he listened. He sensed a terrific
danger. There was no sound at the edge of the lake. There was no sound
anywhere. For a few moments a death-like stillness followed Jolly
Roger's words.
Then a voice came in answer, each word cutting the gloom with the
decisive clearness of a bullet coming from a gun.
“Yes, this is Cassidy--Corporal Terence Cassidy, of 'M' Division, Royal
Northwest Mounted Police. Is that you, McKay?”
“Yes, it's me,” replied Jolly Roger. “Does the wager still hold,
Cassidy?”
“It holds.”
There was a shadowy movement on the beach. The voice came again.
“Watch yourself, McKay. If I see you I shall fire!”
With drawn gun Cassidy rushed toward the spot where Jolly Roger and
Peter had stood. It was empty now, except for the bit of old canvas.
Cassidy's Indian came up and stood behind him, and for many minutes
they listened for the crackling of brush. Slim Buck joined them, and
last came Yellow Bird, her dark eyes glowing like pools of fire in
their excitement. Cassidy looked at her, marveling at her beauty, and
suspicious of something that was in her face. He went back to the
beach. There he caught himself short, astonishment bringing a sharp
exclamation from his lips.
His canoe and outfit were gone!
Out of the star-gloom behind him floated a soft ripple of laughter as
Yellow Bird ran to her tepee.
And from the mist of water--far out--came a voice, the voice of Jolly
Roger McKay.
“Goodby, Cassidy!”
With it mingled the defiant bark of a dog.
In her tepee, a moment later, Yellow Bird drew Sun Cloud's glossy head
close against her warm breast, and turned her radiant face up
thankfully to the smoke hole in the tepee top, through which the
spirits had whispered their warning to her. Indistinctly, and still
farther away, her straining ears heard again the cry,
“Goodby, Cassidy!”