e 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 darkn