“Yellow Bird!”

He went to her slowly, wondering if it could be possible the years had touched Yellow Bird so lightly; and Yellow Bird reached out her hands to him, her face flaming up with sudden happiness, and Peter wondered what it was all about as he cautiously eyed the half dozen brown-faced little Indian children who had now gathered quietly about them.  In another moment there was an interruption.  A girl came through the fringe of willows behind them.  It was as if another Yellow Bird had come to puzzle Peter—­the same slim, graceful little body, the same shining eyes, and yet she was half a dozen years younger than Nada.  For the first time Peter was looking at Sun Cloud, the daughter of Yellow Bird.  And in that moment he loved her, just as something gave him confidence and faith in the starry-eyed woman whose hands were in his master’s.  Then Yellow Bird called, and the girl went to her mother, and Jolly Roger hugged her in his arms and kissed her on the scarlet mouth she turned up to him.  Then they hurried along the shore toward the fishing camp, the children racing ahead to tell the news, led by Sun Cloud—­with Peter running at her heels.

Never had Peter heard anything from a man’s throat like the two yells that came from Slim Buck, Yellow Bird’s husband and chief of the tribe, after he had greeted Jolly Roger McKay.  It was a note harking back to the old war trails of the Crees, and what followed it that night was most exciting to Peter.  Big fires were built of white driftwood, and there was singing and dancing, and a great deal of laughter and eating, and the interminable howling of half a hundred Siwash dogs.  Peter did not like the dogs, but he did no fighting because his love for Sun Cloud kept him close to the touch of her little brown hand.

That night, in the glow of the big fire outside of Slim Buck’s tepee, Jolly Roger’s heart thrilled with a pleasure which it had not known for a long time.  He loved to look at Yellow Bird.  Five years had not changed her.  Her eyes were starry bright.  Her teeth were like milk.  The color still came and went in her brown cheeks, even as it did in Sun Cloud’s.  All of which, in this heart of a wilderness, meant that she had been happy and prosperous.  And he also loved to look at Sun Cloud, who possessed all of that rare wildflower beauty sometimes given to the northern Crees.  And it did him good to look at Slim Buck.  He was a splendid mate, and a royal father, and Jolly Roger found himself strangely happy in their happiness.  In the eyes of men and women and little children he saw that happiness all about him.  For three winters there had been splendid trapping, Slim Buck told him, and this season they had caught and dried enough fish to carry them through the following winter, even if black days should come.  His people were rich.  They had many warm blankets, and good clothes, and the best of tepees and guns and sledges, and several treasures besides.  Two of these Yellow Bird and her husband disclosed to Jolly Roger this first night.  One of them was a sewing machine, and the other—­a phonograph!  And Jolly Roger listened to “Mother Machree” and “The Rosary” that night as he sat by Wollaston Lake with six hundred miles of wilderness between him and Cragg’s Ridge.