Later, when the camp slept, Yellow Bird and Slim Buck and Jolly Roger still sat beside the red embers of their fire, and Jolly Roger told of what had happened down at the edge of civilization.  It was what his heart needed, and he left out none of the details.  Slim Buck was listening, but Jolly Roger knew he was talking straight at Yellow Bird, and that her warm heart was full of understanding.  Softly, in that low Cree voice which is the sweetest of all voices, she asked him many questions about Nada, and gently her slim fingers caressed the tress of Nada’s hair which he let her take in her hands.  And after a long time, she said.

“I have given her a name.  She is Oo-Mee, the Pigeon.”

Slim Buck started at the strange note in her voice.

“The Pigeon,” he repeated,

“Yes, Oo-Mee, the Pigeon,” Yellow Bird nodded.  She was not looking at them.  In the firelight her eyes were glowing pools.  Her body had grown a little tense.  Without asking Jolly Roger’s permission she placed the tress of Nada’s hair in her bosom.  “Oo-Mee, the Pigeon,” she said again, looking far away.  “That is her name, because the Pigeon flies fast and straight and true.  Over forests and lakes and worlds the Pigeon flies.  It is tireless.  It is swift.  It always—­flies home.”

Slim Buck rose quietly to his feet.

“Come,” he whispered, looking at Jolly Roger,

Yellow Bird did not look at them or speak to them, and Slim Buck—­ with his hand on Jolly Roger’s arm—­pulled him gently away.  In his eyes was a little something of fear, and yet along with it a sublime faith.

“Her spirit will be with Oo-Mee, the Pigeon, tonight,” he said in a voice struck with awe.  “It will go to this place which you have described, and it will live in the body of the girl, and through Yellow Bird it will tell you tomorrow what has happened, and what is going to happen.”

In the edge of the shore-willows Jolly Roger stood for a time watching Yellow Bird as she sat under the stars, motionless as a figure graven out of stone.  He felt a curious tingling at his heart, something stirring uneasily in his breast, and he stood alone even after Slim Buck had stretched himself out in the soft sand to sleep.  He was not superstitious.  Yet it was equally a part of his philosophy and his creed to believe in the overwhelming power of the mind.  “If you have faith enough, and think hard enough, you can think anything until it comes true,” he had told himself more than once.  And he knew Yellow Bird possessed that illimitable faith, and that behind her divination lay generations and centuries of an unbreakable certainty in the power of mind over matter.  He realized his own limitations, but a mysterious voice in the still night seemed whispering to him that in the crude wisdom of Yellow Bird’s brain lay the secret to strange achievement, and that on this night her mind might perform for him what he, in his greater wisdom, would call a miracle.  He had seen things like that happen.  And he sat down in the sand, sleepless, and with Peter at his feet waited for Yellow Bird to stir.