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.