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.