"Tell me, then."
Beginning with her distrust of the trader she did tell him. She ended with her attempt that afternoon to send the pigeon with a message urgent enough to bring the White Chief to their rescue before Shane and his partners had sailed away in the leaky whaleboat.
When she finished Shane made no comment. She waited. Was it possible he did not believe her? A long minute went by . . . and then another. . . . Obeying an impulse she did not understand she swiftly took the pigeon from him and tossed it once more into the air.
It readjusted itself and rose confidently. There was a swift movement as Shane whipped his revolver from his pocket. Before the bird had flown twenty feet he fired. The first shot missed, but the second brought the smoke-grey pigeon to the ground.
A moment later Ellen felt her husband's arms about her.
"God love you, little fellow." There was tenderness, contrition and a great relief in his tones as he laid his cheek against her hair. "Sure, nothing matters now that I know it's myself you're still in love with and not that damnable blackguard in Katleean!" . . .
For an hour they sat on the log below the flagpole, explaining, mutually forgiving, planning. Shane, with Irish logic, chose to see in the death of the pigeon, a riddance to all adverse circumstances. He seemed suddenly endowed with a new faith concerning the trip in the whaleboat and succeeded in imparting some of his enthusiasm to his wife.
"Luck is with me, El. I tell you I can feel it in my bones. The devil himself can't keep me from making Katleean now," he declared confidently as they walked hand in hand toward the trail that led down to the cabin.
As if fortune had at last decided in their favor, the days went sunnily by. Gulls began to lay by the thousands. Loll was relieved of his hated task of killing sea-parrots, for Harlan discovered that when the birds began to lay, he could urge them from their tunnel nests with a long stick, and capture them. The whaleboat, repaired and recalked, was launched and brought down to the beach before the cabin. All was in readiness, at last, for the journey.
The evening before they were to set sail Jean went up the hill to the Lookout to help with the last signal fire she and Gregg would build together. The night air, soft and scented, was like a caress to the senses. Sea and sky were luminous with the rose and amethyst tinting of Alaskan nights. The three plaintive descending notes of the golden-crown sounded from the alders along the crest of the hill.