For three weeks there had been no rain. Even the nights
were hot and dry. Each day the factors at their posts looked out
with anxious eyes over their domains, and by the first of August
every post had a score of halfbreeds and Indians patrolling the
trails on the watch for fire. In their cabins and teepees the
forest dwellers who had not gone to pass the summer at the posts
waited and watched; each morning and noon and night they climbed
tall trees and peered through that palpitating gray film for a
sign of smoke. For weeks the wind came steadily from the south and
west, parched as though swept over the burning sands of a desert.
Berries dried up on the bushes; the fruit of the mountain ash
shriveled on its stems; creeks ran dry; swamps turned into baked
peat, and the poplar leaves hung wilted and lifeless, too limp to
rustle in the breeze. Only once or twice in a lifetime does the
forest dweller see poplar leaves curl up and die like that, baked
to death in the summer sun. It is Kiskewahoon (the Danger Signal).
Not only the warning of possible death in a holocaust of fire, but
the omen of poor hunting and trapping in the winter to come.
Miki and Neewa were in a swamp country when the fifth of August
came.
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