While Star was travelling with the other Comanche ponies, he thought many times of Songbird and wondered what she was doing without him to share her days. If he had known the loneliness of his little playmate, he would have raced back to her, even though his mother had told him that his duty was now beside her so that Quannah might ride him.

Meantime, Songbird wandered sadly among the tepees where the other children played happily while their fathers rode with Quannah to fight the white men. The squaws tried to interest her in the work they were doing, and took the best bits of venison and thrust green willow twigs through the meat, so that she might hold it in the campfire and cook it.

Songbird smiled gravely when they did this and shook her head. She was not hungry, but the other children crowded up noisily and ate the crisp tender meat, laughing when one child held his stick too long, so that it burnt and let the meat fall into the hot wood ashes from which he at once fished it with his twig.

New clothes, fashioned from soft buckskin, new moccasins made from buckskin with soles of tough buffalo hide, were laid in her father's tepee for Songbird. Though she put them on, she did not run to show them to the other children. Always she had hurried to her father first, that he might praise her new things. As she remembered it, she slipped away alone to the edge of the creek near camp. Sitting beneath the tree where she had woven the wild flowers in Star's mane, she wondered when her father would come back.

"If he had left Star with me," she said at last, as though the fishes in the creek could hear her and understand, "I could follow him when it grew dark, and if I found him he would not send me back."

But the fishes did not pause to listen, and at last she rose and went back to the camp. The buffalo calf, tied by a plaited rope made of strips of cured hides, rubbed its thickly haired head against her shoulder, and pretended to fight her, but she did not laugh at it as she had always done while her father stood beside her. She changed the calf to another place, and fastened the rope carefully; then, having brought fresh water to it in a bucket made of dry hide, she went into the big tepee.

Her pet horn-toads were kept in one of the deep pottery bowls made from dirt and clay, then set in the sun to dry and harden. She carried the little creatures outside and let them run about on the ground and eat small insects. The bright orange, black, and red colouring of their backs made a beautiful design and looked as though an artist had painted them. Each head had a circlet of small sharp horns, while two larger ones stood up very fiercely, and all over their backs were other tiny horns, reaching to the tapering tail. Songbird knew the horn-toads could not hurt her with their many horns, nor could they bite, for they had no teeth.

After eating, the toads became sleepy, so she placed them back in the bowl and carried them to their accustomed place in the tepee.

"Caw! Caw!" a crow croaked outside, and Songbird hastened to the black, shining bird that walked jerkily at the entrance of her home. Its beady eyes blinked up at her, and its head twisted sidewise in a very knowing manner; then it straightened up and gave its hoarse call, as though it had a sore throat.

"Caw! Caw!"

She did not clap her hands to-day and imitate its cry, but moved quietly into the tepee and soon came back, holding a deep earthen bowl which she placed on the ground. The crow sidled up, cocking its head to see if anything were coming upon it from the sky or from the back. Satisfied that no robbers were near, it began eating.

Songbird watched it as she sat on the ground with her knees drawn up and her hands propping her chin. Very gravely she decided that the crow was getting fatter.

For several months she had cared for it. Some accident had happened to its upper bill and half of it was gone, so the crow had not been able to pick up food from the ground or eat anything solid as the others could do when they pecked very hard. It had been almost dead from starvation when Songbird noticed it lying in the camp. She had driven away the other children who were teasing it with sticks.

Her father had shown her how to fix soft food in a deep bowl so that the poor crow could thrust its entire beak down deeply to eat the moist mixture. So day after day it came to the tepee, knowing it would find food. The meal finished, it always bobbed and stalked around, repeating its cry, "Caw! Caw!" until at last it flapped its glossy wings and darted high above Songbird's head. But even when almost out of sight she could hear it calling to thank her and say that it would come again the next day.

When she picked up the bowl to return it to its proper place, as Quannah had taught her to do, a beautiful fawn, with skin like brown velvet dotted with small white spots, leaped from the side of the tepee as though it were trying to frighten her. Its nose sniffed the empty bowl as it stood poised on slender legs and stretched its graceful neck. Songbird tipped the bowl. The fawn licked it perfectly clean. Then its pink tongue touched the little brown hand that held the bowl, and Songbird, looking into the beautiful dark eyes, stroked the soft nose.

The fawn waited at the entrance of the tepee until she came out. It kept pace with her to the place where Moko, the Picture-maker, lived. She was a very wonderful old squaw with pure white hair. It was her work to paint pictures on the backs of dried buffalo robes.

One side of these robes was always covered with brown, thick hair, while the under side, dried and stretched very smoothly, had to be painted carefully with colours made from roots, berries and earths, mixed in a way that the old Picture-maker alone understood. Moko did not like any one to watch her at work, but Songbird was always welcomed. The child would sit for hours wondering at the magic way in which Moko made figures of Indians on ponies, sometimes chasing buffaloes, hunting antelope, or possibly a camp with warriors walking about the many tepees.

"Who showed you how to make pictures, Moko?" asked Songbird.

"The Great Spirit," replied the Picture-maker, and Songbird pondered over the answer. The painting Moko was now doing was the most wonderful of all that Songbird had ever seen. The robe was the largest buffalo hide that any Comanche had ever owned. Quannah had killed the enormous beast with just one arrow, and the meat had provided food for many days. Now the hide, cured and dried, was being painted for him, and Songbird knew that some day it would be given to her to keep.

The picture showed a lot of Indians fighting white men. The Indians could be easily told by their war-bonnets. All around the edges, the robe was bordered with the fighters, but in the very centre was an Indian boy riding a swiftly running pony. In his arms was a little girl. Songbird knew that the boy was Peta Nocona, and the girl in his arms was Preloch, the white child who had afterward been the mother of Quannah and of Prairie Flower.

"Why do the brothers of my father's mother war with us?" she asked at last, for the question had been puzzling her a long time.

The old squaw kept on with her work, as she replied, "Because they want our lands, our ponies, our grass for their own pony herds, and they want to kill all the buffalo and antelope, so there will be none left for us. Then we could not make new tepees, nor warm robes, nor clothes, nor moccasins. Our ponies would all die if the white men had the prairie lands, and the white hunters killed the game which they did not need for food. Other Indians have told us how the white men cut the hides from buffaloes that lie as thick as fallen leaves, and then leave the meat to spoil or for coyotes to eat. Indians hunt that they may have enough meat and robes to provide for their tribes. So it will be with the grass. The white men's herds will eat it all, leaving our ponies to starve."

"But the world is so big," Songbird spoke, "why cannot all men dwell in peace and share the game and grass?"

"Because the white people want to rule us," the Picture-maker answered quickly. "We lived here long before the white men came. We are the children of the Great Spirit. He gave us the land, He gave us the wild horses that we might tame and use them, He gave us the buffalo and deer, the antelope on the flats, the fish in the streams, that we might live happily. And because these things all belong to the Great Spirit, we did not kill more than we needed.

"The tribes did not quarrel with each other, for each had its own land and no one sought to drive them from it. Men were taught not to lie or steal, and a man who pledged his word was dishonoured if he broke it. But long years ago tales came to us through other tribes, of men with white faces who lied, stole, and cheated Indians who had believed in them. These white-faced men killed the game, killed the Indians, burned their tepees, then came in still greater numbers and drove the Indians from place to place, saying, 'This is our land. This game belongs to us. You must not touch it!'"

Moko paused and Songbird kept silent, fearing the old woman might not speak further, but at last she went on.

"When game grew scarce in the places where we had been driven, our warriors went in search of foods and robes for the old people, the squaws, and the children. White men, who saw them coming, did not ask why our men had wandered from the camps, but began to fight. After that day our warriors fought every white man they met. Each chief knew that unless he fought, his own tribe would be driven until it had no place to go, no game to eat, no robes for tepees or to sleep under when cold nights brought wind and snow, and soon all the Indians would die."

"My father's mother did not want to go away from us," said Songbird. "Many times he has told me she loved the Comanche people."

"I saw her grief"—the old Picture-maker spoke slowly, and now her wrinkled hand lay idly in her lap—"I heard her beg the white men to leave her with us, but they would not listen to her. So Preloch, the white squaw of Peta Nocona, and her baby daughter, Prairie Flower, went away and none of us ever saw them again. That is how the white men would treat all of the Indians if we did not fight them."

"My father tells me that his mother was three winters older than I am now, at the time his father carried her to our camp." Songbird leaned forward. Her body rested on the ground, but her elbow propped her cheek, so that she might still watch the work of the old Picture-maker. "Tell me about her, please."

Moko nodded, but her hand moved less swiftly as she began talking, while her eyes looked through the tepee opening across the rolling prairie, as though she saw once more the young son of the chief coming into camp with the white child in his arms.

"I can see her now as he rode past me. Her hair was like sunshine, and when the Great Spirit made openings in the sky so that we could see the stars at night, two little pieces must have been kept to make her blue eyes. As she grew up among us she was different, for she was as gentle as a young doe. Many times she made peace between hot-blooded young warriors who wished to fight one another. The children followed her just to see her smile at them."

A deep sigh interrupted Moko's story, and for a few seconds the old woman forgot the little girl who waited patiently.

"I remember the day the white men took her away. Dark clouds gathered overhead. Peta Nocona, our chief, was dead, but he had told us to flee to our camp in the hills where the white men could not follow nor find us. As we fled, the rain fell upon us, and Karolo, the Medicine Man, called upon the Great Spirit to send the spirits of Peta Nocona and all the other Comanche warriors from the Happy Hunting Grounds, that they might follow Preloch and her daughter, Prairie Flower, into the land of the white men and bring them back again to their own people.

"The Great Spirit will send them both back some day," Karolo said as the rain beat on his face. "He is weeping now because his children are captives among the white people."

"Then we who heard him drew our robes over our faces that none but the Great Spirit might see our grief. And for many moons the Comanches of the Quahadas kept their hair cut short because we were mourning the death of our great War Chief, Peta Nocona, and the loss of his white squaw, Preloch, with her baby daughter, Prairie Flower. Many winters have passed, but they have never come back to us."

"The snows of many winters have fallen on my head," the old Picture-maker spoke after a short silence. "I am weary and my heart is sad for my people. But I have asked the Great Spirit to let me stay until I have painted one more robe, so that you may hang it in your tepee with this one. Your children's children shall read the pictures and learn how your father, Quannah, Chief of the Quahadas, conquered the white men who robbed him of his mother and sister. After I have finished that robe, the Great Spirit will let me rest, for I am old and weary, and my children wait me in the Happy Hunting Grounds."

"I wish I could go with my father, as Preloch went with Peta Nocona," said Songbird. "I can shoot arrows as well as the boys, and Star can go as fast as Running Deer!"

"Some tribes take their squaws to help in the fight, but Quannah will not allow it," asserted Moko. "Women and children must obey his orders and stay in camp while the men go out to fight. Our chief says that the work of women is to teach children to be fearless and truthful. That work is as great as fighting. Sometimes I think it may be greater work. Preloch said that it was better to make men love each other rather than teach them to hate and kill one another. Maybe she was right, but the white men hate us and we have to save our own lives and our homes."

Muttering to herself the old woman rose from the place where she had been sitting, and as Songbird saw the thin lips tighten, she knew that the Picture-maker would not talk any more, so she slipped away from the tent and sat watching the sun drop over the edge of the world. Two white clouds closed together, and Songbird knew that the Spirit of the Sun had dropped the flap of its tent so that it could sleep. Soon the Spirit of Night would ride his big black pony across the sky and the shadow would hide everything from sight.

Somewhere in the world of darkness Songbird's father would be sleeping. Her eyes filled with tears and her lips trembled. She was so little, so afraid and so lonely.

In the big tepee of the Quahada Chief, Songbird crept to bed, and as she lay staring into the darkness toward her father's couch of skins, she heard the shrill yelps of coyotes gathering around the camp. Suddenly she drew the buffalo robe over her head and sobbed herself to sleep.