Quannah kept his pledge. Never again did the Quahada Comanches war with the white people, for when their chief had given his word of honour, it became their honour to uphold him and keep his promise.

Near the garrison of Fort Sill he taught his tribe the best ways of the white men, and he did his utmost to preserve a sense of fairness and justice in all his transactions with his own people as well as with the white men. The children of the Quahadas were educated, and so Quannah's little daughter was taught the things that white children learn.

Songbird saw her father honoured by the most prominent men of the United States; saw him living in a large house that was built and furnished and given to him as a token of regard from white people who had learned to understand and admire the "White Comanche Chief." She saw him a guest in homes of the most noted men in the great city of Washington, and she watched him ride in the big parade in Washington when Theodore Roosevelt was elected for the second term as President of the United States.

All that Moko had predicted the day Songbird had sat watching the old Picture Maker work on the big buffalo robe had come true. Even Quannah's desire to have his mother, Preloch, and his baby sister, Prairie Flower, come back to sleep among the Quahada people had been fulfilled.

The Congress of the United States, twenty-four years after Quannah had given his pledge of peace passed a law which gave an appropriation of a thousand dollars for a monument to be erected to the memory of Cynthia Ann Parker, whom the Quahadas called Preloch. It not only honoured the mother of Quannah, but was also an acknowledgment of the valued services of her son, in coÖperating with the United States to keep peace between the Indians and the white people.

And so Preloch and Prairie Flower came back at last to the Quahadas, and when Quannah died, he slept beside them, while the Indians mourned the passing of the greatest chief they had ever known. Untutored and unlettered, he had taught his people the lesson of forgiveness and of honour, and in so doing he had won the respect of all men.

Moko's words were again proved true when a town, Nocona, was named after Quannah's father, Peta Nocona; and to-day, still another town bears the name of the son, Quannah.

Star and Running Deer, after living happily many years, at last went to join the other Quahada ponies in the Happy Hunting Grounds.

Sometimes when the Thunder Bird wings its way across the sky, and white people think they hear distant thunder, Songbird stands with uplifted face. It is not thunder, but the sound of galloping hoofs that she hears.

Beyond the dark shadows of the Thunder Bird's wings, she knows that Quannah is riding on Running Deer. Near him is Peta Nocona, and with them rides Preloch, holding little Prairie Flower closely against her breast.

On the other side of Running Deer gallops a black pony without a rider, his thick mane and long black tail streaming like the edges of a dark cloud. Songbird knows that the pony is Star, and that some day she will ride him again beside her father.

As the thunder dies away, she smiles and turns back to the work that Quannah left for her to do, until she, too, shall answer the cry of the Great Eagle.

Books by Forrestine C. Hooker

PRINCE JAN

STAR: The Story of an Indian Pony

THE LONG DIM TRAIL