the Kiowa interrupted angrily. "Even now they are gathering in great bands, and making ready to sweep upon us from all four sides of the earth at once, hoping to scatter us like dry leaves before a windstorm.

Soon we shall be driven to the edge of the earth. Then only the cold ashes of our camp fires will be left to tell the places where our children once dwelt."

"Yes, that is true," the Chief of the Quahadas spoke, and his head sank so that his chin rested on his breast, while his eyes were fixed on the ground. "My mother, Preloch, bade me rule the Quahadas wisely. If I war on the white men, they will come in still greater numbers, and my tribe will suffer. But the white men killed my father and took my mother and sister away. My mother did not want to leave us, and she sent word to me by old Moko, the Picture-maker, that she would try to escape from the white men and come back to me. Maybe she is dead now. When the sun shines on the winter snow, no one can bring it back. But the moisture sinks into the heart of the earth where the flowers are born. So though my mother has never come back to me, the memory of her words lives in my heart. I wish to rule my people wisely and help them. Maybe it would be best not to fight. I will ask my warriors. What they say, that will I do!"

When the Quahadas had gathered about their chief and the Kiowa messenger, the Kiowa spoke quickly.

"My chief sent me to ask whether Quannah, Chief of the Quahadas, will join us and lead your tribe to help us save our people from the white men who will kill the Comanches and Kiowas, take our children and squaws captives, and laugh at our humiliation. Shall I go back and say to my chief that Quannah, Chief of the Quahada Comanches, is a squaw because his white blood is afraid to fight his mother's people who stole her?"

Quannah's eyes flashed angrily, and he flung out his hand while he replied, "Tell your chief that I and my warriors will fight against the white men because we must save the game and gra.s.s and protect our women and children. That is all. Go!"

Star and Running Deer watched the Kiowa messenger leap on the strange pony's back. Then, with a shrill call, the rider was lost in a cloud of dust that arose from the swiftly running pony, while Quannah, surrounded by his warriors, looked after the vanishing Indian.

"Why should the white men drive us from our camps?" asked Star as he turned to his mother. "We do not drive the Kiowas from their camps, and the Comanche ponies graze beside the ponies of other tribes, for there is gra.s.s enough for us all."

"White men are different from ponies," answered Running Deer. "That is all I know. Maybe the white men war among themselves and destroy each other's camps, and carry away the women and children as prisoners."

During that evening, when the shadows grew longer and darker, and the huge campfire sent shafts of light like golden arrows between the trees, the warriors gathered in consultation.

Their faces were very stern as they seated themselves on the ground in a half circle, while Quannah and the Medicine Man faced them. The Medicine Man was very old. The face he lifted toward the stars was wrinkled, his raised hands trembled, and the words he spoke to the Great Spirit asked that help might be given the warriors so that the gra.s.s and game might be saved for the tribe.

While he was speaking, coyotes yelped from the darkness beyond the light of the camp fire, and Star, standing very closely against his mother, twitched nervously and kept looking backward to see how near the coyotes might be. All the ponies understood that a band of coyotes would chase any pony if it were alone, and if they overtook it, they would tear it to pieces. So when a bunch of coyotes came near the pony herd, the mares surrounded the colts in the very centre of the group, keeping their noses closely against the colts, and the mothers would lash out their heels and protect them. But fear of a band of coyotes never died as the colts grew older.

"The warriors are holding a War Council now," Running Deer told Star.

"Our wise old Medicine Man will tell them what the Great Spirit tells him. Then he will bless them that the strength of the Great Spirit may enter their hearts and help them conquer their enemies and save the game and the gra.s.s."

Through the night the fire burned brightly, while the Comanches sat in a large circle talking together. Star, waking many times, lifted his head that he might watch the warriors who faced the Medicine Man and Quannah.

Once the pony half rose to his feet, but Running Deer kicked at him as she lay beside him.

"Lie down and be quiet," she whispered angrily. "It is not dawn yet. You will waken the other ponies and they are weary. What is the matter with you to-night?"

"I want to go back to Songbird, Mother," he answered. "If the white men find the camp they may take her away as they took Quannah's mother and sister, and she may never come back again!"

"Quannah would follow them and get her back. He loves her more than anything else," Running Deer said.

"But all the Comanche ponies are here with us," Star went on anxiously.

"If I go back to her, she could ride swiftly from the white men, if they try to capture her."

"Stop talking so foolishly," snorted Running Deer. "Quannah is wiser than you are. He will guard her from harm. Go to sleep at once, for we have many miles to travel yet."

Chapter V

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 hoa.r.s.e 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, c.o.c.king 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s. 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 gra.s.s?"

"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.