"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.