Three weeks after the warriors had left the village, Star wandered up to the big tepee and poked at the entrance with his nose. Songbird lifted the flap and stroked his nose, for she had heard him coming. Then she dropped the flap again, as she did not want any one to see what she was doing.
First she took pieces of dry buffalo meat and tied them together in a bunch, then she laid them carefully in a large square of buckskin. With them she placed some of the little cakes made of pounded meat and nuts, and as she glanced around she saw a prayer-stick, which she laid on the other things. The four corners of the buckskin were then drawn together and bound securely by a twisted thong.
After these preparations she took her doll and tucked it into the belt that held her robe at the waist. It was now almost dark.
She went out of the tepee and mingled with the other children, until they scattered for the night. Then Songbird returned to the tepee and sat alone, her arms about her knees, and her eyes staring steadily beyond the raised flap at the dim outline of the hill over which her father had ridden.
Satisfied, at last, that no one would notice her, she slipped cautiously from the tepee and made her way to where Star was stretched out among the old ponies. A hobble was on his front ankles, so that he would not stray during the night.
Songbird unfastened the hobble and thrust it into the bundle she was carrying, and Star rose to his feet. His head bent for the bridle in her hand. She did not mount the pony, but led him away from camp without arousing any one. Then clutching the bundle which she had prepared in the tepee, she climbed to Star's back and turned his head in the direction in which her father had led the warriors.
She had no fear that she would not be able to find them, for she knew their ponies would make a plain trail, and though she could not see it herself, Star would know and follow it. The Great Spirit taught ponies how to do that.
It was the memory of Preloch, who had ridden beside Peta Nocona when he had gone to fight the white men, that made Songbird determine that she would find her father and ride with him. She could shoot arrows as well as any large boy, and she could ride much better than most of them.
If her father told her that she could not stay and fight, she would remind him that the little boys who had frightened the white horses had not been any older than she was now. So she had brought her bow and all the arrows that she had been saving for a long time, and when she found her father she would show him that she was not a baby. She had her bow, her arrows, food to eat, and Star, who could out-run any other Quahada pony except Running Deer.
So she rode while it was dark, trusting Star to keep the trail. When the sun rose, the hoof prints of unshod ponies could be seen distinctly, though in some places the wind had stirred dry sand over them.