Star Part 9

"No; but he said that the flag on the lodge-pole meant that all those who came to it for help are treated kindly, and all who live under it are protected. I asked him if he thought that it could make the buffalo hunters and other men with fire-sticks leave the Quahadas in peace. He and the Old White Horse both said they were sure of it, if Quannah would lead us all there to talk."

"That was what the messengers from the Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Kiowa camps said to Quannah," retorted Hawk. "The white men wanted them to make a treaty of peace in a big Medicine Lodge, and then the Indians would go and live where the white men put them. Quannah did not do it.

He was wise. He would not trust the white people, nor let them rule the Quahadas, as though we were all captives. Who can tell what they would do afterward? Why do you trust the two strange horses and their stories?"

"They are my friends!" Star's eyes were angry, his ears flattened backward, his lips twitched so that his teeth showed. As he thrust his head forward, Hawk jumped aside to avoid Star's strong teeth, and Running Deer stood in front of her colt.

"Why do you fight Hawk?" she snorted as Star moved out of her reach.

"You and he have played together all your lives. His mother and I grew up together, and our mothers slept side by side before I was born. These strangers are not of our people. They will leave us when they have a chance to return to their own people, but we shall remain together until we die. That is right. The white men and their horses have their own ranges; the Indians and their ponies have other places. Whenever they meet there is trouble and sorrow. When they dwell apart there is peace.

So why should you quarrel with Hawk about these strange horses of the white men?"

"I am sorry," spoke Hawk, edging more closely toward Star.

The other pony moved quickly and rubbed his nose against Hawk's shoulder, saying, "I'm sorry, too. I was to blame, but I do like to listen to them talking."

"Let me go with you now and hear them," suggested Hawk.

"Yes, go!" said Running Deer, and she watched the two ponies trotting together toward the Old White Horse and the Big Gray Horse, who showed their pleasure at having the youngsters join them.

A couple of hours later as the ponies rested beside the big horses under the shade of a tree, Star scrambled hastily to his feet, saying, "Songbird is calling me. Good-bye!"

It did not take long for him to reach her side. She was standing before the opening of the big tepee and a short tether was in her hand. Star bent his head so that she could slip the crude bridle back of his ears and around his nose, but there was no bit to be thrust into his mouth.

Then without saddle or blanket she prepared to mount. Grasping his s.h.a.ggy mane in her strong little hands, she sprawled against his side and balanced her body across his back, after which she wriggled until she sat erect, with the single strand of rawhide in her left hand.

Star knew that the pressure of her knee meant for him to turn one way or the other. When she leaned forward and her bare brown legs clamped closely against his body, the pony understood, without whip or spur, that he must go faster. The lightest pull on the rawhide loop around his nose caused him to stop at once. Besides all this, the tones of Songbird's voice guided him, and he always did his best to obey and please her, because he loved her.

Often Songbird's pet fawn accompanied them. The fawn thought it great sport to out-run the pony, but at times Star reached slyly to nip the little creature, which took delight in teasing the pony and getting in front of it.

Some days the other Comanche children rode with Songbird, and when they raced their ponies Star could easily outdistance the rest. Most of the children rode the old ponies that were too stiff to be of value in trades. The Comanches traded ponies instead of using money like white people. The children bragged one to the other, about the number of ponies his, or her, father owned, and how fast those ponies could run.

Songbird did not talk like the rest. Everyone knew that her father, Quannah, had the most ponies of any warrior in any Indian tribe, and that his ponies were faster and more beautiful than all others.

She thought proudly of the pony races during festivals. When only the ponies of the Quahadas ran, Quannah's ponies were not among them, for he would not humiliate his own warriors by showing how slowly their ponies ran. But when the Cheyennes, Kiowas, or Arapahoes brought their best ponies to race against those of the Quahadas, Running Deer was led into the line of strange ponies.

As she stood among them, her bright eyes would note each lithe body, each nervous nostril, and the outlines of steeled muscles. Measuring her rivals she would toss her dainty head, and when the signal was given, would shoot away like an arrow from the other ponies and reach the goal ahead of them. Then amid wild shouts the Quahadas would gather about Running Deer who had upheld the honour of the tribe.

Later the defeated warriors would go back to their own camps, but the best ponies would be left behind with the herd of the Quahadas. Songbird knew that some day Star would race for the honour of the tribe. So while the other children raced and bragged, Songbird watched and was silent.

The games that Songbird played with the children were not so very different from many games played by white children in other parts of the world. Both boys and white girls shot arrows at targets, or, mounted on high stilts, chased one another between the tepees. There were wooden tops carved from tough limbs of trees, and the boys made whistles of reeds on which they blew music that the Indians loved.

Tiring of this they would turn to playing "Wolf" or "Chaser," which is much like "Tag," or it might be a game of "Hide Things" which was the name for "Hide and Seek." "Cat's Cradle" was played with strings of tough buckskin, and a great favourite among the boys was a breath-holding contest in which the boy who could hold his breath the longest was the winner, and the one who was first to fail was ridiculed by boys and girls.

Songbird and the other little girls had dolls which the squaws made for them. These were of buckskin painted gaily, and hair from the tails of ponies was sewed to the heads. The women used threads of fine sinews, and sharply pointed bits of stout wood pushed the queer thread through the material. That was the way the Comanche women sewed, even in making their tents, their clothes, and their moccasins.

Keeping house and having feasts like dinner parties made many merry hours. The boys, who scorned to play with the dolls, were very glad to join the games when they saw cactus-fruit, pine nuts, dried wild berries, dried acorns, and maybe deer meat that had been cut into long narrow strips and hung in the sun until cured so that it could be eaten without being cooked. There might even be little cakes made of dried buffalo meat that had been pounded between two stones and mixed with dried berries.

Instead of candy they chewed dried mesquite beans, which were juicy inside, and though sweet were tart. Possibly a special treat had been prepared for the little housekeepers, and their mothers had given them cactus-fruit. Eagerly the children watched the gorgeous yellow blossoms form on the p.r.i.c.kly-pear bushes, and when the petals fell, leaving the delicious fruit, they knew enough not to touch it, for it was thickly encrusted with tiny stickers. These were so fine as to be almost invisible and were very painful as they worked into the flesh.

A tough stick was used to knock the fruit from the edge of the thick, flat, fleshy leaves that formed great clumps of the p.r.i.c.kly-pear cactus.

The thorns and skin were then removed with sharp sticks, or by placing for a few moments in hot ashes. The feast usually wound up with chewing gum obtained from the sweet sap of certain trees. It oozed through the bark, formed into dry lumps, and was all ready for any little Comanche who happened near.

So the men hunted deer and buffalo and made plans to protect their families and homes, and the women searched for roots, nuts, and berries for food and medicine, made clothes and cooked, while the children played their games, like other children all over the world, and listened to stories told in the tepees and by the camp fires, until the Spirit of Darkness rode his big black horse across the sky.

Then the children of the Quahada Comanches went into their tepee-homes, curled up on their beds of furry robes and slept.

But Songbird knew that Quannah and the wisest and bravest men of the tribe sat in the big tepee talking very gravely, night after night, when they thought that she was sound asleep. She heard enough to understand that they did not think the white men had given up the fight, but would come again some day, and come in greater numbers to conquer the Quahadas.

Chapter XIII

Songbird awakened early one morning and lost no time getting into her moccasins and buckskin dress. Then she braided her hair and fastened it with bits of red string.

Aided by one of the older squaws, she set the tepee in order for the day. The home of the Quahada Chief, though larger than other dwellings in the big village, was built like the rest.

A circular framework of poles had been erected to form a peak where they joined near the top. There were twenty poles made of hewn cedar trees.

The poles were lashed together by hide ropes, then firmly sewed buffalo skins, stretched tautly over them, were pegged solidly to the hard ground. But an opening at the top of the tepee permitted the ends of the poles to protrude.

In the centre of Songbird's home was a fire, arranged so that the smoke would pa.s.s through the opening at the top of the tepee. On either side of this pit hung skins on crude frames. By moving these screens the smoke from the fire pit could be controlled when the wind shifted, thus making an inside chimney which carried off the smoke but allowed the warmth to spread in the tepee. Near the fire crotched sticks supported a pole on which clothes, robes, or moccasins could be hung when wet.

The doors or openings of all the tepees in the village faced the east, and were closed by flaps of buffalo hides on frames which enabled them to be lifted easily, yet which stayed in place during bad weather.

Two beds, or seats, were arranged inside the dwelling. One at a side, the other at the back. These beds were merely slightly raised platforms on which many soft robes had been thrown. But there were pillows of buckskin stuffed with the feathers of wild turkeys, geese, or ducks, mixed with long, soft hair cut from buffalo hides.

Decorated skins hung slanting from the centre of the room across and over the two beds, so that any water would be drained from the smoke hole in rainy weather, and thus the fire was protected, as well as the beds. The entire inside of the tepees had been painted by Moko in designs of queer characters, or pictures of Comanches hunting or fighting.

Mats of woven bark and plaited rushes lay on the smooth, hard dirt floor. A border of interwoven twigs around the two beds kept cold drafts away in winter. During the summer the edges of the tepee were lifted and tied, thus allowing the breeze full sway.

Songbird was very proud of her home as she bustled around, sweeping the earth floor with her broom made of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s and twigs. Then with the wing of a wild turkey, she carefully brushed the scattered ashes to the centre of the fire-pit. Her father's best saddle hung on a post, and on another was his big shield made of toughened buffalo hide.

She stood looking at the shield, for it was beautifully painted, and a fringe of buckskin bordered it all around. The buffalo hide had been shrunken over fire to make it twice as tough and thick as originally.

Moko had told her about the important ceremony which took place when a new shield was made, and how the Medicine Man blessed it, so that it would protect the warrior who carried it.

She had also told how the Quahadas in battle formed long lines, and the other Indians who were enemies made a line opposite. After that, one warrior rode out alone. Holding his shield high in the air, and balancing his long lance, he challenged his foes to send a warrior to meet him in single battle between the two lines of Indians.

Then the other Indians sent their best fighter, and the two tribes waited as the hors.e.m.e.n dashed toward each other, their ponies' manes and long tails flying while the silver mountings on their bridles clinked.

The warriors leaning forward, with war bonnets of tall feathers that trailed almost to the ground, met in a crash, and then if the spear were not of tough wood, or the shield were not strong and tightly stretched, the tribe of the wounded warrior was humiliated as their champion fell from his pony.

No lance had ever pierced Quannah's shield, though he had met the foes of his tribes many times. But Songbird, small as she was, knew that the white men did not fight with lances and shields. Moko had said that the fire-sticks would tear the best shield the Quahadas could make, and that the men with the fire-sticks could stand far away yet kill the Quahada warriors before the Indians could reach their white foes.

"They will come back to-day." The old squaw, who was puttering among the cooking utensils at the back of the tent, spoke. "May the Great Spirit grant they bring much meat, for our dried meat must be cured before the days grow wet and cold."

"I have two prayer-sticks," answered Songbird, proudly pointing at little sticks fastened by cactus thorns to the wall of the tepee. "They will bring my father and his warriors back to us safely with all the meat and robes that are needed."

The little sticks, about as long as the hand of a grown man, were decorated with feathers, and other objects were attached by strings of buckskin. The feathers, from the breast of an eagle, were called "breath feather," for when the prayers were offered to the Great Spirit for any warrior, the "breath feather" carried it to the Great Spirit and the warrior was protected. Songbird knew that Karolo, the Medicine Man, had moistened the prayer-sticks with wonderful medicine, and that he had sprinkled them with sacred pollen. Karolo had given the prayer-sticks to Songbird to comfort her when she was alone.