Meanwhile the three white girls had their own special surprise.  The white soldier, who was plainly an officer, advanced toward the special car.  His bronzed and smiling face was not to be mistaken even at that distance.  Helen suddenly cried: 

“Hold me, somebody!  I know I’m going to faint!  That’s Tommy-boy.”

Ruth, however, gave no sign of fainting.  She dashed off the steps of the car and ran several yards to meet the handsome soldier.  Then she halted, blushing to think of the appearance she made.  Suppose members of the company should see her?

“Well, Ruth,” cried the broadly smiling Tom, “is that the way you greet your best chum’s brother?  Say!  You girls ought to be kinder than this to us.  Why! when we paraded in New York an old lady ran right out into the street and kissed me.”

“And how many pretty girls did the same, Captain Tom?” Ruth wanted to know sedately.

“Nobody as pretty as you, Ruth,” he whispered, seizing both her hands and kissing her just as his sister and Jennie reached the spot.  He let Helen—­and even Jennie—–­kiss him also.

“You know how it is, Tommy,” the latter explained.  “If I can’t kiss my own soldier, why shouldn’t I practise on you?”

“No reason at all, Jennie,” he declared.  “But let me tell the good news.  By the time you get back to New York a certain major in the French forces expects to be relieved and to be on his way to the States again.  He tells me that you are soon going to become a French citizeness, ma cherie."

It was a very gay party that sat for the remainder of that afternoon on the observation platform of the special car.  There was so much to say on both sides.

“So the appearance of Wonota’s father was the great surprise you had in store for us, Tom?” Ruth said at one point.

“That’s it.  And some story that old fellow can tell his daughter—­if he warms up enough to do it.  These Indians certainly are funny people.  He seems to have taken a shine to me and follows me around a good deal as though he were my servant.  Yet I understand that he belongs to the very rich Osage tribe, and is really one of the big men of it.”

“Quite true,” Ruth said.

The story of Totantora’s adventures in Germany was a thrilling one.  But only by hearsay had Tom got the details.  The Indians and other performers put in confinement by the Germans when the war began, had all suffered more or less.  Twice Chief Totantora had escaped and tried to make his way out of the country.  Each time he had been caught, and more severely treated.

The third time he had succeeded in breaking through into neutral territory.  Even there, in a strange land, amid unfamiliar customs and people talking an unknown language, he had made his way alone and without help till he had reached the American lines.  Perhaps one less stoical, with less endurance, than an Indian, and an Indian, like Chief Totantora, trained in an earlier, hardier day, could not have done it.  But Wonota’s father did succeed, and after he reached the American lines he became attached in some indefinite capacity to Captain Tom Cameron’s regiment.