Mention of Chief Totantora did not warn Ruth of any pending event.  The thing which happened was quite unexpected as far as she was concerned.

The westbound train halted at Clearwater one afternoon, while the three white girls were sitting on the rear platform of their car busy with certain necessary needlework—­for there were no maids in the party.  Ruth idly raised her eyes to see who got off the train, for the station was in plain view.

“There are two soldiers,” she said.  “Look!  Boys coming home from ’over there,’ I do believe.  See!  They have their trench helmets slung behind them with their other duffle.  Why——­”

She halted.  Helen had looked up lazily, but it was Jennie who first exclaimed in rejoinder to Ruth’s observation: 

“Dear me, it surely isn’t my Henri!”

“No,” said Ruth slowly, but still staring, “there is no horizon blue uniform in sight.”

“Don’t remind us of such possibilities,” complained Helen Cameron with a deep sigh.  “If Tom—­”

“It is!” gasped Ruth, under her breath, and suddenly the other girls looked at her to observe an almost beatific expression spread over the features of the girl of the Red Mill.

“Ruthie!” cried Helen, and jumped up from her seat.

“My aunt!” murmured Jennie, and stared as hard as she could along the beaten path toward the station.

The two figures in uniform strode toward the special car.  One straight and youthful figure came ahead, while the other soldier, as though in a subservient position, followed in the first one’s footsteps.

Wonota was coming across the street toward the railroad.  She, too, saw the pair of uniformed men.  For an instant the Indian girl halted.  Then she bounded toward the pair, her light feet fairly spurning the ground.

“My father!  Chief Totantora!” the white girls heard her cry.

The leading soldier halted, swung about to look at her, and said something to his companion.  Not until this order was given him did the second man even look in the direction of the flying Indian maid.

Ruth and her friends then saw that he was a man past middle age, that his face was that of an Indian, and that his expression was quite as stoical as the countenances of Indians are usually presumed to be.

But Wonota had learned of late to give way to her feelings.  No white girl could have flung herself into the arms of her long-lost parent with more abandon than did Wonota.  And that not-withstanding the costume she wore—­the very pretty one sent West from the Fifth Avenue modiste’s shop!

Perhaps the change in his lovely daughter shocked Totantora at first, He seemed not at all sure that this was really his Wonota.  Nor did he put his arms about her as a white father would have done.  But he patted her shoulder, and then her cheek, and in earnest gutturals he conversed a long time with the Indian maid.