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.

"When I first saw the poor old chap he was little more than a skeleton.
But the life Indians lead certainly makes them tough and enduring. He
stood starvation and confinement better than the white men. Some of the
ex-show people died in that influenza epidemic the second year of the
war. But old Totantora was pretty husky, in spite of having all the
appearance of a professional living skeleton," explaine