The next morning Joe was down at the Indian camp very early to see his dusky friends make ready for their departure. The chief told him that they had camped on the Oxhide for the last time; the whites had taken up all the country, and the buffalo would come there no more. Now when they needed buffalo meat, they would be obliged to go out as far as the Walnut, and in a few more years there would be no buffalo at all. His people would have to take the "white man's road" if they expected to live. He and the other warriors made their youthful friend some presents, and told him that they had to go by the house to take the trail down the Smoky Hill Fork to their distant home. He said that they would stop a moment at the ranche to say good by to all the people who had been so kind to him and the tribe every year since they had camped on the creek. Joe returned to Errolstrath, feeling very sad, because he had become much attached to the Indians, and he knew that he would miss them so much, and feel lonely for a long time. He told the family that the Pawnees would come soon to say farewell, and that they must be sure to be out on the veranda when they came. By nine o'clock, Kate, whose ears were well trained to faint sounds, through her vigilance when a captive in the Cheyenne camp, came into the house from the porch where she had been attending to her birds as usual, and said the Pawnees were coming; she could hear the tread of their ponies' hoofs. Then the family took their places on the veranda, as they had promised Joe. Presently, slowly coming up the trail, with White Wolf in the lead, the band of Pawnees were seen approaching the house. Arrived in front, they all halted, and with their usual "How? How?" saluted the family. All came down from the porch to shake hands, when Ginger, who with the other ponies was running loose in the bunch, came up to Kate and, neighing affectionately, began to rub his nose against her arm and shoulder. The salutation of her once favorite pony was too much for the warm-hearted girl, and she burst into tears as she returned the animal's love for her by throwing her arms around his neck. "Oh, father!" said she, "why did I ever consent to part with Ginger? I am so sorry now. I would give worlds to have him back again." White Wolf, noticing her weeping, asked in his own language why the little squaw was feeling so badly. Joe told him how she loved Ginger and how sorry she was she had ever consented to give him up. White Wolf then said: "Tell her she shall have her pony again. I am a chief and do not like to see the white squaws cry." He dismounted from his animal, and going up to Kate, took Ginger's foretop in his hand; then taking hers, he pressed into it the bunch of hair. Ginger neighed when the rude ceremony of returning him to his former mistress was over, seeming to understand just what had been effected.