A frosty morning he said it was, and he was out in the mountain a-hunting.  He repeated the song which he had been singing, and the wind as it swirled about the house must have caught his voice and carried it far.  It was a song chronicling the deeds of the Great Bear, and had a meaningless refrain, “Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!  Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!" But when he reached the advent upon the scene of the secondary hero, the Great Bear himself, very polite, speaking excellent Cherokee ("since we are alone,” he said), very recognizant of the merits of Amoyah,—­the fame of which indeed was represented to have resounded through the remotest seclusions of the ursine realm,—­fiction though it all obviously was, the man of facts could no longer endure this magnification of his rival.

“The great Eeon-a said all that to you?” he sneered.  “The fire-water at the trading-house makes your heart very strong and your tongue crooked.  This sounds to me like the language of a simple seequa, not the Great Bear—­a mere bit of an opossum!”

Amoyah paused with a sudden gasp.  He was not without an aggressive temper, albeit, persuaded of his own perfection, he feared no rival, and least of all Tus-ka-sah.

“You, Tus-ka-sah,” he retorted angrily, “have evidently strongly shaken hands with the discourse of the opossum, speaking its language like the animal itself, and also the wolfish English.  You have too many tongues, and, more than all, the deceitful, forked tongue of the snake, which is not agreeable to the old beloved speech.  For myself, the Great Bear made me welcome in the only language that does not make my heart weigh heavy,—­the elegant Cherokee language.”

The spellbound listeners had broken out with irritated protests against the interruption, and Tus-ka-sah said no more.

As the blasts went sonorously over the house and the flames swirled anew into the murky atmosphere of the interior, a weird, half-smothered voice suddenly invaded the restored quiet of the hearthstone:  “Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!  Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!”

Like an echo the barbaric chant vibrated through the room.  One of the sleepers, a half-grown youth, had semi-consciously caught the familiar refrain and sang it in that strange uncanny voice of slumber.  The tones gave fitting effect to the grotesque details of the supernatural adventure, and as Tus-ka-sah rose and surlily took his way toward the door his departure did not attract even casual notice from the listeners, hanging enthralled upon the words of the Great Eeon-a, so veraciously repeated for their behoof.  Their eyes showed intent even in the murky gloom and glistened lustrous in the alternate fitful flare; the red walls seemed to recede and advance as the flames rose and fell; the sleeping boy on the broad bed-place stirred uneasily, flinging now and again a restless arm from out the panther skins in which he was enveloped, and ever and anon his cry, “Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!  Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!" punctuated the impressive dramatic tones of the raconteur.