For there upon the bank, as if struck from his hand in the confusion and turmoil of first entering the water, lay his ball-sticks.  He seemed about to return for them, as the implement of the game must be dipped also in the water at the appropriate moment of the incantation.  But old Cheesto, the Rabbit, motioned him to forbear lest by this unprecedented quitting of the line during the ceremonial the efficacy of the spell be annulled; he himself stooped down and picked up the ball-sticks.  Then, notwithstanding his age and his fierce rheumatism, notwithstanding his long and cumbrous robe of buffalo skin, the skirt of which he seemed to clutch with difficulty, he plunged into the icy water, waded out to the young man, handed him the ball-sticks, and regained the bank just as the other cheera-taghe standing at the margin of the river began the incantations supposed to influence the success of the competition.

This Indian game, which has left its name on one of the watercourses of Tennessee, Ball-Play Creek, required a level space of some five or six hundred yards in length but no other preparation of the ground.  At one end, in the direction of Niowee, two tall poles were fixed firmly in the earth about three yards apart, and slanting outward.  At the end toward Ioco a similar goal was prepared.  Every time the ball should be thrown over either goal the play would count one for the proximate town, and the game was of twelve or twenty points according to compact, the catcher of the twentieth ball being entitled to especial honor.  It was of course the object of each side to throw the ball over the goal toward their own town, and to prevent it from going in the direction of the town of the opposing faction.

All the morning crowds of Cherokees of all ages and both sexes had been gathering from the neighboring towns, and were congregated in the wide spaces about the course at Ioco.  These fields had earlier been planted in corn, but the harvest had stripped the plain, and now the trampling of hundreds of feet erased all vestiges of the growth except for the yellow-gray tint of the stubble, spreading out on every side to the brown of the dense fallen leaves on the slopes where the forests began to climb the mountain sides.  Here and there fires were kindled where some spectator felt the keen chill of the approaching winter, and more than one meal was in progress,—­perhaps such groups had come from far.  Pack-horses were in evidence laden with rich garments of fur, various peltry, blankets, valuable gear of every sort to be staked on the result of the game, and soon the men were betting heavily.  All the various tones of the gamut were on the air,—­the deep bass guttural laugh of the braves; the shrill callow yelping of boys; the absent-minded bawl of spoiled pappooses interested in the stir, but with an ever-recurrent recollection of the business of vocally disciplining their patient mothers; the keen treble chatter of women,—­all were suddenly resolved into