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When the ada-wehi next reappeared in a remote town of the district and was sedulously interrogated as to how his freedom had been achieved, he threw out his right hand at arm's length in his old, boastful, airy gesture. "Cheesto kaiere!" "A little old rabbit ran down the slope. I turned the soldier into a rabbit, and he ran away. And I turned myself into a fish, and I swam away. Ha! Tsida-wei-yu!"
Tsida-wei-yu!" he cried continually. Indeed, this seemed to be the only reasonable method of accounting for the renewed presence in the world of a man known to be dead. This was his status, he argued. He was a dead man, and this was his captive. The Cherokee nation could not pretend to follow with its control the actions of a dead man. They themselves had pronounced him dead.
"Akee-o-hoosa!" And the Highlander felt that death had obviously been in every stroke, and hardly wondered that they who had seen the blows dealt should now account the appearance of the man a spectral manifestation, his unquiet ghost. Then, Attusah's mood changing suddenly, "Tsida-wei-yu!"
The two prisoners could no longer see each other, and the little gestures and significant glances which had supplemented their few words, and made up for the lack of better conversational facilities were impracticable in the darkness. The silent obscurity was strangely lonely. MacVintie began to doubt if the other still lived. "Attusah!" he said at length. "Tsida-wei-yu!"
Attusah was obviously an impostor. Many, however, had full faith in his supernatural power, and often he seemed to believe in his own spectral account of himself. "Tsida-wei-yu!" "Akee-o-hoosa! Akee-o-hoosa!" Then triumphantly, "And behold I am still here." Attusah had gone unscathed through that bloody campaign of 1761 in which the Cherokees suffered such incredible rigors.
He was carving a pipe from the soft stone of the region, which so lends itself to the purpose, hardening when heated. "Tsida-wei-yu!" There was a long pause while the mockingbird sang with an exuberant magic which might baffle the emulation of any ada-wehi of them all.
"He would be if I could get close enough with a bare pinch of powder that might charge my gun!" declared Attusah disconsolately. Then himself again, "But I will tell you this! He is waiting for my poisoned arrow! And when he dies he will come back no more. He is not like me." He paused to throw out his hand with his splendid pompous gesture. "Akee-o-hoo-sa! Tsida-wei-yu!" Digatiski groaned.
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