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Updated: July 17, 2025
Despite this show of alacrity Cheesto distinctly winced as he contemplated the sullen and averse mien of his client or parishioner, for the relation in which Tus-ka-sah stood toward him partook of the characteristics of both. The professional wiseacre, however, made shift to recover himself. "I will tell you what you have come to tell me," the prophet said quickly.
And old Cheesto, he reflected, was one of the cheera-taghe of Ioco, and could work a spell quite as well as the Great Bear, who had gone to bed for the winter two weeks ago, and had not heard of ball-sticks within the memory of man, perhaps not since he was a Cherokee himself, and playing with the rest on the course at Tennessee Town.
Cheesto fixed an anxious gaze upon his interlocutor as Tus-ka-sah rehearsed, by way of illustrating how worthless were the charms wrought, the unsubstantial fiction that had so beguiled the fancy of Altsasti, and posed Amoyah in the splendid guise of the representative of the great Eeon-a in the shadow-march of the bears. The fate of the over-wise is ever the sorrowful dispensation.
The fool may be merry and irresponsible. Cheesto was at his wit's end. With that unlucky drought in June to confront him, and dealing with the sharp business man of Ioco, who exacted his due in the exchange of the Fates as rigorously as if in a merely mundane market, the jeopardy of the magician was great and his discredit almost assured. Old Cheesto set his jaw firmly.
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!"
"I am afraid of that Great Bear," she declared, eying the ball-sticks askance as he came up. Then revealing his theory of the spell that old Cheesto had wrought upon him in Tus-ka-sah's interest, Amoyah proposed a counter-spell which would defeat Tus-ka-sah. "But Cheesto can still send you trouble if you have a wife," she argued. "Ah, no," the specious Amoyah replied.
The fields about Ioco had suffered especially, and Tus-ka-sah, as the chief business man of that town, had manifested half veiled suspicions that the art of the conjurer was incompetent; this rendered Cheesto particularly solicitous to succeed when his magic had been invoked to reduce the attractions of Amoyah in the eyes of Altsasti and turn her heart toward Tus-ka-sah.
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.
In fact, old Cheesto, in common with many men not Cherokees, cared little for the public weal when it interfered with private interest. But he had not realized how much he had jeopardized the success of Ioco Town in cutting the netting of the ball-sticks.
And now a picture was before him, being a man of fancy, he thought in pictures, a picture of old Cheesto the Rabbit holding the ball-sticks half hidden in the folds of his great fur robe and wading out into the ice-cold water to restore them.
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