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Amoyah had nothing but his imagination to support his theory, but it seemed singularly credible to Altsasti, to whom he rehearsed it, finding her seated on the ground before the door of her winter house in great dreariness of spirit, that he should in playing so well have won nothing and merely jeopardized the game.

“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. “Everybody knows that a man’s wife makes him all the trouble that he needs.”

To save him from these woes devised by others Altsasti undertook to give him all the trouble he needed. But he seemed quite cheerful in the prospect, and as she cooked the supper within doors he sat at the entrance, much at home, singing, “Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!”

Tus-ka-sah upbraided the magician with the result of this victory, by which he was defeated. And the wise man threw up eyes and hands at his ingratitude.

“I set the Great Bear after Amoyah for you! I made the Eeon-a acquainted with his boastful lies, and he bewitched Amoyah’s ball-sticks that his fine play might come to nothing.”

Very little to the purpose, the disaffected man of facts reflected, remembering the impression produced by his rival’s display of skill. Somehow Amoyah seemed beyond the reach of logic. “Why did you not instead bewitch the woman?” Tus-ka-sah asked.

But this wiliest of the cheera-taghe shook his head.

“If she had been a mere woman,” he said. “But a widow is a witch herself.”

“Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!” sang Amoyah at the door of the winter house.

Eeon-a, the Great Bear, made no sign and slept in peace at his town house in the mountains.

And since then, as always before, under the first icy moon of the winter the company of bears with their feather-crested shadows take up their mysterious march seven times around the “beloved square” of their ancient secluded town in the Great Smoky Mountains, which it is said may be seen to this day–by all who can find it!