Then they both paused and gazed at each other.
“Cherokee—heap fight! Big damn—O!” remarked Choolah, the Fox, applausively.
The use of this most vocative vowel as an intensitive suffix is one of the peculiar methods of emphasis in the animated Chickasaw language—for instance the word Yanas-O means the biggest kind of buffalo (yanasa signifying buffalo in all the dialects). Choolah conversing in the cold and phlegmatic English evidently felt the need of these intensitives, and although a certain strong condemnatory monosyllable has been usually found sufficiently satisfying to the feelings of English speaking men seeking an expletive, the poor Aboriginal, wishing to be more wicked than he was, discovered its capacity for expansion with the prefix “Big” and devised an added emphasis with the explosive final “O.”
“The Cherokee warriors? Pretty men!” said MacDonnell laconically, according the enemy’s valor the meed of a soldier’s praise. “Very pretty men.”
Choolah had never piqued himself on his command of the English language, but he thought now his fluency was at least equal to that of this Scotchman, who really seemed to speak no tongue at all. As to the French—of that speech, ookproo-se (forever despised) Choolah would not learn a syllable, so deadly a hatred did the Chickasaw tribe bear the whole Gallic nation, dating back indeed through many wars and feuds, to the massacre by Choctaws of certain of the tribe in 1704, while under the protection of Boisbriant with a French safeguard, the deed suspected to have been committed if not at the instigation, at least by the permission of the French commander who, however, himself wounded in the affray, was beyond doubt, helpless in the matter.
“Heap tired?” ventured Choolah, at last, pining for conversation, his searching eyes on the young Highlander’s face.
Ronald MacDonnell laughed a proud negation. He held out one of his long, heavily muscled arms, with the fist clenched, that the Indian might feel, through his sleeve, the swelling cords that betokened his strength.
But it was Choolah’s trait to cherish vanity in physical endowment, not to foster it in others. He only said, “Good! Swim river.”
“Why swim the river?” demanded the Lieutenant.
Then Choolah detailed that through a scout he had thrown out he had learned that Colonel Grant’s force, still pushing on, had succeeded in crossing the Tennessee river, the herd of cattle and the pack animals giving incredible trouble in the fords, deeply swollen by the unprecedented rains. It suddenly occurred to MacDonnell that, in view of the passage of the troops beyond this barrier, much caution would be requisite in endeavoring to rejoin the main body, lest they fall into the clutch of the Cherokees on the hither side, who doubtless would seek the capture of parties of stragglers by carefully patrolling the banks. He suggested this to Choolah. The Indian listened for only a moment with a look of deep conviction; then suddenly calling to five Chickasaws who were still engaged in parceling out the booty they had brought away from the dead bodies, he beckoned to MacDonnell, and they set out on a line parallel with the river, in Indian file, in a long, steady trot, the Scotchman among them, half willing, half dismayed, repudiating with the distaste of a prosaic, unimaginative mind every evidence of barbarism; every unaccustomed thing seemed grotesque and uncouth, and lacking all in lacking the cachet of civilization. Each man, as he ran lightly along that marshy turf, almost without noting, as if by instinct placed his feet upon the steps of the man in advance; thus, although seven persons passed over the ground, the largest man coming last, the footprints would show as if but one had gone that way. Ronald MacDonnell, quick at all military or athletic exercises, readily achieved conformity, although the barbarous procedure compromised his sensitive dignity, and he growled between his teeth something about a commissioned officer and a “demented goose-step,” as if he found the practice of the one by the other a painful derogation. The moon came into the sky while still they sped along in this silent, crafty way, the wind in their faces, the pervasive scents of the damp, flowery June night filling every breath they drew with the impalpable essences of sylvan fragrance.