“A bonny ploy,” assented the officer, who had seen much bigger ones. 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.