Amoyah

First there was present, of course, Amoyah himself, seeming

The Frontiersmen Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

This game was usually played in the mid-summer or fall, but it would seem that the unseasonable cold weather was well suited for such violent exercise and the severe physical training which preceded it, and although Amoyah noticed ice in the river as he dashed in for the ceremonial plunge which accompanies the incantations, he remembered the fact for a different reason than discomfort.

The Frontiersmen Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

The onrushing crowd of players, bearing down upon Amoyah, having intended to force him to drop the ball, which he had seemed predestined to catch, or to throw it so ill as to deliver it into the power of Niowee still to secure the point, could not arrest their own momentum, and went over the startled and dumfounded player in a swift dash, leaving him prone upon the ground.

The Frontiersmen Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

Amoyah, the deftest runner of all the Tennessee River country, was foremost in the crown of swift athletes; presently he was detached by degrees from it; now he was definitely in advance; and soon, spurting tremendously, he had so neared the Niowee goal that the ball just above must needs pass over it if a spring might not enable him to capture it at the last moment.

The Frontiersmen Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

Yet even while he argued within himself Tus-ka-sah noted the old warrior's gaze fix spellbound upon Amoyah, the hands of Altsasti petrify, the bead in one, the motionless thread in the other.

The Frontiersmen Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

The eyes of the more remote of the group, who were seated on rugs around the fire, glistened wide and startled, in the shadow, as Amoyah proceeded to relate how it had chanced.

The Frontiersmen Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

His thoughts were with the group he had just left, and he marveled if no influence could be brought to reduce the prestige with which the immaterial chief of the bears, the fabled Eeon-a, had contrived to invest the illusory Amoyah.

The Frontiersmen Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

They had gone in with a tumultuous rush, and with their faces painted, their heads crested with feathers, clad fantastically and gorgeously but scantily, they were holding their ball-sticks high in the air with an eager grasp, -- all except Amoyah.

The Frontiersmen Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

Amoyah, wearing a choice garb of furs; -- often, so great was his vanity, his face was elaborately painted as if for some splendid festive occasion, a dance or the ball-play, instead of merely to impress with his magnificence this simple domestic circle.

The Frontiersmen Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

Amoyah hardily declared, he himself had witnessed the march, -- he had been permitted to behold that weird and grotesque progress!

The Frontiersmen Mary Noailles Murfree 1886