The Reluctant Shaman
and Other Fantastic Tales
L. Sprague de Camp
THE RELUCTANT SHAMAN
One fine July day, a tourist took his small boy into a shop in Gahato, New York. The sign over the shop read:
CHIEF SOARING TURTLE
Indian Bead-Work—Pottery
Inside, a stocky, copper-colored man stood amidst a litter of burnt-leather cushions, Navajo blankets made in Connecticut, and similar truck.
"Have you got a small bow-and-arrow outfit?" the tourist asked.
"Ugh," said the Indian. He rummaged and produced a small bow and six arrows with rubber knobs for heads.
"Are you a real Indian?" the boy asked.
"Ugh. Sure. Heap big chief."
"Where are your feathers?"
"Put away. Only wear um for war-dance."
The tourist paid and started out. At that instant, a copper-colored boy of fifteen years entered from the back.
"Hey, Pop, one of the kittens just et the other!" he called loudly.
The Indian lost his barbaric impassiveness. "What? Jeepers Cripus, what kind of mink farmer do you call yourself? I told you to shift 'em to separate cages yesterday, before they began to fight!"
"I'm sorry, Pop. I guess I forgot."
"You'd better be sorry. That be good money throwed down the sewer."
The tourist's car door slammed, and as the car moved off, the thin voice of the tourist's little boy was wafted back:
"He talks just like anybody else. He don't sound like a real Indian to me."
But Virgil Hathaway, alias Chief Soaring Turtle, was a real Indian. He was a Penobscot from Maine, forty-six years old, a high-school graduate, and—except that he did not bathe as often as some people thought he should— a model citizen.
Shortly after the departure of the tourist, another man came in. This visitor had Hathaway's distinctive muddy coloring and Mongoloid features, though he was fatter, shorter, and older than Hathaway.
"Morning," he said. "You're Virgil Hathaway, ain't-cha?"
"That's who I be, mister."
The man smiled so that his eyes disappeared in fat. "Pleased to know you, Mr. Hathaway. I'm Charlie Catfish, of the Senecas."
"That so? Glad to know you, Mr. Catfish. How about stopping over for some grub?"
"Thanks, but the folks want to make Blue Mountain Lake for lunch. Tell you what you can do. I got eight stone throwers with me. They was let come up here providing they behaved. I got enough to do without dragging them all over, so if you don't mind I'll leave 'em in your charge."
"Stone throwers?" repeated Hathaway blankly.
"You know, Gahunga. You can handle 'em even though you're Algonquin, being as you're a descendant of Dekanawida."
"I be what?"
"A descendant of Hiawatha's partner. We keep track—" A horn blast interrupted him. "Sorry, Mr. Hathaway, gotta go. You won't have no trouble." And the fat Indian was gone.
Hathaway was left puzzled and uneasy. It was nice to be descended from Dekanawida, the great Huron chief and cofounder of the Iroquois League. But what were Gahunga? His smattering of the Iroquoian dialects included no such term.
Then there was another customer, and after her Harvey Pringle lounged in wearing a sport shirt that showed off his strength and beauty.
"Hi, Virgil," he drawled. "How's every little thing?"
"Pretty good, considering." Hathaway felt a sudden urge to bring his accounts up to date. Young Pringle could waste more time in one hour than most men could in three.
"I finished my ragweed pulling for today." "Huh?" said Hathaway.
"Yeah. The old man got shirty again about my not doing anything. I said, why take a job away from some poor guy that needs it? So I appointed myself the county's one-man ragweed committee. I pull the stuff up for one hour a day, heh-heh! Babs been in?"
"No," replied Hathaway.
"Oh, well, she knows where to find me." Harvey Pringle yawned and sauntered out. Hathaway wondered what Barbara Scott could see in that useless hulk. Then he listened to the noise.
It was like a quick, faint drumming, queerly muffled, as though the drum were half full of water. Hathaway looked out the screen-door; no parade. Timothy weeds nodded peacefully in the breeze, and from the Moose River came the faint scream of old man Pringle's sawmill.
The noise seemed to be behind Hathaway, in the shop, like the sound of a small Delco plant in the cellar. The noise increased. It waxed, and eight figures materialized on the rug. They looked like Iroquois warriors two feet tall, complete with moccasins, buckskin leggings, and scalps shaven except for stiff crests on the crown. One squatted and tapped a three-inch drum. The other seven circled around him, occasionally giving the loon cry by slapping the hand against the mouth while uttering a long, shrill yell.
"Hey!" barked Hathaway. The drumming stopped. "Who the devil be you?"
The drummer spoke:
"Adenlozlakstengen agoiyo—"
"Whoa! Don't you speak English?"
"Ayuh, mister. I thought if you was a medicine man, you'd talk Iroquois—"
"If I was what?"
"Medicine man. Charlie said he was gonna leave us with one while he went to Canada." "Be you the stone throwers?"
"Ayuh. I'm chief, name of Gaga, from Cattaraugus County. Anything you want us to do?"
"Yeah. Just disappear for a while." The Gahunga disappeared. Hathaway thought that Charlie Catfish had played a dirty trick on him, to spring these aboriginal spooks without explanation.
He brightened when Barbara Scott entered, trim, dark, and energetic. Hathaway approved of energy in other people.
"Have you seen Harvey, Virgil?" she asked. "I had a lunch date with him."
"Uh-huh," said Hathaway. "Prob'ly sleeping on somebody's lawn."
Miss Scott stiffened. "You're as bad as the rest, Virgil. Nobody's fair to poor Harvey."
"Forget it," said Hathaway with a helpless motion of his hands. When a girl toward whom you felt a fatherly affection seemed bent on marrying the worthless son of the town's leading businessman, who was also your landlord, there wasn't much a moderate man could do. "You still be having that séance tomorrow night?"
"Yep. Dan Pringle's coming."
"What? He swears you're a fake."
"I know, but maybe I can win him over."
"Look here, Babs, why does a nice girl like you do all this phony spook business?"
"Money, that's why. Being a secretary and notary won't get me through my last year of college. As for being phony, how about that ug-wug dialect you use on the tourists?"
"That be different."
"Oh, that be different, be it? Here's Harvey now; so long."
The eight Gahunga reappeared.
"What you want us to do for you, mister?" asked Gaga. "Charlie told us to be helpful, and by Iuskeha, we're gonna be."
"Don't exactly know," Hathaway cautiously replied.
"Is there anything you want?"
"Well," said Hathaway, "I got a good breeding female mink I wish somebody'd offer me five hundred bucks for."
The Gahunga muttered together.
"I'm afraid we can't do anything about that," Gaga said finally. "Anything else?"
"Well, I wish more customers would come in to buy my Indian junk."
"Whoopee! U-u-u-u!" shrilled Gaga, drumming. "Come on!"
The seven pranced and stamped for a few seconds, then vanished. Hathaway uneasily waited on a customer, wondering what the Gahunga were up to.
Earl Delacroix, owner of The Pines Tea-Shoppe, was passing on the other side of the street, when he leaped and yelled. He came down rubbing his shoulder and looking about resentfully. As soon as he started to walk, there was a flat spat of a high-speed pebble striking his clothes, and he jumped again. Spat! Spat! The bombardment continued until he hurled himself into Chief Soaring Turtle's shop.