The Best of L. Sprague de Camp by de Camp L. Sprague

Author:de Camp, L. Sprague
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781612422497
Publisher: Phoenix Pick
Published: 2014-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

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’tcha?”

“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.

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