The Best of L Sprague De Camp Part 16

"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. n.o.body'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 seance tomorrow night?"

"Yep. Dan Pringle's coming."

"What? He swears you're a fake."

"I know, but maybe 1 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-wtzg 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 luskeha, 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 somebocly'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 pa.s.sing 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.

"Somebody's shooting me with an air rifle!" he gasped.

"Bad business," agreed Hathaway.

There was another yell, and Hathaway looked out. Leon b.u.t.tolf was being driven inexorably down the street to the shop. As soon as he was inside, the bombardment overtook Mrs. Camaret, wife of a worker in Pringle's mill.

By the time she had been herded in, the streets were deserted.

"Somebody ought to go to jail for this," b.u.t.toif said.

"That's right," said Delacroix. He looked keenly at Hathaway. "Wonder how everybody gets chased in here?"

"If I sink you have somesing to do wiz zis, Virgil, I tell my Jean," Mrs. Camaret said. "He come, beat you up, stomp you into a leetle jelly!"

"Jeepers Cripus!" protested Hathaway. "How should I make a BB shot fly out in a circle to hit a man on the far side? And my boy Calvin's out back with the mink. You can go look."

we ain't suspecting you," said b.u.t.tolf.

"I'll walk with you wherever you be going, and take my chance of getting hit," Hathaway said.

"Fair enough," said Delacroix. So the four went out and walked down the street a way. Delacroix turned into his restaurant, and the others went about their business. Hathaway hurried back to his shop just as a pebble hit Wallace Downey in the seat of the pants.

"Gaga!" Hathaway yelled in desperation. "Stop it, blast your hide!"

The bombardment ceased. Downey walked off with a look of deep suspicion. When Hathaway entered his shop, the Gahunga were sitting on the counter.

Gaga grinned infuriatingly.

"We help you, huh, mister?" he said. "Want some more customers?"

"No!" shouted Hathaway. "I don't want your help. I hope I shan't ever see you again!"

The imps exchanged startled glances. Gaga stood up.

"You don't want to be our boss no more?"

"No! I only want you to leave me alone!"

Gaga drew himself to his full twenty-five inches and folded his arms.

"Okay. We help somebody who appreciates us. Don't like Algonquins anyway." He drummed, and the other seven Gahunga did a solemn dance down the counter, disappearing as they came to the pile of miniature birch-bark canoes.

In a few minutes Hathaway's relief was replaced by a faint unease. Perhaps he had been hasty in dismissing the creatures; they had dangerous potentialities.

"Gaga!"

Nothing happened. Calvin Hathaway put in his head.

"Did you call me, Pop?"

"No. Yes, I did. Ask your maw when dinner's gonna be ready."

It had been a mistake; what would he tell Catfish?

After dinner, Hathaway left his wife in charge of the shop while he went for a walk, to think. In front of Tate's hardware store he found a noisy group consisting of old man Tate, Wallace Downey, and a state trooper. Tate's window was broken, and he was accusing Downey of breaking it and stealing a fis.h.i.+ng rod. Downey accused Tate of throwing the rod at him through the window. Each produced witnesses.

"I was buying some film for my camera in the store when bingo! away goes the winda," a witness said. "Mr. Tate and me, we look around, and we see Wally making off with the rod."

"Did you see Downey inside the window?" asked the trooper.

"No, but it stands to reason-"

"What's your story?" the trooper interrupted him, as he turned inquiringly at Downey.

"1 was sitting on the steps of the bank havin' a chaw, when Wally comes along carrying that reel, and zowie! out comes the rod through the winda, with busted gla.s.s all over the place. If old man Tate didn't throw it at him somebody musta."

Puzzled, the trooper scratched his head. Finally, since Tate had his rod back and the window was insured, he persuaded the two angry men to drop the matter.

"h.e.l.lo, Virgil," said Downey. "Why does everything screwy have to happen in this town? Say, do you know anything about those BB shot? You yelled something, and they quit."

"I don't know nahthing," said Hathaway innocently. "Some kid with an air rifle, I suppose. What was all this run-in with Tate?"

"I went down to the river to fish," explained Downey. "I had a new tackle, and I no sooner dropped it off the bridge than I got a strike that busted the rodright off short. Musta been the biggest ba.s.s in the river. Well, I saved the reel, and I was bringin' it back home when old man Tate s.h.i.+es a new rod at me, right through his window."

Hathaway could see how the Gahunga were responsible for these events; they were being "helpful." He left Downey and sauntered down Main Street, pa.s.sing the Adirondack a.s.sociation office. Barbara Scott made a face at him through the gla.s.s. Hathaway thought she needed to be spanked, either on account of the seances, or her infatuation with Harvey Pringle, or both.

Returning to his shop, the middle-aged Indian noted that the Gahato Garage seemed to have an unusually brisk trade in the repair of tires. The cars included the trooper's Ford with all four tires flat. Bill Bugby and his mechanics were working on tires like maniacs.

The trooper who had handled the Tate-Downey incident was walking about the street, now and then stooping to pick up something. Presently he came back.

"Hey, Bill!" he shouted, and conferred in low tones with Bugby, who presently raised his voice. "You're crazy, Mark!" he cried. "I ain't never done a thing like that in all the years I been here!"

"Maybe so," said the trooper. "But you got to admit that somebody scattered bright new nails all over this street. And if you didn't, who did?"

Hathaway prudently withdrew. He knew who had scattered the nails.

Newcomb, the game warden, lounged into Chief Soaring Turtle's shop and spread his elbows along a counter. Hathaway asked him what he was looking so sad about.

The warden explained.

"I was walking by the bank this afternoon, when a big car drives up and a young man gets out and goes in the bank," he said. "There was a canvas bundle on the back of the car. I didn't think anything of it, only just as I get past it the canvas comes tearing off the bundle, like somebody is pulling it, and there on the b.u.mper is tied a fresh-killed fawn."

"You don't say so?"

"Three months out of season, and no more horns than a p.u.s.s.ycat. 'Well, you know and I know there's some of that all the time. I run 'em in when I catch 'em, and if it makes me unpopular that's part of my job. But when this young man comes out and I ask him about it, he admits it-and then it turns out he's Judge Dusenberry's son. Half the village is looking on, so I got to run young Dusenberry in."

"Will that get you into trouble?"

"Don't know; depends on who wins the election next fall. Now, Virgil, I'm not superst.i.tious myself. But some of these people are, especially the Canucks. There's talk of your putting a hoodoo on the town. Some have had rocks thrown at 'em, or something, and Wallace Downey is saying you stopped them. If you can stop it, why can't you start it?"

"I don't know a thing about it," said Hathaway.

"Of course, you don't-I realize that's all nonsense. But I thought you ought to know what folks are saying." And Newcomb slouched out, leaving behind him a much worried Indian.

The next day, Hathaway left his wife in charge of the shop and drove towards Utica. As he was turning on to the state highway, Barbara Scott walked past and called good morning. He leaned out.

"Hi, Barbara! Be you still going to have your spook hunt?"

"You bet, Chief Wart-on-the-Nose."

"What'll you do if old man Pringle gets up and denounces you as a fake?"

"I don't tell my victims I'm not a fake. I say they can watch and judge for themselves. You don't believe in spirits, do you?"

"Never did. Until a little while ago, that is."

"What the devil do you mean by that crack, Virgil?"

"Oh, just some funny things that happened."

Barbara tactfully refrained from pressing for details.

"I never did either, but lately I've had a feeling I was being followed," she said. "And this morning I found this on my dresser." She held out a slip of paper on which was scrawled: "Don't you worry none about Daniel Pringle that old sower-puss. We will help you against him-G."

"I got an idea who sent this, but it won't do no good to explain now," Hathaway mused. "Only I'd like to see you before your seance. G'by."

Three hours later, Hathaway gave up his search through the stacks of the Utica Public Library, having gone through every volume on anthropology, folklore, and allied subjects. He had learned that the stone throwers belonged to the genus of sprite known to the Iroquois as Dzhungeun. They all lived in the southwest part of the state and comprised the stone-throwing Gahunga, the fertijity-producing Gendayah, and the hunting and burrowing Ohdowa. But, although it was intimated in several places that the Iroquois shamans had known how to control these spirits, nowhere did it tell how.

Hathaway thought a while. Then he left the library and walked along Genesee Street to a pay telephone. He grunted with pain when he learned the cost of a call to the vicinity of Buffalo, but it couldn't be helped. He resolved, if he ever caught up with Charlie Catfish, to take the money either out of the Seneca's pocket or out of his hide.

"Give me the Tonawanda Reservation," he said.

When he got the reservation, he asked for Charlie Catfish. After a long wait, during which he had to feed the coin box, he was told that Catfish would not be back for weeks.

"Then give me Chief Cornplanter."

Another pause. Then: "He's gone to Buffalo for the day."

"Listen," said Hathaway. "Have you got any medicine men, hexers, spook mediums, or such people among you?"

"Who wants to know?"

"I be Virgil Hathaway, of the Pen.o.bscots, member of the Turtle clan and descendant of Dekanawida."

He explained his difficulties. The voice said to wait. Presently an aged voice, speaking badly broken English, came from the receiver.

"Wait, please," said Hathaway. "I got to get me a pencil. My Seneca ain't so hot. . - When Hathaway was driving back to Gahato, he attempted to pa.s.s a truck on one of the narrow bridges over the Moose River at McClintock. The truck driver misjudged his clearance, and Hathaway's car stopped with a rending crunch, wedged between the truck and the bridge girders. When the garage people got the vehicles untangled and towed to the garage, Hathaway learned that he faced a four-hour, fifty-dollar repair job before he could start moving again, let alone have his fenders straightened. And the afternoon train north had just left McClintock.

That evening, Barbara Scott had collected the elite of Gahato for her seance: Doe Lenoir and his wife; Levi Macdonald, the bank cas.h.i.+er, and his better half; the Pringles, father and son; and a couple of other persons. Dan Pringle greeted Barbara with a polite but cynical smile. He was plump and wheezed and had seldom been worsted in a deal.