There was complaint in the village. The women chattered together with
shrill, high-pitched voices. The men were glum and doubtful of aspect,
and the very dogs wandered dubiously about, alarmed in vague ways by
the unrest of the camp, and ready to take to the woods on the first
outbreak of trouble. The air was filled with suspicion. No man was
sure of his neighbor, and each was conscious that he stood in like
unsureness with his fellows. Even the children were oppressed and
solemn, and little Di Ya, the cause of it all, had been soundly
thrashed, first by Hooniah, his mother, and then by his father, Bawn,
and was now whimpering and looking pessimistically out upon the world
from the shelter of the big overturned canoe on the beach.
And to make the matter worse, Scundoo, the shaman, was in disgrace,
and his known magic could not be called upon to seek out the
evil-doer. Forsooth, a month gone, he had promised a fair south wind
so that the tribe might journey to the _potlatch_ at Tonkin, where
Taku Jim was giving away the savings of twenty years; and when the day
came, lo, a grievous north wind blew, and of the first three canoes to
venture forth, one was swamped in the big seas, and two were pounded
to pieces on the rocks, and a child was drowned. He had pulled the
string of the wrong bag, he explained,--a mistake. But the people
refused to listen; the offerings of meat and fish and fur ceased to
come to his door; and he sulked within--so they thought, fasting in
bitter penance; in reality, eating generously from his well-stored
cache and meditating upon the fickleness of the mob.
The blankets of Hooniah were missing. They were good blankets, of most
marvellous thickness and warmth, and her pride in them was greatened
in that they had been come by so cheaply. Ty-Kwan, of the next village
but one, was a fool to have so easily parted with them. But then,
she did not know they were the blankets of the murdered Englishman,
because of whose take-off the United States cutter nosed along the
coast for a time, while its launches puffed and snorted among the
secret inlets. And not knowing that Ty-Kwan had disposed of them in
haste so that his own people might not have to render account to the
Government, Hooniah's pride was unshaken. And because the women envied
her, her pride was without end and boundless, till it filled the
village and spilled over along the Alaskan shore from Dutch Harbor to
St. Mary's. Her totem had become justly celebrated, and her name
known on the lips of men wherever men fished and feasted, what of the
blankets and their marvellous thickness and warmth. It was a most
mysterious happening, the manner of their going.
"I but stretched them up in the sun by the side-wall of the house,"
Hooniah disclaimed for the thousandth time to her Thlinget sisters. "I
but stretched them up and turned my back; for Di Ya, dough-thief
and eater of raw flour that he is, with head into the big iron pot,
overturned and stuck there, his legs waving like the branches of a
forest tree in the wind. And I did but drag him out and twice knock
his head against the door for riper understanding, and behold, the
blankets were not!"
"The blankets were not!" the women repeated in awed whispers.
"A great loss," one added. A second, "Never were there such blankets."
And a third, "We be sorry, Hooniah, for thy loss." Yet each woman
of them was glad in her heart that the odious, dissension-breeding
blankets were gone. "I but stretched them up in the sun," Hooniah
began for the thousand and first time.
"Yea, yea," Bawn spoke up, wearied. "But there were no gossips in the
village from other places. Wherefore it be plain that some of our own
tribespeople have laid unlawful hand upon the blankets."
"How can that be, O Bawn?" the women chorussed indignantly. "Who
should there be?"
"Then has there been witchcraft," Bawn continued stolidly enough,
though he stole a sly glance at their faces.
"_Witchcraft!_" And at the dread word their voices hushed and each
looked fearfully at each.
"Ay," Hooniah affirmed, the latent malignancy of her nature flashing
into a moment's exultation. "And word has been sent to Klok-No-Ton,
and strong paddles. Truly shall he be here with the afternoon tide."
The little groups broke up, and fear descended upon the village. Of
all misfortune, witchcraft was the most appalling. With the intangible
and unseen things only the shamans could cope, and neither man, woman,
nor child could know, until the moment of ordeal, whether devils
possessed their souls or not. And of all shamans, Klok-No-Ton, who
dwelt in the next village, was the most terrible. None found more
evil spirits than he, none visited his victims with more frightful
tortures. Even had he found, once, a devil residing within the body of
a three-months babe--a most obstinate devil which could only be driven
out when the babe had lain for a week on thorns and briers. The body
was thrown into the sea after that, but the waves tossed it back again
and again as a curse upon the village, nor did it finally go away till
two strong men were staked out at low tide and drowned.
And Hooniah had sent for this Klok-No-Ton. Better had it been if
Scundoo, their own shaman, were undisgraced. For he had ever a gentler
way, and he had been known to drive forth two devils from a man
who afterward begat seven healthy children. But Klok-No-Ton! They
shuddered with dire foreboding at thought of him, and each one felt
himself the centre of accusing eyes, and looked accusingly upon his
fellows--each one and all, save Sime, and Sime was a scoffer whose
evil end was destined with a certitude his successes could not shake.
"Hoh! Hoh!" he laughed. "Devils and Klok-No-Ton!--than whom no greater
devil can be found in Thlinket Land."
"Thou fool! Even now he cometh with witcheries and sorceries; so
beware thy tongue, lest evil befall thee and thy days be short in the
land!"
So spoke La-lah, otherwise the Cheater, and Sime laughed scornfully.
"I am Sime, unused to fear, unafraid of the dark. I am a strong man,
as my father before me, and my head is clear. Nor you nor I have seen
with our eyes the unseen evil things--"
"But Scundoo hath," La-lah made answer. "And likewise Klok-No-Ton.
This we know."
"How dost thou know, son of a fool?" Sime thundered, the choleric
blood darkening his thick bull neck.
"By the word of their mouths--even so."
Sime snorted. "A shaman is only a man. May not his words be crooked,
even as thine and mine? Bah! Bah! And once more, bah! And this for thy
shamans and thy shamans' devils! and this! and this!"
And snapping his fingers to right and left, Sime strode through the
on-lookers, who made over-zealous and fearsome way for him.
"A good fisher and strong hunter, but an evil man," said one.
"Yet does he flourish," speculated another.
"Wherefore be thou evil and flourish," Sime retorted over his
shoulder. "And were all evil, there would be no need for shamans. Bah!
You children-afraid-of-the-dark!"
And when Klok-No-Ton arrived on the afternoon tide, Sime's defiant
laugh was unabated; nor did he forbear to make a joke when the shaman
tripped on the sand in the landing. Klok-No-Ton looked at him sourly,
and without greeting stalked straight through their midst to the house
of Scundoo.
Of the meeting with Scundoo none of the tribespeople might know, for
they clustered reverently in the distance and spoke in whispers while
the masters of mystery were together.
"Greeting, O Scundoo!" Klok-No-Ton rumbled, wavering perceptibly from
doubt of his reception.
He was a giant in stature, and towered massively above little Scundoo,
whose thin voice floated upward like the faint far rasping of a
cricket.
"Greeting, Klok-No-Ton," he returned. "The day is fair with thy
coming."
"Yet it would seem ..." Klok-No-Ton hesitated.
"Yea, yea," the little shaman put in impatiently, "that I have fallen
on ill days, else would I not stand in gratitude to you in that you do
my work."
"It grieves me, friend Scundoo ..."
"Nay, I am made glad, Klok-No-Ton."
"But will I give thee half of that which be given me."
"Not so, good Klok-No-Ton," murmured Scundoo, with a deprecatory wave
of the hand. "It is I who am thy slave, and my days shall be filled
with desire to befriend thee."
"As I--"
"As thou now befriendest me."
"That being so, it is then a bad business, these blankets of the woman
Hooniah?"
The big shaman blundered tentatively in his quest, and Scundoo smiled
a wan, gray smile, for he was used to reading men, and all men seemed
very small to him.
"Ever hast thou dealt in strong medicine," he said. "Doubtless the
evil-doer will be briefly known to thee."
"Ay, briefly known when I set eyes upon him." Again Klok-No-Ton
hesitated. "Have there been gossips from other places?" he asked.