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 evildoer
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.
Scundoo shook his head. “Behold! Is this not a most excellent mucluc?”
CHILDREN OF THE FROST
42
He held up the foot-covering of sealskin and walrus hide, and his visitor
examined it with secret interest.
“It did come to me by a close-driven bargain.”
Klok-No-Ton nodded attentively.
“I got it from the man La-lah. He is a remarkable man, and often have I
thought . . .”
“So?” Klok-No-Ton ventured impatiently.
“Often have I thought,” Scundoo concluded, his voice falling as he came
to a full pause. “It is a fair day, and thy medicine be strong, Klok-No-
Ton.”
Klok-No-Ton’s face brightened. “Thou art a great man, Scundoo, a shaman
of shamans. I go now. I shall remember thee always. And the man La-lah,
as you say, is a remarkable man.”
Scundoo smiled yet more wan and gray, closed the door on the heels of his
departing visitor, and barred and double-barred it.
Sime was mending his canoe when Klok-No-Ton came down the beach,
and he broke off from his work only long enough to ostentatiously load his
rifle and place it near him.
The shaman noted the action and called out: “Let all the people come
together on this spot! It is the word of Klok-No-Ton, devil- seeker and
driver of devils!”
He had been minded to assemble them at Hooniah’s house, but it was
necessary that all should be present, and he was doubtful of Sime’s
obedience and did not wish trouble. Sime was a good man to let alone, his
judgment ran, and withal, a bad one for the health of any shaman.
“Let the woman Hooniah be brought,” Klok-No-Ton commanded, glaring
ferociously about the circle and sending chills up and down the spines of
those he looked upon.
Hooniah waddled forward, head bent and gaze averted.
“Where be thy blankets?”
“I but stretched them up in the sun, and behold, they were not!” she
whined.
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43
“So?”
“It was because of Di Ya.”
“So?”
“Him have I beaten sore, and he shall yet be beaten, for that he brought
trouble upon us who be poor people.”
“The blankets!” Klok-No-Ton bellowed hoarsely, foreseeing her desire to
lower the price to be paid. “The blankets, woman! Thy wealth is known.”
“I but stretched them up in the sun,” she sniffled, “and we be poor people
and have nothing.”
He stiffened suddenly, with a hideous distortion of the face, and Hooniah
shrank back. But so swiftly did he spring forward, with inturned eyeballs
and loosened jaw, that she stumbled and fell down grovelling at his feet.
He waved his arms about, wildly flagellating the air, his body writhing and
twisting in torment. An epilepsy seemed to come upon him. A white froth
flecked his lips, and his body was convulsed with shiverings and
tremblings.
The women broke into a wailing chant, swaying backward and forward in
abandonment, while one by one the men succumbed to the excitement till
only Sime remained. He, perched upon his canoe, looked on in mockery;
yet the ancestors whose seed he bore pressed heavily upon him, and he
swore his strongest oaths that his courage might be cheered. Klok-No-Ton
was horrible to behold. He had cast off his blanket and torn his clothes
from him, so that he was quite naked, save for a girdle of eagle-claws
about his thighs. Shrieking and yelling, his long black hair flying like a
blot of night, he leaped frantically about the circle. A certain rude rhythm
characterized his frenzy, and when all were under its sway, swinging their
bodies in accord with his and venting their cries in unison, he sat bolt
upright, with arm outstretched and long, talon-like finger extended. A low
moaning, as of the dead, greeted this, and the people cowered with
shaking knees as the dread finger passed them slowly by. For death went
with it, and life remained with those who watched it go; and being
rejected, they watched with eager intentness.
Finally, with a tremendous cry, the fateful finger rested upon La- lah. He
shook like an aspen, seeing himself already dead, his household goods
divided, and his widow married to his brother. He strove to speak, to deny,
but his tongue clove to his mouth and his throat was sanded with an
intolerable thirst. Klok-No-Ton seemed to half swoon away, now that his
work was done; but he waited, with closed eyes, listening for the great
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44
blood-cry to go up—the great blood-cry, familiar to his ear from a
thousand conjurations, when the tribespeople flung themselves like wolves
upon the trembling victim. But only was there silence, then a low tittering,
from nowhere in particular, which spread and spread until a vast laughter
welled up to the sky.
“Wherefore?” he cried.
“Na! Na!” the people laughed. “Thy medicine be ill, O Klok-No- Ton!”
“It be known to all,” La-lah stuttered. “For eight weary months have I been
gone afar with the Siwash sealers, and but this day am I come back to find
the blankets of Hooniah gone ere I came!”
“It be true!” they cried with one accord. “The blankets of Hooniah were
gone ere he came!”
“And thou shalt be paid nothing for thy medicine which is of no avail,”
announced Hooniah, on her feet once more and smarting from a sense of
ridiculousness.
But Klok-No-Ton saw only the face of Scundoo and its wan, gray smile,
heard only the faint far cricket’s rasping. “I got it from the man La-lah, and
often have I thought,” and, “It is a fair day and thy medicine be strong.”
He brushed by Hooniah, and the circle instinctively gave way for him to
pass. Sime flung a jeer from the top of the canoe, the women snickered in
his face, cries of derision rose in his wake, but he took no notice, pressing
onward to the house of Scundoo. He hammered on the door, beat it with
his fists, and howled vile imprecations. Yet there was no response, save
that in the lulls Scundoo’s voice rose eerily in incantation. Klok-No-Ton
raged about like a madman, but when he attempted to break in the door
with a huge stone, murmurs arose from the men and women. And he,
Klok-No-Ton, knew that he stood shorn of his strength and authority
before an alien people. He saw a man stoop for a stone, and a second, and
a bodily fear ran through him.
“Harm not Scundoo, who is a master!” a woman cried out.
“Better you return to your own village,” a man advised menacingly.
Klok-No-Ton turned on his heel and went down among them to the beach,
a bitter rage at his heart, and in his head a just apprehension for his
defenceless back. But no stones were cast. The children swarmed
mockingly about his feet, and the air was wild with laughter and derision,
but that was all. Yet he did not breathe freely until the canoe was well out
CHILDREN OF THE FROST
45
upon the water, when he rose up and laid a futile curse upon the village
and its people, not forgetting to particularly specify Scundoo who had
made a mock of him.
Ashore there was a clamor for Scundoo, and the whole population
crowded his door, entreating and imploring in confused babel till he came
forth and raised his hand.
“In that ye are my children I pardon freely,” he said. “But never again. For
the last time thy foolishness goes unpunished. That which ye wish shall be
granted, and it be already known to me. This night, when the moon has
gone behind the world to look upon the mighty dead, let all the people
gather in the blackness before the house of Hooniah. Then shall the evildoer