"De Camp, L Sprague - The Reluctant Shaman UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Camp L Sprague)

"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 sщance 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 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.
"Somebody's shooting me with an air rifle!" he gasped.
"Bad business," agreed Hathaway.
There was another yell, and Hathaway looked out. Leon Buttolf 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," Buttoif 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 Buttolf.
"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!"