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

"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 Penobscots, 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 pass 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 sщance: Doe Lenoir and his wife; Levi Macdonald, the bank cashier, 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.
Barbara sat her guests- in a circle in semidarkness to await the arrival of her "influences." When Harvey Pringle had fallen asleep, she got out her paraphernalia. She sat on a chair in the cabinet, a thing like a curtained telephone booth, and directed the men to tie her securely to the chair. Then she told them to drop the curtain and put out the lights. She warned them not to risk her health by turning on the lights without authorization. It was not an absolutely necessary warning, as she could control the lights herself by a switch inside the cabinet.
On the table between the cabinet and the sitters were a dinner bell, a trumpet, and a slate. The chair on which Barbara sat came apart easily. Concealed in the cabinet was a quantity of absorbent cotton for ectoplasm. There was also a long-handled grasping device, painted black. Her own contribution to the techniques of this venerable racket was a system of small lights which would warn her if any of the sitters left his chair.
Soon, Barbara gave the right kind of squirm, and the trick chair came apart. The loose bonds could now be removed. Barbara moaned to cover the sounds of her preparations and chanted a few lines from the Iliad in Greek. She intended to have Socrates as one of her controls this time.
She was still peeling rope when she was astonished to hear the dinner bell ring. It wasn't a little ting such as would be made by someone's accidentally touching it, but a belligerent clangor, such as would be made by a cook calling mile-away farmhands. The little signal lights showed all the sitters to be in their seats. The bell rang this way and that, and the trumpet began to toot.
Barbara Scott had been sщancing for several years and had come to look upon darkness as a friend, but now childish fears swarmed out of her. The cabinet began to rock. She screamed. The cabinet rocked more violently. The door of the false side flew open; the cotton and the grasper were snatched out. The curtain billowed. The table began to rock too. From the darkness came an angry roar as the grasper tweaked Doe Lenoir's nose.
From somewhere came the muffled beat of a drum and a long, ululating loon-cry:
"U-u-u-u-u-u-u-u!"
The cabinet tipped over against the table. Barbara fought herself
out of the wreckage. She remembered that her private light switch was in series with the room's main switch, so that the lights could not be turned on until the secret switch had beшn thrown. She felt for it, pushed it, and struggled out of the remains of the cabinet.
The terrified sitters were blinded by the lights and dumb at the spectacle of the medium swathed in loose coils of rope with her hand on the switch, her dress torn, and the beginnings of a black eye. Next they observed that the bell, slate, grasper, and other objects were swooping about the room under their own power.
When the lights came on, there was a yell and a command in an unknown language. The slate smashed down on Dan Pringle's head. While he stood blinking, glasses dangling from one ear and the frame of the slate around his neck, other articles went sailing at him. He stumbled over his overturned chair and bolted for the door. The articles followed.
When Pringle reached the street, pebbles began picking themselves up and throwing themselves after the mill owner. It took about three tries to get his range. Then a pebble no bigger than the end of one's thumb, traveling with air-rifle speed, hit the back of his thigh with a flat spat. Pringle yelled, staggered, and kept running. Another glanced off his scalp, drawing blood and making him see stars.
The inhabitants of Gahato were entertained by the unprecedented sight of their leading businessman panting down the main street and turning purple with effort. Every now and then there would be the sound of a pebble striking. Pringle would make a bucking jump and come down running.harder than ever.
His eye caught a glimpse of Virgil Hathaway letting himself into his shop, and a faint memory of silly talk about the Indian's supernatural powers stirred his mind. He banked and galloped up the porch steps of Soaring Turtle's establishment just as Hathaway closed the screen door behind him. Pringle went through the door without bothering to reopen it.
"Jeepers Cripus!" exclaimed Hathaway mildly. "What be the matter, Dan?"
"L-l-isten, Virgil! Are you a medicine man?"
"Aw, don't pay no attention to superstitious talk like that-"
"But I gotta have help! They're after me!" And he told all.
"Well!" said Hathaway doubtfully. "I'll see what I can do. But
they're Iroquois spooks, and don't think much of us Algonquins. Got some tobacco? All right, pull down the shades."
Hathaway took Pringle's tobacco pouch and opened his shattered screen door. He threw a pinch of tobacco into the dark and chanted in bad Seneca:

I give you tobacco, Dzhungeun,
Wanderers of the mountains.
You hear me and will come.
I give you tobacco.
I have done my duty towards you.
Now you must do yours.
I have finished speaking.

All eight Cahunga imps materialized on the lawn. Hathaway sternly ordered them to come inside. When they were in, he questioned them:
"What have you little twerps been up to now?"
Gaga squirmed. "We was only trying to do Miss Scott a favor," he said. "She wants to put on a good spook show. So we help. She don't like this old punkin Pringle. All right, we throw a scare into him. We wasn't going to hurt him none."
"You know you was let come up here for your vacations only if you didn't use your stone-throwing powers," Hathaway said. "And you know what Eitsinoha does to little imps who don't behave."
"Eitsinoha?" cried Gaga. "You wouldn't tell heTr'
"Dunno, yet. You deserve it."
"Please, mister, don't say nothing! We won't throw even a sand grain! I swear by luskeha! Let us go, and we'll head right back to Cattaraugus!"
Hathaway turned to the quivering Pringle. "Changed your mind about raising my rent, Dan?"
"I'll lower it! Five dollars!"
"Ten?"
"Seven and a half!"