Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/82
"Put them there, Mike," she said, with a scorn that seemed to add "You dog" to the spoken words.
"Certainly, Mrs. Dachs," said Michael Angelo, with all due courtesy, and he withdrew, quietly, as he had entered. As he passed from the room his eyes fell upon a book handsomely bound in limp leather, and bearing the name of a famous work on religion and health. "That's so," he thought in English; "she is a Christian cultist. My ideas of that faith are hazy, to say the least, but it seems to me that they believe that mind can be made to triumph over matter. Now the corollary to that is that they believe that unless they have sufficient faith, matter will triumph over mind. Not so very different from Bad Medicine among us, is it?" A smile crossed his dark features. "Eh, anamekut!" His thoughts reverted to his own language. "Kenabutch gagun!—Doggone it, I think I have it! Pagan Science!" With a chuckle the Indian passed out of the hall and into the world of his people.
Old Owl Man stared into the glowing embers of his wigwam fire and smoked. His hard, wrinkled features held something sinister about them. His hooked nose, long and sharp, his high forehead, with its crown of scanty hair that rose in two peaks over his forehead, and his strange, fascinating eyes, large and dark, attracted the attention of all who saw them, red or white, and gave him at times the look of the owl his namesake. At other times he resembled more a giant spider, and then, again, if one touched his clammy skin, there was the cold smooth feeling of a snake. Among red men and white he bore an evil reputation. The Indians, who loathed and dreaded him the most, would have slain him long ago, save for the fear that they held of his dread magic. It was whispered that he had the power to take from his sacred bundle the skin of a bear, sing a certain song, don the skin, and become a bear. Others said that he derived his powers from the owl, and could become an owl at will. Still others claimed that he was in league with the serpents, and that the master of all snakes, the greatest power for evil on "This Island", the earth, the Great Horned Serpent, came out of the Bear River, or from a dismal swale not far from his lodge, and held mysterious communion with him. To pacify the Snake, his master, it was necessary for him to take a human life a year. These and other tales of gruesome rites gave him a reputation that caused people to avoid him. But tonight he had company—Michael Angelo.
"Eh, grandson," said the old wizard, "what you ask me is very hard. It is well known that Indian medicines have no effect on most white people."
"But it is already whispered among us that she really believes in some of our magic. The women say that she married the agent by means of a love medicine that she got from old Betsey, the medicine-woman."
"About old Betsey I know nothing. It may well be true. That white woman and her family have always lived on the Indians, and among them. It is certain that they despise us, and have done us all the harm in their power, but yet they may believe in some of our ways. Yes, grandson, it can be done, it can be done. But it can not be done for nothing. Four times I must try before I can be successful and that calls for a four-legged animal—a leg to pay for each attempt."
"Hau, Nimaso! It is well, my grandfather! There is a four-legged animal hitched to yonder sapling. It is yours. Moreover, that day that you are successful, on that very day, I say, I will ride over and leave another pony hitched to the same sapling."