WHITE MAGIC

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 271, 15 December 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

WHITE MAGIC

A Short Story by L. C. DOUTHWAITE

■”] COWLING, Corporal MacGrath indicated the circular with which his newly-reported opposite number was fid-

geting. “Hand over that paper and attend to me!” he cried angrily. “Here I am, worried stiff as to what’s goin’ to happen when Rolling Thunder and his bunch refuse to quit Salmon Inlet, and 1 can’t even get you to listen. What I mean is ... ” Startled, he broke off; in its passage from Second-Class Constable White’s hand to his own, the circular had disappeared; one moment, there it was, immediately under his eyes, the. next — gone! Nor, as a glance assured him, had it fallen to the table or floor. “Excuse me,” White murmured, and with a long-fingered hand plucked the circular from his superior’s breast pocket. “Years of study!” he explained modestly, and the Irishman sneered. “Better make it your business as well,” he advised acidly. “You’re more fitted for smalltown vaudeville than the Royal Canadian Mounted, anyway.” His mouth grew harder. “Until then, however, our job is to clear that Ojibway camp—and that means trouble. All wool and a yard wide.”

White looked impressed, but thoughtful.

“Just what’s the object of turning them out of their own reservation?” he demanded, and the corporal expelled a long, deep breath.

“if you’d spent more time learning your job and less in practising as a card-sharp,” he pointed out, “you’d know that Indian reserve is just what Salmon Inlet isn’t. Rolling Thunder’s father merely squatted there from the real reservation after half killing Chief Big Eagle in a scrap twenty or thirty years ago. Now, when Headquarters are ordering him off the lot, he’s telling them to go and jump in the lake.”

“But why turn him out after all these years?” the other inquired. “Because Salmon Inlet’s one of the finest natural harbours on the coast, and the Government have decided to develop it,” the corporal explained. Abstractedly palming- and retrieving his cigarette case, White appeared, for the first time in the corporal’s experience, actually to be thinking.

“When do you propose executing- the ejectment order?” he asked at last, and saw how gloomily the other’s glance rested on the officially crested letter beneath the paper-weight. “Divisional orders came yesterday that the camp’s to he clear by the twenty-seventh,” replied that anxious man. “I saw Rolling Thunder in the afternoon, and the way he put his refusal to shift is nobody’s business.” He glanced at the wall calendar. “And after I’ve fallen down on the job of moving him, this detachment is going to need a new Ofiicer-in-Charge . . .” During the night there was a storm; lashing rain, with a gale that increased progressively tohurricane ; 'from his bunk White could hear the waves crashing to spindrift against the beach a quarter of a mile away. The weather had calmed by morning, and after he had seen MacGrath set out on patrol, White wandered down to the beach, where an unprecedentedly high tide had left all kinds of flotsam. However, it was not until he found himself immediately opposite the Ojibway camp that he came across anything of interest. For a moment he stared unbelievingly; then, with a quick glance towards the camp, saw, to his relief, that it was deserted. Later he learnt that the ..tribe were out retrieving storm-stam-peded cattle .... It took him a long time, but when he stepped back to survey Would take ah Ojibway llVCltViMn-' tion of Sherlock Holmes to detect that anything was concealed beneath that pile of sand and seaweed. His ascent to the camp being simultaneous with the return of the search-party, Rolling Thunder greeted him with a certain welcome. “How’s Little Knife making out?” White inquired.

“He - Who - Laughs - With - His - Eyes come see um,” the gaunt, high-shouldered Ojibway invited laconically, in the first intimation of White’s'rechristening. Inside the tepee, watched silently by the alert-eyed Rolling Thunder, the boy, who a few days before had caught his leg in a bear trap, endured with racial fortitude the renewal of the dressing that White had applied on a previous visit. “Now Hc-Who-Laughs-With-liis-Eyes will make magic again?” Little Knife demanded when, comfortable again, he was lying back on his caribou skins. Followed what later the entertainer realised to have been the performance of Ins life. The circumambient air yielded fifty-ccnt pieces that, in transit to Little Knife, dulled to long-circulated copper; before their wide-pupilled eyes the ornate cigarette case changed to one of battered tin; the lighted cigarette that disappeared within his mouth emerged charred and lifeless from the heel of Rolling Thunder’s mocassin; when, after it vanished into thin air, a gaily-patterned deck of cards cascaded from the demonstrator’s mouth, it was seen that the backs had darkened ominously to black. So it Was throughout the original brightness of each trick fading to depression. And though the Ojibway remained impassive,

gradually the lithe body tensed and the eye-pupils distended. The demonstration at an end, as White sat back on his heels, the Ojibway’s comment was not so

much one of appreciation as of inquiry. “That’s good magic,” he approved tentatively, but White shook his head. “Not good magic, but bad; for did you not see how all that at first was good turned to evil?” he corrected soberly, and saw a flicker of fear cross the Chief’s customarily impassive face. “I think,” the Constable resumed, his tone stern, “that because you have disobeyed the

Great White Chief, Muji-Manito is angry, and that this magic is a sign that if on the day appointed for you to break camp the centrepole of but one tepee remains erect, much bad medicine will come to Rolling Thunder and his people.” Though Muji-Manito is a spirit alert for man’s undoing, the Ojibway’s deeply-set eyes were arrogant. “Because my people have been

here for more moons than there are cicidas in the trees,” he said, sullenly, “and that here so many have been sent from the Silence, and so many passed to the Happy Hunting Ground, here Rolling Thunder stay until he, too, shall be summoned to the Spirits.” As if to gather resolution for the blasphemy, he paused: "Nor is there any evil Muji-Manito may send that my medicine man will not overcome, for in the magic of Crows Nest is more strength than comes from the sea in tempest.” White’s heart-beat quickened; by the employment of that simile the Ojibway had played directly into his hands. His face unreadable as that of his host, he balanced on his palm the three knuckle-bones he drew from his pocket; tossed his hand for a moment over his head. When he lowered his arm the hand was empty .... “We shall see,” lie said quietly, and for a few tense moments sat motionless. Then, one by one he plucked those returned messengers from the air; eyes intent, arranged and rearranged them in shifting patterns in the dust. At last, gathering them together, he replaced them in his pocket; raised himself to the upright; looked down on the wide-eyed, heavily-breathing Little Knife with more than a hint of compassion. “Gopd-bye,” he said sadly. In a single movement Roiling Thunder, too, was, a question not less^|‘ ssgfeif 1 ted Cohmiv; ■ —rirarc—magic, of Crow’s Nest is stronger than the waves of the sea in tempest ?1 lie I led the Ojibway to the tepec/entrance, from there indicated! a pine tree, taller than, its fellovjs, that stood high from out of theiscrub across the clearing.

“This has my magic revealed, Rolling Thunder. If on the day appointed, at the hour when the sifn rests above that tree, there is left here but one tepee, then will Muji-Manito come from the sea to wipe out the shame you have put upon him,” he said sternly, and without further word passed between the tepees to the overland trail.

As in the next few days White observed in MacGrath no inten-, tion of visiting the Ojibways, it was not until the evening before the one upon which evacuation had been ordered, that the subject came up for discussion. “What time do you propose going to the camp to-morrow?” White asked.

“About eleven in the forenoon —not too early to tell that bunch I expect ’em to pull out as ordered, and not too late to catch the next stage for the Outside after Rolling Thunder’s flung me out on my ear,” the obviously muchworried corporal replied grimly. White, however, shook his head.

“By noon to-morrow, that seaside camp will be as free of tepees as a snake of tail feathers,” he said confidently, and on the point of climbing into his bunk, the corporal swung round. “Talk of what you know something about —if anything,” he snarled. “It isn’t one man, nor twenty, who’ll be needed to clear that camp; it’ll take a full squadron, complete with side-arms and a capacity to assimilate trouble.” “Tell me that again to-mor-row,” White suggested. The next morning found him crawling through the scrub until he had a view of the camp. Here, heart-beat accelerated, he took observation.

He gave a quick sigh of relief; though there was no indication of any preparations for breaking camp, at least Rolling Thunder had temporarily moved his flock to the crest of the higher ground that, well back from the sea, immediately overlooked the camp. White wormed his way to a carefully memorised patch of scrub on the seaward side; noted how intently the figure who stood a little apart was scanning the horizon. Even from that distance he could sense the strain that animated the tribe; a tension that increased progressively as the sun swung inland.

Nearer, ever nearer, until the time came when the pine’s crest was as a finger pointing directly to the glare.

To-day was another high tide, and for that coast an angry one. Suddenly, and without warning, from the margin of the breakers leapt an inverted cone of water —higher and ever higher, until at fifty feet or more it poised before, beginning with the outer edges, the column avalanched back to the sea; simultaneously came a roar that, battering into White’s eardrums, set the trees to bowing; that, sweeping upward from the beach, tore the nearer tepees from their pegs and sent them whirling before it, with the fabrics of those outside its direct path giving to the pressure as if squeezed by giant hands. On the cliff-top every figure was prone; from the concourse came a wailing and a moaning . . . White got to his feet and strode to the camp. When, having waited, and none had come down, he climbed the path, beseeching and clamouring, they crowded about him.

And when, forcing his way through the press, Rolling Thunder drew him aside, White was able to realise how small a margin the usually impassive Indian had himself in hand.

“He - Who - Laughs - With - His Eyes will make um magic to tell when safe for Ojibway strike camp,’’ the chief pleaded with hardly repressed urgency. White nodded curtly; under the stretched attention of the tribe, squatted cross-legged; produced his knuckle-bones; muttering spells, dispatched them on their errand; in due course retrieved them; shuffled them in varying patterns on the ground. Eventually he looked up:

“Though angered by your disobedience to the Great White Chief,” he said impressively, “out of his goodness Muji-Manito promises that should you hit the trail without delay, then will he avert the evil he had planned.” Hand clasped tightly about that of his son, Rolling Thunder shot to his feet.

“We go!” he said with conviction, and in a matter of seconds the tribe were swarming down the cliff after him.

Even though while watching that frenzied packing, White saw

MacGrath striding at spe the landward trail, it wai til the straggling colum dian carts, hand-tobogga ies, ponies, and all were down the inland trail thj tunity came for explain!

“What in Sam Hill’s 1 anyway?” the bemused demanded. “And what bomb I heard? Loud em added, “to blow a man’s Poker-faced White a head. j

“Not a bomb,” he expi mine,” before MacGrq find his voice : “Obviouslj referred to in that circ the United States’ Depa Marine warning all sli the breaking-away of cJ naval manoeuvres.” “It drifted a whale I way,” MacGrath com ml want of something betl “Darned good thing tl beached it, too . . . . I what set it off?” he I thoughtfully. I

White shot him a praising glance.

“I did, laddie,” he “Found it, covered it, made the necessary with a hide-up in the s< a spot of mumbo-juni Rolling Thunder I’d I formation that if he < vacant possession on tl the order to quit, M would leave his watel serve the ejectment oil son. This morning, wj moval vans hadn’t aril pressed the button, tlj concussion flattened I every tepee on the 11 forced by a further mJ the spirit world, thJ easy. Rolling Tliunl good home, but he lei

There was a silenc

“I guess you’ve saj —Government a wh< trouble,” MacGrath n last, and shot his sn curious glance. “Tell may happen to have job before you joined

“Lecturer on In< Customs, Superstition lect to the Universn toba,” said White.