The Shaman Laughs by James D. Doss Read Free Book Online Page B

she nodded her polite rejection of this offer. "Thanks, Aunt Daisy. I don't have much of an appetite this early."
    Gorman rested his face in his hands. His voice croaked when he spoke. "Ouray is dead!"
    Daisy tilted her round face and raised her eyebrows. Had he been drinking this early in the morning? Who did Gorman think he had shot? "Well, it's a bad thing, I guess, but you ought to be over it by now. Chief Ouray's been dead way over a hundred years."
    Gorman looked up, wide-eyed and outraged. "Dammit, Daisy, not
that
Ouray. My registered Hereford bull, Big Ouray, he's dead!"
    Men, the old woman sighed, they were all alike. They loved their pickup trucks and their animals. And ignored their wives. She wondered what she should say to comfort her cousin. "They say you should never give an animal a name unless it's a pet." This brought no response. Daisy poured an extra dash of coffee into his mug. "That the bull you bought back in January?"
    Gorman grunted. Benita started to say something, then clamped her mouth shut.
    Daisy adopted a more sympathetic tone. "How did it happen?" That bull, with his enormous horns and nasty temper, was a dangerous brute. No cougar or bear would dare mess with him. "He eat some poison weed?"
    Gorman shook his head; he felt a need to cleanse his thoughts. "This is a bad thing. Somebody cut him up. Took his ears and balls. Like that elk in the Never Summer range."
    She remembered the story about the mutilated elk in the alpine pasture. Some Utes figured it was witches. The crazy
matukach
woman in Durango insisted the culprits were little silver-clothed people (with long ape-like arms!) who came from the stars in flying ships that like looked like huge cigars. But nobody really knew what had happened to the unfortunate animal.
    Daisy sat down beside Gorman and patted his shoulder in a motherly fashion. She had always tried to look out for her lanky cousin, ever since they were children. He was like a brother. "A Ute wouldn't do anything like that," she offered. "Sounds like some crazy
matukach
at work. Some of them are filled with superstition; who knows why they do the things they do?" Daisy noticed Benita's smile and was puzzled. Who could understand young people? Maybe Ben-ita had spent too much time with the
matukach
professors, learning a lot of foolishness.
    Gorman rubbed at his eyes with a dirty red bandanna. "I don't know. White people in the canyon? It happened late last night; he was still warm." He looked out the trailer window. "The only way into Spirit Canyon goes right past your place… Wouldn't you have noticed if somebody went up the lane?"
    "I didn't hear a car or truck." Daisy was searching for an answer. "Maybe the animal got sick and died; coyotes eat what is easy to get, like the tongue and privates and…"
    "Big Ouray still had his tongue, and coyotes don't eat ears." He eyed her curiously. "I heard something. Howling." Gorman swirled the coffee in his cup. "You don't think… that little man who lives in the canyon might have had something to do with this?" This question embarrassed Benita, but Gorman didn't care.
    Daisy shook her head to dismiss this troubling question. The
pitukupf
! No. The dwarf would never mutilate an animal. The shaman's brow furrowed. Would he?
    "Daddy," Benita began firmly, "there isn't any such thing as a
pitukupf
, it's just an old tribal myth, like the Water-Baby." The young woman was pointedly ignored by her elders.
    Gorman stuck his brier between his teeth. He looked through the kitchen window and into the yawning mouth of the great canyon. "The dwarf—he killed my best horse a few years back."
    "That was different," Daisy retorted sharply. "Your own fault. You shouldn't have hobbled him so close to the little man's home. You know he doesn't like that." She got up and opened a small sack of flour. "Anyway, I put tobacco by his home every new moon. He wouldn't do anything bad to me. Or my relatives." She adjusted the propane flame under the