Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/676

658 dispersed, while the friends of the unfortunate merely lifted and carried him to his lodge, and there left him alone, to recover or die as the case might be. Justice compels me to add, however, that this apparent stoicism was not so much the result of indifference as of the fact that the man was esteemed "medicine," and hence should not be meddled with; any interference might not only be fatal to the spell that had been worked, but would jeopard the welfare of the individual, bringing the wrath of the spirits upon his own head!

I visited the subject of conjuration the day following, and found him up, "clothed and in his right mind." Accepting an invitation to a seat beside him, conversation soon turned on the events of the night before, when he assured me, and I presume truthfully, that he had no remembrance of what had occurred subsequent to the moment he announced the partial restoration of sensation, until in the gray of the morning, when he awoke to find himself reclining on the skins in his own lodge. I also availed myself of the opportunity offered for investigation, when I found, much to my amazement, that, save for a slightly atrophied condition of the diseased side, the two halves of the body were coequal in sensation and control. He was confident that permanent relief had been obtained, which I was by no means willing to concede, though I kept my opinions strictly to myself. Subsequently my diagnosis and prognosis were confirmed by a return of the malady, which became even more assertive than before: for now the leg, which before had been in a degree amenable to the will, became perfectly unmanageable, and even the muscles of the face were rigidly set. When I left the neighborhood, a second powwow was proposed, to be conducted on a still grander scale; but I have no means of knowing more of the case or its subsequent treatment. There were, however, reasons convincing to any qualified medical man why there should be no permanent change save for the worse: the case was simply incurable.

One conjurer, whom I knew intimately, and whose adopted brother I was, surpassed by far the most able and expert of the civilized exponents of necromancy. Wa-ah-poos, or "The Rabbit," as he was mellifluously known, would perform the most difficult and astounding feats at an instant's notice, regardless of preparation or surroundings. He would allow himself to be bound hand and foot with rawhide thongs, even the whole body enveloped, pinioning the arms and hands to back and sides, yet the very instant a blanket or robe was cast over him he would bound to his feet free, with the bonds gathered in his hands., with the fastenings thereof intact. Once I bound his naked form with powerful strips of green moose-hide, drawing them so tightly that the blood threatened to burst from the ridges of unimprisoned flesh; but it made not the least difference so far as I could discover. On another occasion, in the middle of the day, he was even more elaborately