“It is true,” agreed the Shaman, “but,” he added, thoughtfully, “you are not grown to man’s size yet.”
“Maybe we trade it to the Shaman in the next village,” Ike suggested with a guileless face.
But the Shaman protested violently. “They were not all good Shamans like himself in the other villages. They would certainly cheat and rob him. Why did he not trade with him? He had a big heart. He always gave more than he received. Then, too, he was losing power over his people. There were the priests that traveled summer and winter through the land, treating the sick for nothing and always talking against the medicine men and forever preaching a new faith that might be all right in another land, but which would not work in the Northland, where life was cruel and no man could love his brother like himself. Many of his own tribe had embraced the faith and openly laughed at his power. And soon he, the Shaman, whose father had been a Shaman, and whose father’s father had been a Shaman, would be regarded as only a common man in the tribe. The wondrous box would help him to regain his power. His people would be convinced of his greatness when he summoned the spirits to talk and sing to them, but to give up the finest team in Alaska, that was too much.”
This was Ike’s cue, and the bargaining that ensued was a thing worth remembering. From the lockers, Ike brought out some of all the things they had brought to barter, while the Shaman viewed the head with eyes of cupidity.
Ike selected a dozen plugs of tobacco and laid them out in a row.
The Shaman eyed them with envy, but controlled himself with an effort.
“More,” he grunted.
Ike wrung his hands and declared he was being robbed, but he added four more plugs of tobacco to the row. After all it was only the beginning of the battle and he had decided in the first place to give thirty plugs if he had to do so. For two hours the battle raged, the pile of trinkets before the Shaman growing steadily. Often the boys turned their heads aside to hide their grins at Ike who, with tears in his eyes, protested that he was being robbed, that he was a poor man with a sick child to support, and he was taking the bread from his child’s mouth to give to a stranger, but Ike’s wildest outbursts were met by the Esquimau, with a steady demand of:
“More, more.”
But it was not in the law of things for a Jew to be worsted by a mere Esquimau, so when Ike decided that the pile had grown big enough, he reached out and gathered it up in his arms. “We can not trade,” he shouted angrily. “Here I offer you gifts worthy of a prince, besides a box full of spirits, and all you say is ‘More, more,’ all the time. All these things I offer you for a few mangy dogs, so poor you can see their ribs and so old and worn out that they do not snap and bite like real huskies do. Go. Perhaps in the next village we will find a Shaman who is not a robber.”