Old Plaited-Beard sent for Bakula and accused him of destroying the power in his charms; and when the lad strenuously denied the accusation, he told him what he had sneeringly said in the nganga’s town about “medicine men” and their tricks; of his companionship with the white man in the King’s town; and how he who used to wear so many charms had thrown nearly all of them away. It seemed a very black indictment.
Bakula admitted that he had lost faith in ngangas, and told with dramatic force of the nganga’s exposed trickery in the King’s town; he did not deny his liking for the white man, for had he not shown kindness to him in forgiving him and healing his wound? He assented to the charge of throwing his charms away, for he could not see that the messes the witch-doctors put into horns and shells could help them in sickness, hunting, trading, or anything else.
“Besides,” he said, "if I had power to affect the charms made by the ‘medicine man’ for the town, how is it our people have killed pigs, gazelles and an antelope?"
“You let them shoot the animals, and took the spirit from my charms, so that I could not kill any,” unreasonably argued the superstitious old man.
“I am sorry no game fell to your gun,” soothingly replied the lad, “but it was through no fault of mine.”
Old Plaited-Beard looked at the apologetic lad suspiciously, and he thought that his very conciliatory attitude was a sign of his guilt. He would have understood him better if the spirited boy had burst into loud, angry abuse, recriminations and counter-charges. However, he only said: "Don’t do it again. Leave my charms alone and do not laugh at ‘medicine men’ and their fetishes, for you have put me to the expense of engaging a nganga to renew the power in my hunting charm."
Old Plaited-Beard went next day to the nganga nkongo, who made three plaits of nine pieces of grass in each plait. He then asked for a piece of the last bird or animal his client had killed. The old man took from his shoulder-bag the tail of a gazelle that he had brought for the purpose and handed it over to the “medicine man.”
A hunter always saves a feather or a claw of the last bird he killed, or the tail or hoof of the last animal he shot, and that is why all these odds and ends are stuck in the front walls of the houses. At any time he may repeatedly miss, and may require a piece of the last thing he killed to restore his luck. The nganga took the gazelle’s tail from Old Plaited-Beard and put it on the ground; he then made three little heaps of loose gunpowder round it, and chalked a cross near the powder, and on the butt of the hunter’s gun. The nganga exploded the powder; a little gunpowder was then put in the gun, and the hunter, standing a few feet away, fired at the gazelle’s tail, and blew it from the spot on which it was resting, thus proving that his hunting skill had returned to him. If the tail had not been blown out of its position the “medicine man” would have repeated his ceremonies.
After the old man had knocked the tail away, the nganga took the gun from him, and put his finger in the dirt where the tail had been, and rubbed a little of the earth three times on the hunter’s upper lip; the fourth time he put his fingers on the butt of the gun, and ran them up the barrel and snapped them in the air. He then loosened the plaits, and shook the grass about the gun. Old Plaited-Beard stepped forward, solemnly clapped his hands, took his gun, sprang into the air, and returned home satisfied that in future he would be more successful. He had never been a good shot, and this season he failed utterly, and put all the blame on Bakula, on whom he determined to avenge himself on the first good opportunity.