Shaman Pass by Stan Jones

flap to reveal a pair of narrow, stubborn black eyes staring back at him. “I never leave nothing there,” Lemuel Bass said. “I never go there.” He looked everywhere but at the amulet and Active’s eyes, then finally gave in and stared at the amulet.
    “Never? Not even in the summer when you were living in Tent City?”
    “Maybe couple times.”
    “You know that old naluaqmiu that runs it? Mr. Harriman?”
    “Little bit maybe.”
    “He knows you pretty well. He says you come in for Pokémon a lot.”
    “Not that much.”
    “He wouldn’t lie, would he?”
    “I dunno.”
    “Well, he said you were in there this morning and you traded him this amulet for some Pokémon cards you wanted, but you left before he could give them to you.” Active pulled the Pokémon cards with the dinosaur on the wrapper out of his pocket and showed them to Lemuel. The boy’s eyes grew huge and he twitched as if he were about to snatch the cards into his sleeping bag.
    “I brought them to you, all right, but I guess if that wasn’t you at Harriman’s, I’ll have to take them back.” Active returned the cards to his pocket. A soft “ Arii, that’s Larvitar!” escaped the bag.
    “Maybe I was in there,” Lemuel said. “That could be my cards, all right.” A dirty brown hand emerged from the bag at the end of a skinny brown arm.
    Active pulled the cards out again. “But I have to ask you something before I can give them to you.”
    The hand froze in midair. “Like what?”
    “Like where did you get the amulet?”
    “I think I find it somewhere.”
    “Where?”
    “I dunno. I think I forget.”
    Active slipped the cards back into his parka and rose to his feet. There was another soft “Arii!” from the bag.
    “Dad give it to me.”
    “Your father? When?”
    “Yesterday maybe.”
    “Maybe?”
    “Yesterday in the afternoon when he wake up.”
    “He slept till after noon?”
    “Uh-huh. He’s out late that night.”
    “What was he doing?”
    “He never tell me. But he say he find this amulet and I can have it if I never tell nobody about it.” Lemuel started to snuffle. “Now he’s going to be mad, maybe he’ll burn my Pokémon like he always say.”
    “I’ll ask him not to.” Active handed the cards to the boy and left the room.
    Alan Long and Mrs. Bass were talking about how the winter had been a little colder than usual, and whether that meant breakup would be late this year. “I sure hope it’s not late,” the woman was saying. “I like to move in to Tent City soon as we can, all right, go to bingo all time.”
    Active showed her the amulet. “Mrs. Bass, where did your husband get this?”
    She bent and peered at the amulet with what looked like genuine, first-impression curiosity. “I dunno. I never see it before. How did you get it if it’s Johnny’s?”
    “Lemuel tried to trade it at Harriman’s this morning.”
    She opened her mouth to answer, but stopped and looked in the direction of the Katonak as the dog yard erupted. Over the uproar, they could just pick out the sound of a snowmachine climbing the bank from the river.
    “That’s Johnny,” she said with an air of relief. “You should ask him about it yourself.”
    *Bureau of Indian Affairs

CHAPTER NINE
    ACTIVE AND LONG STEPPED out the door as a white man with a huge potbelly and a bushy black beard shut down a snowmachine in front of the cabin. Johnny Bass, like his wife, seemed to be about forty, and had very few teeth in front. He had an ugly mullet haircut—short on the top and sides, long in the back—that was maybe a month overdue for a touch-up.
    Two boys in their early teens rolled out of the sled behind him and stood staring at the two uniformed strangers, as did Johnny Bass. A rifle in a scabbard was lashed to a rail of the sled, but neither boy was near it, and Bass was in front of the snowmachine.
    Bass glanced at his wife, hovering in the doorway, then his eyes swung between Active and Long and finally settled on