The Dragons of Blueland (2 page)

The darkness faded into morning, and looking down he saw green meadows, fields of corn and potatoes, a road wandering past barns and houses, and a brook zigzagging back and forth across the road. "Perhaps I can find a bridge to hide under," thought the dragon, "but I'll have to hurry. Soon the farmers will be up."

He swooped, and coasted down to a place where the road crossed the brook. Gently he landed and pattered down the bank to hide underneath the bridge. But there wasn't any bridge! The road had been built right over the brook, and the water flowed under the road through a culvert, a long round tunnel. And the culvert was too small for a dragon to hide in.

"I'll try another crossing," he said to himself, scrambling up the bank, and galloping down the road as fast as he could to the next crossing. But here, too, a very small culvert carried the water under the road.

"Oh dear, oh dear!" he muttered as he galloped on farther between a yellow farmhouse and a big yellow barn. Just as he was passing he heard a rooster scream and a window slam shut in the house. "Where shall I hide? Where shall I hide?" he panted.

And then he came to a third crossing. He tumbled down the bank and found another culvert, but a big culvert, big enough for a baby dragon to hide in. He crawled inside, wading through shallow water that cooled his hot, sandy feet.

"What if someone in the farmhouse saw me^ he kept thinking as he stretched just far enough to nibble the tasty skunk cabbages and marsh marigolds growing outside the culvert. And then as he ate and cooled off, he felt tired and happy and almost safe, and he dozed off to sleep in the culvert.

Chapter Two

MR. AND MRS. WAGONWHEEL

But someone
had
seen the dragon. At least he was sure he'd seen something blue and yellow and gold galloping down the road. It was Mr. Wagonwheel, the farmer living in the yellow farmhouse, who had just been closing his window as the dragon ran past.

"What's that galloping noise?" asked Mrs. Wagon- wheel, sitting up in bed.

"A large blue monster just ran by, and after breakfast I'm going to find out all about it!" yelled Mr.

Wagonwheel, jumping into his clothes and rushing off to put the cows in the barn for milking.

Mrs. Wagonwheel, meanwhile, made pancakes and coffee, but forgot to boil the eggs. She was horribly upset at the thought of a monster rushing past her house at five o'clock in the morning.

Mr. Wagonwheel hurried through the milking, let the cows into the pasture, and dashed back to the kitchen. He was anxious to eat and be off after the Blue Demon, as he had decided to call whatever it was. He swallowed a pancake whole and banged two eggs on the side of his cup.

Splop! Raw egg flew all over the table and Mr. Wagonwheel. Mrs. Wagonwheel had forgotten to boil the eggs, of course.

"Martha! What's the matter with you?" yelled Mr. Wagonwheel.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said poor Mrs. Wagonwheel. "I'm so upset about that horrible monster I don't know what I'm doing," and she nervously slipped a pancake instead of her handkerchief into her apron pocket.

"Well, boil more eggs!" roared Mr. Wagonwheel, going to the sink to wash off his face and hands and shirt and overalls.

Now Mr. Wagonwheel liked his eggs hard, veryhard, and as he waited for them to get very hard, it began to rain. It was only a drizzly rain, but enough to wash away the dragons footprints in the dusty road.

"Drat it!" thundered Mr. Wagonwheel, looking out the window. "It's raining!"

"I thought we needed rain, dear," said Mrs. Wagon- wheel.

"We do, but why can’t it wait until I capture the Blue Demon? Now maybe I'll never find him."

"Maybe it's just as well," said Mrs. Wagonwheel, carefully putting a spoonful of salt in her coffee.

"Well, I can see you have no spirit of adventure," grumped Mr. Wagonwheel, peeling his at-last-ready very hard eggs.

He picked up his rifle, a strong rope, and put on his raincoat and boots. "I'm off!" he yelled, and slammed the door.

"He'll never come back," thought Mrs. Wagonwheel, and she quietly sat down to cry.

Mr. Wagonwheel ran down the road, pouncing on bushes, peering behind trees, and examining roadside ditches, yelling all the while, "Coming, ready or not!” He made such a racket that the cows heard him in plenty of time. They huddled around the big culvert where the baby dragon was hiding and pretended to be busy drinking water. For they had found the sleeping dragon while Mr. Wagonwheel was eating his very hard eggs.

"Wake up!" they had said, "and tell us what you are, and what you're doing in our culvert."

The dragon woke up with a start, and then smiled at the friendly cows. "I'm a baby dragon," he explained,

"and I'm on my way home to the great high mountains of Blueland."

"But what are you doing in our culvert?" asked a cow.

"I'm hiding. You see, most people think that there are no dragons left, and if I should be captured, I'd surely end up in a zoo or a circus, and never get home again."

"Shh!" said another cow. "I think I hear Mr. Wagonwheel now. All through milking time he was muttering about catching a Blue Demon. He must have meant you."

It was then that the cows huddled around the opening to the culvert, and the dragon crouched down on his stomach in the water.

"The culvert!" yelled Mr. Wagonwheel, brandishing his rifle. "An excellent hiding place for the Blue Demon." And he started down the bank on the other side of the road.

"It's all over now," thought the dragon, who could tell where the farmer was from the noise he was making. But just then Mr. Wagonwheel looked across the road at his peaceful cows and thought, "My cows would be in a panic if the Demon were hiding here!" He turned back up the bank and ran down the road,

beating the bushes and peering behind trees.

The cows grazed nearby all day long, talking to the dragon and telling him when it was safe to come out of the culvert. Toward evening they heard Mr. Wagon wheel stamping back along the road, yelling "Hoop-la! All of you, into the barn! " and as they wandered oil they quietly warned the dragon, "Leave just as soon as he goes to the barn. It's just like him to be out looking for you by flashlight after supper."

And they were right. Long after the dragon had flown far beyond the yellow farmhouse and culvert, Mr. Wagonwheel was shooting into bushes. Mrs. Wagonwheel was in bed with a case of nerves.