The Return of the Indian (12 page)

Little Bear was in the paddock, fetching his pony. He had to get Bright Stars to give him a leg up. He bent over and put his hand on her black head. She gazed up at him, her eyes sparkling, this time with tears. She seemed to be begging him for something, but he shook his head. Suddenly she reached up, seized his hand, and pressed it to her cheek. Then she turned and ran into the tepee.

As she entered, Boone’s face appeared at the flap.

“Hey! Pssst! Injun!”

Little Bear, who was riding toward the ramp, turned his head. “Give it to those Frenchies!”

I give.

Little Bear mounted, waved at the boys, rode down the ramp and, catching the reins up chest-high, galloped to the cupboard. His pony jumped the bottom rim and swerved to a sudden stop to avoid the ranks of Indians. Little Bear barked a command. All the Indians put their hands on each other’s Shoulders. The nearest brave put his on the pony’s rump.

“Omri shut door, send!” ordered Little Bear. His face was burning with impatience.

Omri gave himself a second to take in the group. The painted braves in their double row looked proud, ferocious, eager. They were obviously looking forward to the coming battle without a trace of fear. The weaponry
caught the sun and glistened with readiness to do what it had been made to do. For a moment, Omri was swamped by doubts. It was like …
like mailing death.
Why should he help to kill people …? But he was caught up in it now.

“Go on!” urged Patrick. “Send them!”

“Wait—Fickits!” said Omri. He picked up the little corporal, who was Standing at attention just outside the cupboard, and set him by himself on the shelf. Then he shut the door firmly and turned the key.

For a long moment, they didn’t breathe. Then Omri opened the door. His hand was shaking and he jiggled the cupboard a bit as he did it. Two or three of the Indian figures, now plastic, fell over. It was like dominoes, each knocking down another until most of them lay tumbled across each other on the floor of the cupboard. Only Little Bear and Fickits and a couple more were still up-right.

The boys stared at the scene in a dismay they couldn’t control. Boone, who had crept to the edge of the seed tray and was leaning over to look, voiced their feeling.

“Looks like a massacree, don’t it?”

“Don’t be stupid, Boone!” Patrick almost shouted. “They’re just plastic now. They fell over because Omri jogged the cupboard.”

“Sure,” said Boone hastily. “Sure, Ah know that! Ah wuz just sayin’—”

“Well, don’t!”

“You ain’t superstitious, are ya?”

“Of course not!”

Now there was a feeling of intense anticlimax. There seemed nothing they ought to do. It was getting chilly. They sat for a bit, but that became intolerable because of what they were all imagining.

“Let’s go in.”

Again Patrick took the cupboard, with its Contents, and the bag of weaponless British soldiers, and Omri took the seed tray.

Bright Stars and Boone retreated into the tepee, just in case they met anyone on the way back upstairs, which was just as well, because as they passed Gillon’s bedroom on the first floor, the door opened and out he came.

Omri and Patrick started guiltily. They couldn’t help it.

“What’s all that?” Gillon asked, not because he partic-ularly wanted to know but just out of idle curiosity.

“Just some stuff we’ve been mucking about with,” said Omri. He tried to push past, but Gillon stood in his path.

“Oh, it’s that fantastic little house you made last year,” said Gillon. “And the leather tepee. Often wondered what had happened to that. Never seen one like it in the shops …” Before they could do any thing, he’d picked the tepee up to examine it.

It was one of the worst moments of Omri’s life. There was nothing he could do. There were Bright Stars and Boone, crouching on the earth, exposed—discovered. Everything seemed frozen—neither Patrick nor Omri could move, and the little people sat absolutely motionless.
Omri’s eyes were fastened to them helplessly. They were so obviously alive—so vulnerable! He waited, as a condemned man waits for the ax to fall on his neck, for Gillon to notice them.

Gillon, however, was looking only at the tepee in his hands.

“This really is a mini-marvel,” he said. “I love the paintings. Has Dad seen these?” He peered closer. “This little beaver—and the porcupine … they look dead
genuine
, like those cave paintings we saw in France … And the way the poles are attached, inside, it’s really a work of art.”

With that he plonked it carelessly back on the earth, nearly knocking Boone’s head off, and swung away down the stairs singing a pop song at the top of his lungs.

Patrick did a perfect imitation of Matron, spinning on his heel and falling in a mock faint on the landing. He lay there with the cupboard on his stomach and his eyes wide open and crossed. After a second he sat up.

“Whew, that was close!”

Omri was still rooted to the spot. Boone was lying, half in, half out of the tepee, on his back. His eyes looked crossed too—quite genuinely. After a few moments he wriggled all the way out and stood up, wiping the sweat off his face.

“Jeez, son,” he complained, “d’ ya have t’ skeer a fella like that?
An’
the li’l lady … ’Tain’t right, with her bein’ the way she is, skeerin’ her that-a-way. Might bring somethin’ on.”

Omri put his face down and whispered through the flap. “Are you okay, Bright Stars?”

There was no answer. Cautiously Omri lifted the tepee again. Bright Stars was sitting perfectly still, her face down on her knees.

“Bright Stars? Answer me!”

Patrick had stood up and was peering anxiously over Omri’s Shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Let’s get up to my room.”

They went up. Omri carried the seed tray very carefully. Inside, they locked the door and put the seed tray and the cupboard down on Omri’s desk and turned on the lamp.

Bright Stars stood up. Her face had a greyish look under the brown.

“Son come now,” she said clearly.

“Ah knew it!” said Boone. “Git that ol’ bat in the white headpiece back.”

“Bright Stars need no one. Need water. Knife. Omri bring, then leave.” She signed that he should put the tepee back to cover her.

“Are you sure, Bright Stars? Little Bear said—”

“Little Bear go fight. Bright Stars make son. Go.”

Though very uneasy, Omri obeyed her. He fetched some boiled water, cleaned out the pond and refilled it. Boone carried a bucketful of water to the flap of the tepee and laid his pocketknife beside it. “That’s t’ cut the
cord, y’ know,” he confided. “Animals bite it through, but Ah guess th’ Injuns is beyond that.”

After a short time, Bright Stars’ hand came out through the flap of the tepee and took in the bucket and then the knife. After that, she fastened the flap firmly shut, and all was quiet.

There seemed nothing to do but wait. Omri knew that with white people, anyway, the first baby often took a long time to be born. His mother had been half a day producing Adiel, she’d told them. Perhaps with Indians it was different.

Patrick was uneasy. “If anything happened to her, Little Bear wouldn’t ever forgive us! I wish he’d taken her back with him. Shouldn’t we bring Matron?”

“Bright Stars said not to. Matron’s awfully bossy. Maybe she’d just upset her.”

“Well, I think she’d be better off back in her own village.”

“I
wish
I knew what was happening—back there!” Omri burst out.

“Yeah! If only
we
could get back somehow.”

They sat, the three of them, the boys on chairs, Boone on the “couch” of rhododendron leaves where Little Bear had sat. Every now and then, Boone stood up and paced the ground outside the tepee. He kept biting hunks off a block of tobacco he had with him and chewing at it and then spitting it out. He was obviously very worked up.

Finally he stopped.

“Ah shoulda gone with ’em,” he said. “Ah knew at the time Ah shoulda.”

“That would’ve been crazy, Boone,” said Patrick. “Someone would have shot you just because you look different, and you’re white.”

“Mebbe Ah could’ve stayed in the tepee and shot the Frenchies from cover. Ah could’ve done
somethin’.
Thet Injun’s mah blood brother. His fight oughta be mah fight!”

“We need you here, Boone.”

“Whut fur? Ah ain’t no use here!”

“Well,” said Omri, “you can help with the baby.”

Boone’s jaw dropped.
“Me?
Watcha take me for? Babies is wimmin’s bizness!”

Just at that moment, they heard a little cry from inside the tepee. It wasn’t a baby’s cry. In a flash Boone was crouched at the flap.

“Lemme in, lady, ya cain’t be alone in thur! Ah’ll help ya! Ah brung a dozen calves into the world,
an’
a foal once’t, an’ they’re a lot bigger’n a baby—Ah know whut t’do!”

There was a pause, and then a slight movement at the tent flap. Boone grinned a rather wobbly grin over his Shoulder at the boys.

“Ya see? She trusts me,” he said. “Don’t fret, now. Li’l Bear’ll be glad he made me his brother, you wait.” The flap was loosened and Boone started to crawl in. But just before he disappeared, he turned once more.

“Ah wuz thinkin’,” he said. “If’n ya really wanted to go back, and watch the battle—”

The boys looked at each other, then leaned forward incredulously to listen.

“Wal, whut Ah wuz wonderin’ wuz … Does it have t’be the cupboard? Mebbe it ain’t the cupboard so much as that thur fancy key. Did ya ever try the key in somethin’ bigger? Like that great big box, for instance, that we wuz all on before.”

Another little cry, more of a gasp, came from inside the tepee.

“S’ long, boys—wish us luck!” Boone said, and crawled the rest of the way, leaving both boys in a ferment of excitement at the possibilities of this amazing new idea.

“Would it work?”

“How do I know? I never thought of it.”

“We never asked ourselves whether the cupboard was part of what makes it happen. Maybe he’s right. Maybe the cupboard’s just a cupboard, and the magic thing is the key.”

They turned both at once to look at the chest.

The top of it still had scattered bits of Kleenex, boxes and other things on it. Omri went over to it and swept all this off. Then he opened it. It was full of his private stuff.

“It’s not big enough to hold both of us at once.”

“We couldn’t both go together anyway, you wally.”

“Why not?” Then he realized. Of course! Someone would have to stay behind or there’d be nobody to turn the key.

“Who’ll try it first?” Patrick was asking.

Omri looked at him. “Are you serious? You really want to try it?”

“Of course! Don’t you?”

Omri looked around the room. Despite irritations, he was happy with it, with his life. He wasn’t eager to risk losing either of them.

“Have you thought about the dangers?”

“Coward!”

“No I’m not. You’re rushing in like you always do. Just stop and think a bit. First, if it does work at all, how can you be sure you’d go back to Little Bear’s time, to his village, and not somewhere else? You could find yourself anywhere. And any
when.”
Patrick looked mulish. “Apart from that, what about size?”

“Size?”

“Yes. If
they
reach us small, we’d reach them small. Wouldn’t we? Of course there was no plastic then. We’d have to be in dolls or—totem poles or something. I don’t think it’s cowardly not to fancy waking up in an Indian village two hundred years ago, at the top of a totem pole.”

For answer, Patrick knelt down by the chest and started lifting things out of it. “Give me a hand with all this rubbish” was all he said.

Omri helped him silently until the chest was empty. Then he said, “After all that, probably the key won’t even fit this lock.” His heart was pounding and he knew he hoped it wouldn’t.

Patrick got up and fetched the key. Without closing the lid of the chest, he put it in the lock and turned it. It turned easily. The lock part clicked. Patrick removed the key and looked at it.

“My guess is, this key fits pretty well any lock,” he said slowly.

Omri took a deep breath. Once again, he was caught up in something he felt overwhelmed by.

“Who’ll go first?”

“I will,” said Patrick.

“Wait a minute!”

“What non;?”

“You’ve got to have something with you, something of Little Bear’s. Otherwise you haven’t a hope of finishing up in the right place!”

Patrick stopped. “What have we got of his?”

“The longhouse.”

“That’s no use. The longhouse was made here; he didn’t bring it from his time.”

“Then, there’s only the tepee.”

They looked over at Omri’s desk. The tiny tepee stood up from the seed tray, its poles sticking through the top, its beautiful bold animal designs on its cone-shaped panels.

“That came from somewhere else. The Iroquois didn’t have tepees, only longhouses. Besides, we can’t move that. Bright Stars is having her baby in it.”

Patrick said slowly, “If I took
her
, I’d be sure to go back to the right place. She’d take me.”

“Patrick, you can’t! Take her back into the middle of a battle?”

“Listen, it’s her village, it’s her place. If not for the accident of you bringing them when you did, she’d be there now. I bet it’s where she’d rather be, if you asked her—didn’t you see how she was begging Little Bear just before he left?”

“But he wanted—”

“Listen, shut up! You’re always arguing. I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to miss this chance. I want to see the battle. Don’t let’s have a fight over it or somebody’s sure to get hurt. And it might not be one of us.”

He went to the desk and fetched the seed tray and brought it back and laid it carefully in the bottom of the chest. Omri watched, feeling terribly agitated. He wanted to fight Patrick, but that was impossible now—he should have done it earlier. Now if they started struggling something awful could happen to Boone or Bright Stars.

His mind was racing. “I’m the one who’ll have the key,” he thought. He would have control. He could send them for five minutes, or one minute, or less, and then, just by turning the key in the lock again, he could recover them. That was how it worked. What could happen in such a short time? And he couldn’t help admiring Patrick’s courage. Omri admitted to himself that he would not have been willing to go first, and not just because of Bright Stars, either.