The Return of the Indian (7 page)

Bright Stars vanished into the tepee, and Little Bear, who had been watching her too, beckoned Omri closer.

“Soon I father!” he said proudly, and hit himself on the chest. A flash of pain crossed his face.

“Yes,” said Omri, “so you’d better rest up and get well.”

“I well!” He shifted restlessly about on the matchbox bed. Suddenly he said: “Where other brother?”

“What do you mean—my brothers?”

“No! Little Bear brother! Blood brother, like Omri.”

It occurred to Omri and Patrick at the same moment whom he meant.

Patrick had also been busy. He had gone outside earlier and dug up a very small turf of grass from the garden—a piece of living lawn about six inches square, a paddock for the pony to graze on. It was to have a fence around it, which Patrick was making out of twigs, string and glue. Now he looked up from this with an unreadable look on his face.

“When your mum threw your models away—” began Omri slowly.

“Yeah?”

“Did she get rid of … all of them?”

“As far as I know.”

“You really are the
pits
,” said Omri between his teeth.

“Me? Why?”

“I suppose you just threw him in with the others and left him for your mum to chuck in the dustbin!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know darn well!
Boone.”

Patrick dropped his eyes. Omri couldn’t tell what he felt. He seemed almost to be smiling, but Omri felt suddenly so furious with him that this only made him angrier.

Though they had spoken quietly, Little Bear’s sharp ears had caught the gist.

“Who throw Boone? I want! Want see blood brother! Who throw, I kill!” he roared.

Bright Stars emerged from the tepee at the first roar and darted to his side. She forced him to lie on his back and pinioned him to the bed by main force until he calmed down a little and evidently promised her to behave. Then she hurried to the edge of the chest with a gleam in her eyes that boded no good at all.

“Where Little Bear brother?” she demanded. “Little Bear want! No good him get angry! Omri bring Boone. Now.”

Omri’s insides seemed to be churning up with an anger
no less strong than the Indian’s. He turned on Patrick.

“You must have been mad to let your mother throw him away! Just because for some idiotic reason you wanted to pretend none of it ever happened! I’m going to kick your head in, you dim wally!” And he made a move towards Patrick.

Patrick didn’t step back. He stood with his hand in his pocket.

“He’s here,” he said.

Omri stopped short, jolted as if he’d stepped up a nonexistent step. “What—?” “He’s here. In my pocket.”

Slowly he withdrew his hand and opened it. Lying in the palm was the crying cowboy, on his white horse. Boone!—as large as life. Or rather, as small.

Omri uttered a shout of joy.

“You’ve got him! You had him all the time!” Then his grin faded. “Are you mad? Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“I’m not exactly proud of the fact that I still carry him everywhere,” Patrick said.

“So you hadn’t stopped believing?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to. I tried to tell my brother about it once, and he teased me for a solid week, saying I was a nut case, telling everyone I believed in fairies. It really got me. Of course I couldn’t prove a thing, not even to myself. So I decided it never happened. But I
… I just kept Boone in my pocket all the time, like … well, sort of for good luck.”

Omri had picked up the figure of Boone tenderly and was examining it. The horse’s legs had become a bit bent, and Boone’s beloved hat was looking decidedly the worse for wear. But it was still, unmistakably, even in plastic, Boone. It was the way they had last seen him, sitting on his horse, in his ten-gallon hat, his hand holding a big red bandanna to his nose, biowing a trumpet blast of farewell.

“Ah cain’t stand sayin’ good-bye. Ah jest re-fuse’t say it, that’s all! Ah’ll only bust out cryin’ if Ah do …”

“Come on, Boone!” whispered Omri. And he put him, without more ado, into the cupboard and turned the key.

He and Patrick bent over eagerly, bumping heads. Neither of them brought to the surface of his mind the deep fear they shared. Boone, too, had lived in dangerous times. Omri knew now that time worked the same at both ends, so to speak. A year had passed for him, and, in another place and time, a year had passed for his little men. And an awful lot (and a lot of it awful!) could happen in a year.

But almost at once their fears were laid to rest. There was a split second’s silence, and then, on the other side of the cupboard door, Boone began battering and kicking it, and a faint stream of swear words issued through the metal.

“Ah ain’t puttin’ up with it! No, sir, it ain’t fair, it ain’t dawggone well right! Ah ain’t bin drinkin’, Ah ain’t bin
fightin’, Ah ain’t cheated at poker in over a week! Ain’t no law kin sling a man in jail when he’s inny-cint as a noo-born babe, never mind keepin’ him shut in a cell so dark he cain’t see his own mus-tash!”

The boys were too fascinated to do anything at first, even open the door. They just crouched there, grinning imbecilically at each other.

“It’s Boone! It’s really him!” breathed Patrick.

But Boone, all unaware, and getting no response to his yells and blows, now decided no one was listening, and his voice began to quaver.

“They done up and left me,” he muttered. “Gone plumb away and left ol’ Boone alone in the dark …” There was a pause, followed by a long nose-blow that shook the cupboard. “T’ain’t fu-funny,” he went on, his voice now definitely shaking with sobs. “Don’t they know a man kin be brave as a lion and still skeered o’ the dark? Ain’t they got no ‘magination, leavin’ a fella ter rot in this pitch-black hell-hole? …” His voice rose on a shrill tide of tearful complaint.

Omri could not bear it a second longer. He opened the door. The light struck through and Boone instantly looked up, his red bandanna dropping to the floor between his knees. He jumped to his feet, staring, his mouth agape, his battered old hat askew on his ginger head. The horse backed off and snorted.

“Well, Ah’ll be e-ternally hornswoggled!” Boone got out at last. “If it ain’t you-all!”

“Yes, it’s us-all!—I mean, it’s us!” said Patrick excitedly. He capered about, stiff-legged, unable to contain himself.

Omri, too, was over the moon. “It’s so good to see you, Boone,” he cried, wishing he could wring the little man’s hand and bang him on the back.

Boone, who must have fallen off his horse at some point, now scrambled to his feet and dusted himself off. The horse came up behind him in the cupboard and nudged him forcefully in the back, as if to say, “I’m here too.” Omri could just about stroke its tiny nose with the tip of his little finger. The horse bunted it, nodding its head up and down, and then exchanged whinneys with Little Bear’s pony on the distant seed tray.

“And it’s mighty good t’see you fellas!” Boone was saying warmly, as he scrambled out of the cupboard. “Bin more’n a mite dull without mah hallucy-nations … Wal! Waddaya know, if it ain’t the li’l Injun gal!” Bright Stars had taken a few steps toward him timidly. He raised his hat. “Howdy, Injun lady! Hey, but whur’s th’ other one? That redskin that made me his blood brother—after he’d half killed me?” He looked around the top of the chest, but Little Bear’s matchbox bed had its back to him. “Tarnation take me if’n Ah didn’t miss that dawggone varmint when Ah woke up that last time … Or ‘went back,’ or whatever ya call it …” He rubbed his shirt front reminiscently. “Mah ol’ pals thought Ah’d gawn plumb loco when Ah tried t’ tell ’em how Ah got my wound!”

“Are you okay now, Boone?”

“Me? Ah’m jest fine! Y’ cain’t kill Boo-hoo Boone s’ easy, even if’n he does look a mite soft. So whur’s Li’l Bear? Lemme shake the hand that shot me, t’ show thur ain’t no hard feelin’s!”

Bright Stars didn’t understand much of this, but she heard Little Bear’s name. She took Boone by the arm and drew him over to the bed. When Boone saw the prostrate figure of the Indian he stopped short.

“Holy smoke, whut happened t’ him?”

“He got shot too. By Frenchmen,” Omri added in a low voice, and signaled to Boone not to ask questions. But Boone was not the most tactful of men.

“Jee-hoshaphat! Never did trust them Frenchies. Got
one runnin’ our saloon. Someday someone’s gonna run
him
… right outa town! Waters the whiskey, y’ know,” he added confidentially to Bright Stars.

At the word “whiskey,” Little Bear opened his eyes (he had dropped off to sleep) and tried to sit up. When he saw Boone bending over him he let out a cry of recognition, and then fell back again with a hand to his bandaged chest.

“Gee, the pore ol’ savage!” said Boone, shaking his head. He sniffed. “Not that he probably didn’t deserve it, they’re allus up to no good, but all th’ same Ah cain’t stand to see a man in pain.”

He wiped away a tear.

“He’s much better now,” said Patrick. “There’s nothing to start crying about.”

Boone blew his nose loudly and plonked himself down on the bed.

“Tell me th’ whole thing,” he said.

“Not now,” said Omri hurriedly.

“Why’n thunder not? Ah gotta hear sometime. C’mon, Injun. Or are ya ashamed o’ somethin’ ya done to that Frenchie t’ make him take a shot at ya?”

Little Bear lay on the bed and stared up at Boone. There was suddenly tension in the air as they all—Bright Stars, too—waited for him to remember … to ask.

Slowly he raised himself onto his elbows. His eyes had gone narrow, his face taut and scowling. Suddenly he opened his eyes wide and let out a wild cry. “Aaiiiiii!”

Bright Stars put her hands to her face, turned and fled up the ramp and into the tepee.

“Whut got into her?” Boone asked, looking after her, puzzled.

But another anguished cry transfixed them all.

“Little Bear remember! Soldiers come—burn village! Burn corn! Many … many …” He opened and closed his hands rapidly, holding up ten fingers again and again. “Iroquois braves fight—but not enough—not got guns—horses … Enemy break—burn—steal—kill … kill …”

His voice cracked. He stopped speaking.

Another man might have broken down and wept. But Little Bear just stared, wild-eyed and frozen-faced. His mouth was shut in a straight line, like a knife-cut in his hard face. Only his hands quivered at his sides, and his fingers became hooks.

“Gee whiz, fella,” muttered Boone at last. “That’s too bad.”

There was a long silence. Nobody moved. Little Bear lay on his back, his eyes open. He seemed to be neither fully awake, nor asleep. Omri passed a finger back and forth in front of those staring eyes—they didn’t respond. Omri, Patrick and Boone looked anxiously at each other.

“What shall we do?”

“Nuthin’,” said Boone. “Pore guy’s had a shock. Happened t’ me once’t. Came to after Ah got knocked out in some kinda ruckus … couldn’t remember a thing. Started in talkin’ and drinkin’ jes like ever’thin’ was normal,
when all of a sudden, it come back t’ me.
A lynchin’.
A mob of coyotes just strung a fella up for somethin’ he didn’t even do. Most horriblest thing Ah ever saw. Ah jest laid there, seein’ it all over agin. Took me a danged long time t’ git over it. An’ that wasn’t s’ bad, neither, as what he’s a-seein’ now, pore critter …”

Tears of sympathy were streaming down the cowboy’s leathery cheeks.

“Them rotten Frenchies … Mixin’ in … Sneakin’ up on ’em that-a-way an’ skeerin’ thur wimmenfolk an’ all. Gee. Ah sure would like to help them pore folk, if’n it hadn’t a happened s’ long ago!”

This showed an extraordinary change of heart for Boone, who had been absolutely down on Indians when they’d first known him. Omri said, “If we sent them back now, it would be all still going on. If you wanted to help, maybe we could send you back to their time—if Little Bear just held on to you, you’d all go back together.”

Boone, who had had his face buried in his red bandanna, froze for a moment. His eyes slowly appeared above the red spotted cloth.

“Me?” he said in a quavering voice.

“Well, you said you’d like to help. You’ve got a gun, after all. And you don’t like Frenchmen. Maybe you’d like to shoot a few of them—”

“—Before they shoot me!” finished Boone. “That’s a great idee, thanks a lot. Things is tough and dangerous enough whur Ah come from, Ah mean,
when
Ah come from, without goin’ back a hundred years t’ when things
wuz ten times worse. Come t’ that … what’s stoppin’
you
from lendin’ a hand t’ the redskins if’n yer s’ crazy about ’em?”

Patrick and Omri looked at each other, startled.

“We can’t go back!” Patrick exclaimed. “How could we? We can’t fit into the cupboard!”

Boone looked at them, looked consideringly at the small bathroom cabinet, less than a foot high, and then back at the boys again.

“That’s true,” he said grudgingly. “Ah reckon Ah cain’t argue ’bout that. But thur’s still a way Ah kin think of, that ya could help ’em, ifn you’d a mind ter.”

“How?” they asked at once.

“What’s that, down over yonder? It’s s’ danged far away, Ah cain’t see properly, but it looks to me like a whole bunch o’ folks layin’ in a heap in a box.”