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“Meat,” said the Indian immediately.
“Wouldn’t you like some bread and cheese?”
“Meat.”
“Or corn? Or some egg?”
The Indian folded his arms uncompromisingly across his chest.
“Meat,” said Omri with a sigh. “Yes. Well, I’ll have to see what I can do. In the meantime, I think I’d better put you down on the ground.”
“Not on ground now?”
“No. You’re high above the ground. Go to the edge and look – but don’t fall!”
The Indian took no chances. Lying on his stomach he crawled, commando-fashion, to the edge of the chest-of-drawers and peered over.
“Big mountain,” he commented at last.
“Well …” But it seemed too difficult to explain. “May I lift you down?”
Little Bull stood up and looked at Omri measuringly. “Not hold tight?” he asked.
“No. I won’t hold you at all. You can ride in my hand.”
He laid his hand palm up next to Little Bull, who, after only a moment’s hesitation, stepped on to it and, for greater stability, sat down cross-legged. Omri gently transported him to the floor. The Indian rose lithely to his feet and jumped off on to the grey carpet.
At once he began looking about with suspicion. He dropped to his knees, felt the carpet and smelt it.
“Not ground,” he said. “Blanket.”
“Little Bull, look up.”
He obeyed, narrowing his eyes and peering.
“Do you see the sky? Or the sun?”
The Indian shook his head, puzzled.
“That’s because we’re not outdoors. We’re in a room, in a house. A house big enough for people my size. You’re not even in America. You’re in England.”
The Indian’s face lit up. “English good! Iroquois fight with English against French!”
“Really?” asked Omri, wishing he had read more. “Did you fight?”
“Fight? Little Bull fight like mountain lion! Take many scalps.”
Scalps? Omri swallowed. “How many?”
Little Bull proudly held up all ten fingers. Then he closed his fists, opening them again with another lot of ten, and another.
“I don’t believe you killed so many people!” said Omri, shocked.
“Little Bull not lie. Great hunter. Great fighter. How show him son of Chief without many scalps?”
“Any white ones?” Omri ventured to ask.
“Some. French. Not take English scalps. Englishmen friends to Iroquois. Help Indian fight Algonquin enemy.”
Omri stared at him. He suddenly wanted to get away. “I’ll go and get you some – meat,” he said in a choking voice.
He went out of his room, closing the bedroom door behind him.
For a moment he did not move, but leant back against the door. He was sweating slightly. This was a bit more than he had bargained for!
Not only was his Indian no mere toy come to life; he was a real person, somehow magicked out of the past of over two hundred years ago. He was also a savage. It occurred to Omri for the first time that his idea of Red Indians, taken entirely from Western films, had been somehow false. After all, those had all been actors playing Indians, and afterwards wiping their war-paint off and going home for their dinners, not in tepees but in houses like his. Civilized men, pretending to be primitive, pretending to be cruel …
Little Bull was no actor. Omri swallowed hard. Thirty scalps … phew! Of course things were different in those days. Those tribes were always making war on each other, and come to that the English and French (whatever they thought they were doing, fighting in America) were probably no better, killing each other like mad as often as they could …
Come to that, weren’t soldiers of today doing the same thing? Weren’t there wars and battles and terrorism going on all over the place? You couldn’t switch on television without seeing news about people killing and being killed … Was thirty scalps, even including some French ones, taken hundreds of years ago, so very bad after all?
Still, when he tried to imagine Little Bull, full size, bent over some French soldier, holding his hair in one hand and running the point of his scalping-knife … Yuk!
Omri pushed away from the door and walked rather unsteadily downstairs. No wonder he had felt, from the first, slightly afraid of his Indian. He asked himself, swallowing repeatedly and feeling that just the same he might be sick, whether he wouldn’t do better to put Little Bull back in the cupboard, lock the door and turn him back into plastic, knife and all.
Down in the kitchen he ransacked his mother’s store-cupboard for a tin of meat. He found some corned beef at last and opened it with the tin-opener on the wall. He dug a chunk out with a teaspoon, put it absently into his own mouth and stood there chewing it.
The Indian hadn’t seemed very surprised about being in a giant house in England. He had shown that he was very superstitious, believing in magic and good and evil spirits. Perhaps he thought of Omri as – well, some kind of genie, or whatever Indians believed in instead. The wonder was that he wasn’t more frightened of him then, for genies, or giants, or Great Spirits, or whatever, were always supposed to be very powerful and often wicked. Omri supposed that if one happened to be the son of an Indian Chief, one simply didn’t get scared as easily as ordinary people. Especially, perhaps, if one had taken thirty scalps …
Maybe Omri ought to tell someone about Little Bull.
The trouble was that although grown-ups usually knew what to do, what they did was very seldom what children wanted to be done. What if he took the Indian to – say, some scientists, or – whoever knew about strange things like that, to question him and examine him and probably keep him in a laboratory or something of that sort? They would certainly want to take the cupboard away too, and then Omri wouldn’t be able to have any more fun with it at all.
Just when his mind was seething with ideas, such as putting in plastic bows and arrows, and horses, and maybe even other little people – well, no, probably that was too risky, who knew what sort you might land up with? They might start fighting each other! But still, he knew for certain he didn’t want to give up his secret, not yet, no matter how many Frenchmen had been scalped.
Having made his decision, for the moment anyway, Omri turned to go upstairs, discovering only halfway up that the tin of corned beef was practically empty. Still, there was a fair-sized bit left in the bottom. It ought to do.
Little Bull was nowhere to be seen, but when Omri called him softly he ran out from under the bed, and stood waving both arms up at Omri.
“Bring meat?”
“Yes.” Omri put it on the miniature plate he’d cut the night before and placed it before the Indian, who seized it in both hands and began to gnaw on it.
“Very good! Soft! Your wife cook this?”
Omri laughed. “I haven’t got a wife.”
The Indian stopped and looked at him. “Omri not got wife? Who grow corn, grind, cook, make clothes, keep arrows sharp?”
“My mother,” said Omri, grinning at the idea of her sharpening arrows. “Have you got a wife then?”
The Indian looked away. After a moment he said, “No.”
“Why not?”
“Dead,” said Little Bull shortly.
“Oh.”
The Indian finished eating in silence and then stood up, wiping his greasy hands on his hair. “Now. Do magic. Make things for Little Bull.”
“What do you want?”
“Gun,” he answered promptly. “White man’s gun. Like English soldier.”
Omri’s brain raced. If a tiny knife could stab, a tiny gun could shoot. Maybe it couldn’t do much harm, but then again, maybe it could.
“No, no gun. But I can make you a bow and arrows. I’ll have to buy plastic ones, though. What else? A horse?”
“Horse!” Little Bull seemed surprised.
“Don’t you ride? I thought all Indians rode.”
Little Bull shook his head.
“English ride. Indians walk.”
“But wouldn’t you like to ride, like the English soldiers?”
Little Bull stood quite still, frowning, wrestling with this novel idea. At last he said, “Maybe. Yes. Maybe. Show horse. Then I see.”
“Okay.”
Again Omri rummaged in the biscuit tin. There were a number of horses here. Big heavy ones for carrying armoured knights. Smaller ones for pulling gun-carriages in the Napoleonic wars. Several cavalry horses – those might be the best. Omri ranged five or six of various sizes and colours before Little Bull, whose black eyes began to shine.
“I have,” he said promptly.
“You mean all of them?”
Little Bull nodded hungrily.
“No, that’s too much. I can’t have herds of horses galloping all over my room. You can choose one.”
“One?” said Little Bull sadly.
“One.”
Little Bull then made a very thorough examination of every horse, feeling their legs, running his hands over their rumps, looking straight into their plastic faces. At last he selected a smallish, brown horse with two white feet which had originally (as far as Omri could remember) carried an Arab, brandishing a curved sword at a platoon of French Foreign Legionnaires.
“Like English horse,” grunted Little Bull.
“And he’s got a saddle and bridle, which will become real too,” gloated Omri.
“Little Bull not want. Ride with rope, bare-back. Not like white soldier,” he added contemptuously, having another spit. “When?”
“I still don’t know how long it takes. We can start now.”
Omri lifted the cupboard onto the floor, shut the horse in and turned the key. Almost at once they could hear the clatter of tiny hooves on metal. They looked at each other with joyful faces.
“Open! Open door!” commanded Little Bull.
Omri lost no time in doing so. There, prancing and pawing the white paint, was a lovely, shiny-coated little brown Arab pony. As the door swung open he shied nervously, turning his face and pricking his ears so far forward they almost met over his forelock. His tiny nostrils flared, and his black tail plumed over his haunches as he gave a high, shrill neigh.
Little Bull cried out in delight.
In a moment he had vaulted over the bottom edge of the cupboard and, as the pony reared in fright, jumped into the air under its flying hooves and grasped the leather reins. The pony fought to free its head, but Little Bull hung on with both hands. Even as the pony plunged and bucked, the Indian had moved from the front to the side. Grasping the high pommel of the saddle he swung himself into it. He ignored the swinging stirrups, holding on by gripping with his knees.
The pony flung himself back on his haunches, then threw himself forward in a mighty buck, head low, heels flying. To Omri’s dismay, Little Bull, instead of clinging on somehow, came loose and flew through the air in a curve, landing on the carpet just beyond the edge of the cupboard.
Omri thought his neck must be broken, but he had landed in a sort of somersault, and was instantly on his feet again. The face he turned to Omri was shining with happiness.
“Crazy horse!” he cried with fierce delight.
The crazy horse was meanwhile standing quite still, reins hanging loose, looking watchfully at the Indian through wild, wide-apart eyes.
This time Little Bull made no sudden moves. He stood quite still for a long time, just looking back at the pony. Then, so slowly you could scarcely notice, he edged towards him, making strange hissing sounds between his clenched teeth which almost seemed to hypnotize the pony. Step by step he moved, softly, cautiously, until he and the pony stood almost nose to nose. Then, quite calmly, Little Bull reached up and laid his hand on the pony’s neck.
That was all. He did not hold the reins. The pony could have jumped away, but he didn’t. He raised his nose a little, so that he and the Indian seemed to be breathing into each other’s nostrils. Then, in a quiet voice, Little Bull said, “Now horse mine. Crazy horse mine.”
Still moving slowly, though not as slowly as before, he took the reins and moved alongside the pony. After a certain amount of fiddling he found out how to unbuckle the straps which held the Arabian saddle, and lifted it off, laying it on the floor. The pony snorted and tossed his head, but did not move. Hissing gently now, the Indian first leant his weight against the pony’s side, then lifted himself up by his arms until he was astride. Letting the reins hang loose on the pony’s neck, he squeezed with his legs. The pony moved forward, as tame and obedient as you please, and the pair rode once round the inside of the cupboard as if it had been a circus arena.
Suddenly Little Bull caught up the reins and pulled them to one side, turning the pony’s head. At the same time Little Bull kicked him sharply. The pony wheeled, and bounded forward towards the edge of the cupboard.
This metal rim, about two centimetres high, was up to the pony’s chest – like a five-barred gate to a full-sized horse. There was no room to ride straight at it, from the back of the cupboard to the front, so Little Bull rode diagonally – a very difficult angle, yet the pony cleared it in a flying leap.
Omri realized at once that the carpet was too soft for him – his feet simply sank into it like soft sand.
“Need ground. Not blanket,” said Little Bull sternly. “Blanket no good for ride.”
Omri looked at his clock. It was still only a little after six in the morning – at least another hour before anyone else would be up.
“I could take you outside,” he said hesitantly.
“Good!” said Little Bull. “But not touch pony. You touch, much fear.”
Omri quickly found a small cardboard box which had held a Matchbox lorry. It even had a sort of window through which he could see what was happening inside. He laid that on the carpet with the end flaps open.
Little Bull rode the pony into the box, and Omri carefully shut the end up and even more carefully lifted it. Then, in his bare feet, he carried the box slowly down the stairs and let himself out through the back door.
