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Luckily it was steak and cut easily. Even so he nearly had the whole plate off the fridge shelf and onto the floor before he’d cut his corner off.
His mother swung round just as he closed the fridge door.
“A tiny bit of what?” she asked. She often reacted late to things he said.
“Nothing,” he said, hiding the raw bit of meat in his hand. “Mum, could I borrow a tin plate?”
“I haven’t got such a thing.”
“Yes you have, the one you bought Adiel to go camping.”
“That’s in Adiel’s room somewhere, I haven’t got it. A tiny bit of what?”
But Omri was already on his way upstairs. Adiel was in his room (he would be) doing his homework.
“What do you want?” he asked the second Omri crept in.
“That plate – you know – your camping one.”
“Oh, that!” said Adiel, going back to his French.
“Well, can I have it?”
“Yeah, I suppose so. It’s over there somewhere.”
Omri found it eventually in an old knapsack, covered with disgusting bits of baked beans, dry and hard as cement. He hurried across to his own room. Whenever he’d been away from it for even a few minutes, he felt his heart beating in panic as he opened the door for fear of what he might find (or not find). The burden of constant worry was beginning to wear him out.
But all was as he had left it this time. Patrick was crouching near the seed-tray Little Bull was directing him to take the tops off several of the jars of poster paint while he himself fashioned something almost too small to see.
“It’s a paintbrush,” whispered Patrick. “He cut a bit of his own hair and he’s tying it to a scrap of wood he found about the size of a big splinter.”
“Pour a bit of paint into the lids so he can reach to dip,” said Omri.
Meanwhile he was scraping the dry beans off the plate with his nails. He took the fragment of firelighter and the privet-twigs out of his pocket and arranged them in the centre of the plate. He washed the bit of meat in his bedside water glass. He’d had a wonderful idea for a spit to cook it on. From a flat box in which his first Meccano set had once been neatly laid out, but which was not in chaos, he took a rod, ready bent into a handle shape, and pushed this through the meat. Then, from small bits of Meccano, he quickly made a sort of stand for it to rest on, with legs each side of the fire so that the meat hung over the middle of it.
“Let’s light it now!” said Patrick, who was getting very excited again.
“Little Bull – come and see your fire,” said Omri.
Little Bull looked up from his paints and then ran down the ramp, across the carpet and vaulted onto the edge of the plate. Omri struck a match and lit the firelighter, which flared up at once with a bluish flame, engulfing the twigs and the meat at once. The twigs gave off a gratifying crackle while they lasted, but the firelighter gave off a very ungratifying stench which made Little Bull wrinkle up his nose.
“Stink!” he cried. “Spoil meat!”
“No it won’t!” Omri said. “Turn the handle of the spit, Little Bull.”
Evidently he wasn’t much used to spits, but he soon got the hang of it. The chunk of steak turned and turned in the flame, and soon lost its raw red look and began to go grey and then brown. The good juicy smell of roasting beef began to compete with the reek of the firelighter.
“Mmm!” said Little Bull appreciatively, turning the handle till the sweat ran off his face. “Meat!” He had thrown off his Chief’s cloak and his chest shone red. Patrick couldn’t take his eyes off him.
“Please Omri,” he whispered, “couldn’t I have one? Couldn’t I choose just one – a soldier, or anything I liked – and make him come to life in your cupboard?”
8 (#ulink_fe285cac-25cf-520b-9d51-0bce228787ad)
Cowboy! (#ulink_fe285cac-25cf-520b-9d51-0bce228787ad)
Omri gaped at him. He hadn’t thought of this, but of course now that he did it was obvious – no boy who knew the secret could possibly rest until he had a little live person of his own.
“Patrick – it’s not like you think – just something to play with—”
“Of course not, you’ve explained all about it, now just let me put—”
“But you have to think about it first. No, no, stop, you can’t yet! And anyway I don’t agree to you using one of mine!” Omri didn’t know why he was so reluctant. It wasn’t that he was mean. He just knew, somehow, that something awful would happen if he let Patrick have his own way. But it wasn’t easy to stop him. Omri had grabbed him, but he wrenched free.
“I’ve got to—” he panted. “I’ve got to—”
He stretched out his hand towards the pile of soldiers again. They struggled. Patrick seemed to have gone a bit crazy. Suddenly Omri felt the rim of the tin plate under his shifting feet.
He shoved Patrick out of the way and they both stared downward. The plate had tipped, the fire slipped on to the carpet. Little Bull, with a yell, had leapt clear, and was now waving his arms and shouting horrible things at them. His roast meat had disappeared under Omri’s foot, which instinctively stamped down on the fire to put it out. Omri felt the Meccano crunching under his school shoe, and a squishy feeling …
“Now look! We’ve spoilt the meat!” he shouted at Patrick. “If all you can do is fight, I wish I’d never brought you!”
Patrick looked mulish. “It was your fault. You should have let me put something in the cupboard.”
Omri lifted his shoe. Underneath was a nasty mess of burnt stuff, squashed meat and bent Meccano. Little Bull let out a wail.
“You no great spirit! Only stupid boy! Fight, spoil good meal! You feel shame!”
“Maybe we can rescue it—”
He crouched down and disentangled the meat from the mess, burning his fingers. He tried to brush it clean but it was no use – it was all mixed up with the smelly stuff of the firelighter, and stuck with bits of carpet hairs.
“I’m terribly sorry, Little Bull,” he mumbled.
“No good sorry! Little Bull hungry, work all day, cook meat – now what eat? I chop you down like tree!” And to Omri’s horror he saw Little Bull run to where the battleaxe was lying, pick it up and advance towards his leg, swinging it in great circles as he came.
Patrick fairly danced with excitement. “Isn’t he fantastically brave, though! Much more than David with Goliath!”
Omri felt the whole thing was going too far. He removed his leg from harm’s way. “Little Bull! Calm down,” he said. “I’ve said I’m sorry.”
Little Bull looked at him, blazing-eyed. Then he rushed over to the chair Omri used at his table and began chopping wedges out of the leg of it.
“Stop! Stop! Or I’ll put you back in the cupboard!”
Little Bull stopped abruptly and dropped the axe. He stood with his back to them, his shoulders heaving.
“I’ll get you something to eat – right now – something delicious. Go and paint. It’ll make you feel better. I won’t be long.” To Patrick he said, “Hang on. I can smell supper cooking, I’ll go and get a bit of whatever we’re having,” and he rushed downstairs without stopping to think.
His mother was dishing up a nice hot stew.
“Can I have a tiny bit of that, Mum? Just a little bit, in a spoon. It’s for a game we’re playing.”
His mother obligingly gave him a big spoonful. “Don’t let it drip,” she said. “Does Patrick want to stay for supper?”
“I don’t know – I’ll ask,” said Omri.
“Were you two fighting up there? I heard thumps.”
“No-o – not really. It was just that he wanted to do something that I—”
Omri stopped dead, as if frozen to the ground. He might have been frozen, his face went so cold. Patrick was up there – with the cupboard – and two biscuit-tinsful of little plastic figures – alone!
He ran. He usually won the egg-and-spoon race at the school sports, which was just as well – it’s hard enough to carry an egg in a spoon running along a flat field; it’s a great deal harder to carry a tablespoonful of boiling hot stew steady while you rush up a flight of stairs. If most of it was still there when he got to the top it was more by good luck than skill because he was hardly noticing the spoon at all – all he could think of was what might be – no, must be happening in his room, and how much more of it would happen if he didn’t hurry.
He burst in through the door and saw exactly what he’d dreaded – Patrick, bent over the cupboard, just turning the key to open it.
“What—” Omri gasped out between panting breaths, but he had no need to go on. Patrick, without turning round, opened the cupboard and reached in. Then he did turn. He was gazing into his cupped hands with eyes like huge marbles. He slowly extended his hands towards Omri, and whispered, “Look!”
Omri, stepping forward, had just time to feel intensely glad that at least Patrick had not put a whole handful of figures in but had only changed one. But which? He leant over, then drew back with a gasp.
It was the cowboy. And his horse.
The horse was in an absolute panic. It was scrambling about wildly in the cup of Patrick’s hand, snorting and pawing, up one minute and down on its side the next, stirrups and reins flying. It was a beautiful horse, snow-white with a long mane and tail, and the sight of it acting so frightened gave Omri heart-pains.
As for the cowboy, he was too busy dodging the horse’s flying feet and jumping out of the way when he fell to notice much about his surroundings. He probably thought he was caught in an earthquake. Omri and Patrick watched, spellbound, as the little man in his plaid shirt, buckskin trousers, high-heeled leather boots and big hat, scrambled frantically up the side of Patrick’s right hand and, dodging through the space between his index finger and thumb, swung himself clear of the horse – only to look down and find he was dangling over empty space.
His hat came off and fell, slowly like a leaf, down, down, down to the floor so infinitely far below. The cowboy gave a yell, and scrabbled with his feet against the back of Patrick’s hand, hanging on for dear fife to the ridge beside his thumbnail.
“Hold your hands still!” Omri commanded Patrick, who in his excitement was jerking them nervously about. There was a moment of stillness. The horse stood up, trembling all over, prancing about with terror. Beside his hooves was some tiny black thing. Omri peered closer. It was the pistol.
The cowboy had now recovered a little. He scrambled back through the finger-gap and said something to the horse which sounded like “Whoaback, steady, fella.” Then he slid down and grabbed the reins, holding them just below the horse’s nose. He patted its face. That seemed to calm it. Then, looking round swiftly but not apparently noticing the enormous faces hanging over him, he reached cautiously down and picked the pistol up from between the horse’s hooves.
“Whoa there! Stand—”
Omri watched like a person hypnotized. He wanted to cry out to Patrick that it was a real gun, but somehow he couldn’t. He could only think that the sound of his voice would throw the horse once more into a panic and the horse or man would get hurt. Instead he watched while the cowboy pointed the gun in various directions warily. Then he lowered it.
Still holding the reins he moved until he could press his hand against Patrick’s skin. Then he let his eyes move upward towards the curved fingers just level with the top of his head.
“What the dawggone heck—” he said. “It sure looks like a great big – Aw, what’m Ah talkin’ about? It cain’t be. Hell, it just ain’t possible!” But the more he looked, the more certain he must have become that he was, indeed, in a pair of cupped hands. And finally, after scratching his gingery head for a moment, he ventured to look right up past the fingers, and then of course he saw Patrick’s face looking at him.
There was a petrified moment when he couldn’t move. Then he raised his pistol in a flash.
“Patrick! Shut your eyes!”
Bang!
It was only a little bang, but it was a real bang, and a puff of real, gun-smelling smoke appeared. Patrick shouted with pain and surprise and would have dropped the pair if Omri hadn’t thrust his hand underneath to catch them. Patrick’s own hand had clapped itself to his cheek.
“Ow! Ow! He’s shot me!” Patrick screamed.
Omri was not much bothered about Patrick at that moment. He was furious with him, and very anxious about the little man and his horse. Quickly he put them down on the bed, saying, like the cowboy himself, “Steady! Whoa! I won’t hurt you! It’s okay!”
“Ow!” Patrick kept yelling. “It hurts! Ow!”
“Serve you right, I warned you,” said Omri. Then he felt sorry and said, “Let’s have a look.”
Gingerly Patrick took his hand down. A drop of blood had been smeared on his cheek, and by peering very close Omri could see something very like a bee’s sting embedded in his skin.
“Hang on! I see it – I’ll squeeze it out—”
“OW!”
A quick squeeze between his thumbnails and the almost invisible speck of black metal, which had only just penetrated the skin, popped out.
“He – shot me!” Patrick got out again in a shocked voice.
“I told you. My Indian stuck a knife in me,” said Omri, not to be outdone. “I think we ought to put him back – your cowboy I mean, of course, not my Indian.”
“Put him back where?”
Omri explained how the cupboard could change him back to plastic again, but Patrick wasn’t having any of that.
“Oh no! I want him! He’s terrific. Look at him now—”
Patrick feasted his eyes admiringly on the little cowboy. Ignoring the ‘giants’, whom he clearly thought he must have imagined, he was doggedly dragging his horse across Omri’s quilt as if he were wading through the dunes of some infinite pale-blue desert.
Omri reached for him determinedly, but Patrick stepped into his path.
“Don’t you touch him! I bought him, I changed him – he’s mine!”
“You bought him for me!”
“You said you didn’t want him.”
“Well, but the cupboard’s mine, and I told you not to use it.”
“And so what if I did? Anyway, it’s done, he’s alive now and I’m keeping him. I’ll bash you right in if you try to take him. Wouldn’t you bash me if I took your Indian?”
Omri was silent. That reminded him! Where was Little Bull? He looked round. He soon spotted him at the other side of the room, busy with his paints. Some beautiful minute designs, showing turtles and herons and beavers, mainly in red and yellow, had appeared on the side of the tepee Omri had made. As Omri crouched beside him to admire them, Little Bull, without looking at him, said “You bring food? I very soon die if not eat.”
Omri looked around. What had he done with the spoonful of stew? But he soon saw that he’d put it down on the table without thinking. There it sat, tilting slightly and spilling a few drops of gravy, but still steaming. He hurried to get Little Bull’s – or rather the Action Man’s – mess-tin (the paper plate had got all soggy) and carefully filled it with the hot savoury stuff.
“Here you are.”
Little Bull stopped work, laid down his paintbrush, and sniffed eagerly.
“Ah! Good!” He sat down cross-legged among the paint lids to eat, dipping some of yesterday’s stale bread in as a spoon. “Your wife cook? Ah. No. Little Bull forgot. Omri not got wife.” He ate ravenously for a few moments and then said, “Not want?”
“I’m having mine downstairs in a minute,” Omri said.
