“I shall need an assistant,” she said briskly. “What about the Indian girl?”
“She doesn’t speak much English.”
“We’ll see. She looks bright enough.” She beckoned Bright Stars, who was already at her elbow. “How!” she said in a loud voice. Bright Stars looked puzzled. “When I point—you give,” Matron went on. Bright Stars nodded intently.
“You say. I do.”
Omri was directed to pour a drop of disinfectant and some of the boiling water into a small tin lid Patrick had prized off a box of candy-drops. The water turned white. Matron dropped the instruments in, and after some moments, poured off the liquid into another lid. Meanwhile, Omri was dipping up a few drops of tea into the tooth-paste cap.
“Ah! Thank you, clear,” she said when she saw it. She seemed quite cheerful now. She picked up the cap in both hands. It was, to her, almost the size of a bucket, but she drank most of it at one go, and smacked her lips. “That’s more like it! What spinach is to Popeye, tea is to me! Now then, let’s get on with it.”
The boys saw very little of the operation itself. The light shone straight down on the white-covered table. Matron stood with her back to them, working silently. Every now and then she would point at something on the tray. Bright Stars would swiftly pick it up and hand it to her. Only once or twice did she fumble, and then Matron would snap her fingers impatiently. For a long time there was not a sound except the occasional stamp of the pony’s foot or the clink of metal.
Then Matron said, “I do believe we’re in luck.”
The boys, who had been afraid to come too close, though Matron had made them both tie handkerchiefs around their faces, leaned forward.
“One—er—ball went in one side and straight out the other. Missed his lung by a hairbreadth, I’m thankful to say. I’ve patched that up as best I could. Now I’m playing hide-and-seek with the other one. I think it’s lodged against his shoulder blade. Not far in. I … think … I’ve … got it. Yes!” She made a sharp movement and then held up a minute pair of tweezers. Whatever they held was far too small to see, but the tips were red and Omri shuddered. Matron dropped the bit of metal into the tray with a ping. Suddenly she began to laugh.
“Whatever would St. Thomas’s surgical staff say if they could see me now!” she gurgled.
“Will he be okay?” Omri asked breathlessly.
“Oh, I think so! Yes, indeed! He’s a very lucky lad, is your Indian friend.”
“We’re all lucky to have found you,” said Omri sincerely.
Matron was stripping the wrapper off a large field dressing. “First World War dressings,” she was murmuring. “Amazing how they’ve lasted! As if they were made last week!”
She indicated to Bright Stars that she should help her apply it to Little Bear’s back. Then they bandaged him between them, and after that she wiped her perspiring face on a scrap of cotton.
“You can turn the light off now,” she said. “Phew! I’m hot.” Her towering cap was collapsing like an ice palace, but she didn’t seem to care. “Any more tea?—What an experience! Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Always thought I could do simple ops as well as any of those fat cats … Oh dear, what am I saying?” And she chuckled again at her own disrespect to professional etiquette.
After swigging down another bucket of tea and making sure Bright Stars had some too, she checked Little Bear’s pulse, gave Bright Stars some simple instructions, and then said, “Gentlemen, I think, if you don’t mind, I’d better be getting back to St. Thomas’s. Goodness alone knows how they’re coping without me! I’m afraid the unthinkable has happened and I have fallen asleep on duty … I will simply never live it down.”
She shook hands with Bright Stars, and then gave her a pat—not on her shoulder, oddly, but on her stomach.
“Take care of your husband,” she said. “And take care of yourself, too.” Bright Stars looked shy. “You’ll have a nice surprise for him if he doesn’t come to very soon!” Then she waved to the boys, straightened her wilted cap and, hiking up her skirt over her black stockings, clambered back into the cupboard.
When she’d gone, Omri watched Bright Stars settling down at Little Bear’s side. He was still lying on the “table,” warmly wrapped up and sleeping soundly.
“What did she mean about a surprise?” he asked Patrick, who was yawning hugely.
“Oh, come on! Didn’t you notice?”
“Notice what?”
“Her big belly. She’s going to have a baby.”
“A baby! Wow! That’d be great!”
“Are you nuts? That’s all we need!”
“Indian women manage by themselves,” said Omri, who’d read about it. “They don’t make any fuss. Not like our mothers.”
“I should think any mother’d make a fuss if she had to have you,” said Patrick. “Where do I kip?”
Omri was beginning to feel exhausted too, but it seemed heartless to go to sleep.
“Do you think we should?”
“She said he’d be quite okay. She told Bright Stars what to do. There’s not much we can do, anyway. Look, can I just put these cushions on the floor? I’m knackered.”
In three minutes he was flat out.
It took Omri a little longer. He crouched by the chest and stared at Little Bear and Bright Stars. She must be tired too, especially considering …
“Do you need anything, Bright Stars? Something to eat?”
She raised her tired eyes to him and gave a little nod.
“I’ll get you something!” he whispered.
Down he went once again. He didn’t turn on lights this time. The reflection from the kitchen light could be seen in his parents’ bedroom. He had no desire to explain to anyone what he was doing up at such an hour. The light from the streetlamp was enough to show him cake, bread, butter—
What was that?
Something had gone past the window. He’d seen it out of the corner of his eye. He froze. He could have sworn it was a man’s head. When he could unfreeze, he went to the window and looked out.
All he could see was Kitsa sitting on the sill. Which would have settled the matter, except for one thing. Her head was up, her ears were pricked—and not at Omri, but in the other direction.
Omri climbed the stairs with the food, feeling more than a little uneasy. It seemed to him, on reflection, that the head he had seen had shone in the streetlamp as if it had no hair.
Chapter 9
A Good Luck Piece
Little Bear’s recovery was little short of miraculous. The operation was a complete success. By the next day he was sitting up, demanding food and other services, not particularly grateful for his deliverance and, in general, very much himself as Omri remembered him.
He was unable to hide his delight at seeing Omri again. He tried to conceal his feelings behind a mask of dignity, but through his wooden expression his black eyes gleamed and a grin kept twitching at his stern mouth.
“Omri grow much,” he remarked between slurps of a mug of hot instant soup. (There was a distinct shortage of toothpaste tops throughout the house, which Omri’s mother was to remark on.) “But still only boy. Not chief, like Little Bear.”
“Are you a real chief now?” Omri asked. He was sitting on the floor beside the chest, gazing in rapture at his little Indian, restored to him, and, almost, to health.
Little Bear nodded impressively. “Father die. Little Bear chief of tribe.”
Omri glanced at Bright Stars. How much had she told him of the tragedy which had overtaken their village? She seemed to understand his thought and signaled him quickly behind Little Bear’s back. Omri nodded. Much better not to say too much until Little Bear was stronger. He hadn’t asked any questions yet.
Patrick had stayed for breakfast and then, reluctantly, phoned his mother. He came back up to Omri’s room looking bleak.
“She says I’ve got to come back,” he said. “We’re leaving today. I asked if I could stay and come back later, but she sai
d I have to leave here in an hour.”
Omri didn’t say anything. He didn’t see how Patrick could bear to leave. To make matters worse, Omri’s parents had particularly asked if he could stay over another night. They were going to a party that evening and would be home late. Adiel and Gillon would be out too. There’d be a baby-sitter of course, but she was a stodgy old lady, and Patrick would be company for Omri. Omri thought Patrick’s mother was being entirely unreasonable, and said so. Patrick was inclined to agree.
Meanwhile, they had this hour. They decided to spend it talking and doing things for the Indians. The first thing Little Bear asked for was his old longhouse, built by himself when he’d been with Omri last year. Fortunately, Omri still had it, or what was left of it. It had been made on a seed tray packed with earth, but this had dried out in the interval, so that several of the upright posts had come adrift and some of the bark tiles, so carefully shaped by Little Bear and hung on the crosspieces, had shriveled and dropped off.
When Little Bear saw his derelict masterwork he had to be forcibly restrained from leaping out of bed immediately to repair it.
“How Omri let fall down? Why Omri not mend?” he shouted wrathfully.
Omri knew better than to argue.
“I couldn’t do it like you can,” he said. “My fingers are too big.”
“Too big!” agreed Little Bear darkly. He stared at the longhouse from his bed. Omri had spent the early hours, before anyone was awake, making him a better bed from two matchboxes, giving him a headboard to sit up against. His mind was roving in all directions, thinking of ways to make Little Bear and Bright Stars more comfortable. He still had the old tepee … As soon as the Indian was a bit better, he would probably prefer to use that, for privacy. Omri had fixed a ramp leading onto the seed tray, and Bright Stars had begun to go up and down it carrying bedding into the tepee, like a little bird making its nest. A fat little bird … Omri wondered, watching her stagger to and fro, how long it would be before her baby came.
He was busy giving her a water supply. It was a sort of pond. The container was the lid of a coffee jar, sunk into the earth of the seed tray near the tepee. He was now making a proper bucket out of one of the toothpaste caps, by piercing two holes in the sides with a needle heated red-hot in the flame of an old candle he’d found, and threading in a handle made from a bit of one of his mother’s fine hairpins. That would make it easier to carry. Of course, that was just the beginning of all the things that would be needed if they stayed long.
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, a
nd 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!”
Chapter 10
Boone’s Brain Wave
“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!”