“It’s lucky I learned to play base-ball when I was young,” he remarked, “for I caught all those heads easily and never missed one. But come along, little ones; the Scoodlers will never bother us or anyone else any more.”
Button-Bright was still frightened and kept insisting, “I don’t want to be soup!” for the victory had been gained so suddenly that the boy could not realize they were free and safe. But the shaggy man assured him that all danger of their being made into soup was now past, as the Scoodlers would be unable to eat soup for some time to come.
So now, anxious to get away from the horrid gloomy cave as soon as possible, they hastened up the hillside and regained the road just beyond the place where they had first met the Scoodlers; and you may be sure they were glad to find their feet on the old familiar path again.
11. Johnny Dooit Does It
“It’s getting awful rough walking,” said Dorothy, as they trudged along. Button-Bright gave a deep sigh and said he was hungry. Indeed, all were hungry, and thirsty, too; for they had eaten nothing but the apples since breakfast; so their steps lagged and they grew silent and weary. At last they slowly passed over the crest of a barren hill and saw before them a line of green trees with a strip of grass at their feet. An agreeable fragrance was wafted toward them.
Our travelers, hot and tired, ran forward on beholding this refreshing sight and were not long in coming to the trees. Here they found a spring of pure bubbling water, around which the grass was full of wild strawberry plants, their pretty red berries ripe and ready to eat. Some of the trees bore yellow oranges and some russet pears, so the hungry adventurers suddenly found themselves provided with plenty to eat and to drink. They lost no time in picking the biggest strawberries and ripest oranges and soon had feasted to their hearts’ content. Walking beyond the line of trees they saw before them a fearful, dismal desert, everywhere gray sand. At the edge of this awful waste was a large, white sign with black letters neatly painted upon it and the letters made these words:
ALL PERSONS ARE WARNED NOT TO VENTURE UPON THIS DESERT
For the Deadly Sands will Turn Any Living Flesh
to Dust in an instant. Beyond This Barrier is the
LAND OF OZ
But no one can Reach that Beautiful Country
because of these Destroying Sands
“Oh,” said Dorothy, when the shaggy man had read the sign aloud; “I’ve seen this desert before, and it’s true no one can live who tries to walk upon the sands.”
“Then we musn’t try it,” answered the shaggy man thoughtfully. “But as we can’t go ahead and there’s no use going back, what shall we do next?”
“Don’t know,” said Button-Bright.
“I’m sure I don’t know, either,” added Dorothy, despondently.
“I wish father would come for me,” sighed the pretty Rainbow’s Daughter, “I would take you all to live upon the rainbow, where you could dance along its rays from morning till night, without a care or worry of any sort. But I suppose father’s too busy just now to search the world for me.”
“Don’t want to dance,” said Button-Bright, sitting down wearily upon the soft grass.
“It’s very good of you, Polly,” said Dorothy; “but there are other things that would suit me better than dancing on rainbows. I’m ‘fraid they’d be kind of soft an’ squashy under foot, anyhow, although they’re so pretty to look at.”
This didn’t help to solve the problem, and they all fell silent and looked at one another questioningly.
“Really, I don’t know what to do,” muttered the shaggy man, gazing hard at Toto; and the little dog wagged his tail and said “Bow-wow!” just as if he could not tell, either, what to do. Button-Bright got a stick and began to dig in the earth, and the others watched him for a while in deep thought. Finally, the shaggy man said:
“It’s nearly evening, now; so we may as well sleep in this pretty place and get rested; perhaps by morning we can decide what is best to be done.”
There was little chance to make beds for the children, but the leaves of the trees grew thickly and would serve to keep off the night dews, so the shaggy man piled soft grasses in the thickest shade and when it was dark they lay down and slept peacefully until morning.
Long after the others were asleep, however, the shaggy man sat in the starlight by the spring, gazing thoughtfully into its bubbling waters. Suddenly he smiled and nodded to himself as if he had found a good thought, after which he, too, laid himself down under a tree and was soon lost in slumber.
In the bright morning sunshine, as they ate of the strawberries and sweet juicy pears, Dorothy said:
“Polly, can you do any magic?”
“No dear,” answered Polychrome, shaking her dainty head.
“You ought to know SOME magic, being the Rainbow’s Daughter,” continued Dorothy, earnestly.
“But we who live on the rainbow among the fleecy clouds have no use for magic,” replied Polychrome.
“What I’d like,” said Dorothy, “is to find some way to cross the desert to the Land of Oz and its Emerald City. I’ve crossed it already, you know, more than once. First a cyclone carried my house over, and some Silver Shoes brought me back again—in half a second. Then Ozma took me over on her Magic Carpet, and the Nome King’s Magic Belt took me home that time. You see it was magic that did it every time ‘cept the first, and we can’t ‘spect a cyclone to happen along and take us to the Emerald City now.”
“No indeed,” returned Polly, with a shudder, “I hate cyclones, anyway.”
“That’s why I wanted to find out if you could do any magic,” said the little Kansas girl. “I’m sure I can’t; and I’m sure Button-Bright can’t; and the only magic the shaggy man has is the Love Magnet, which won’t help us much.”
“Don’t be too sure of that, my dear,” spoke the shaggy man, a smile on his donkey face. “I may not be able to do magic myself, but I can call to us a powerful friend who loves me because I own the Love Magnet, and this friend surely will be able to help us.”
“Who is your friend?” asked Dorothy.
“Johnny Dooit.”
“What can Johnny do?”
“Anything,” answered the shaggy man, with confidence.
“Ask him to come,” she exclaimed, eagerly.
The shaggy man took the Love Magnet from his pocket and unwrapped the paper that surrounded it. Holding the charm in the palm of his hand he looked at it steadily and said these words:
“Dear Johnny Dooit, come to me.
I need you bad as bad can be.”
“Well, here I am,” said a cheery little voice; “but you shouldn’t say you need me bad, ‘cause I’m always, ALWAYS, good.”
At this they quickly whirled around to find a funny little man sitting on a big copper chest, puffing smoke from a long pipe. His hair was grey, his whiskers were grey; and these whiskers were so long that he had wound the ends of them around his waist and tied them in a hard knot underneath the leather apron that reached from his chin nearly to his feet, and which was soiled and scratched as if it had been used a long time. His nose was broad, and stuck up a little; but his eyes were twinkling and merry. The little man’s hands and arms were as hard and tough as the leather in his apron, and Dorothy thought Johnny Dooit looked as if he had done a lot of hard work in his lifetime.
“Good morning, Johnny,” said the shaggy man. “Thank you for coming to me so quickly.”
“I never waste time,” said the newcomer, promptly. “But what’s happened to you? Where did you get that donkey head? Really, I wouldn’t have known you at all, Shaggy Man, if I hadn’t looked at your feet.”
The shaggy man introduced Johnny Dooit to Dorothy and Toto and Button-Bright and the Rainbow’s Daughter, and told him the story of their adventures, adding that they were anxious now to reach the Emerald City in the Land of Oz, where Doro
thy had friends who would take care of them and send them safe home again.
“But,” said he, “we find that we can’t cross this desert, which turns all living flesh that touches it into dust; so I have asked you to come and help us.”
Johnny Dooit puffed his pipe and looked carefully at the dreadful desert in front of them—stretching so far away they could not see its end.
“You must ride,” he said, briskly.
“What in?” asked the shaggy man.
“In a sand-boat, which has runners like a sled and sails like a ship. The wind will blow you swiftly across the desert and the sand cannot touch your flesh to turn it into dust.”
“Good!” cried Dorothy, clapping her hands delightedly. “That was the way the Magic Carpet took us across. We didn’t have to touch the horrid sand at all.”
“But where is the sand-boat?” asked the shaggy man, looking all around him.
“I’ll make you one,” said Johnny Dooit.
As he spoke, he knocked the ashes from his pipe and put it in his pocket. Then he unlocked the copper chest and lifted the lid, and Dorothy saw it was full of shining tools of all sorts and shapes.
Johnny Dooit moved quickly now—so quickly that they were astonished at the work he was able to accomplish. He had in his chest a tool for everything he wanted to do, and these must have been magic tools because they did their work so fast and so well.
The man hummed a little song as he worked, and Dorothy tried to listen to it. She thought the words were something like these:
The only way to do a thing
Is do it when you can,
And do it cheerfully, and sing
And work and think and plan.
The only real unhappy one
Is he who dares to shirk;
The only really happy one
Is he who cares to work.
Whatever Johnny Dooit was singing he was certainly doing things, and they all stood by and watched him in amazement.
He seized an axe and in a couple of chops felled a tree. Next he took a saw and in a few minutes sawed the tree-trunk into broad, long boards. He then nailed the boards together into the shape of a boat, about twelve feet long and four feet wide. He cut from another tree a long, slender pole which, when trimmed of its branches and fastened upright in the center of the boat, served as a mast. From the chest he drew a coil of rope and a big bundle of canvas, and with these—still humming his song—he rigged up a sail, arranging it so it could be raised or lowered upon the mast.
Dorothy fairly gasped with wonder to see the thing grow so speedily before her eyes, and both Button-Bright and Polly looked on with the same absorbed interest.
“It ought to be painted,” said Johnny Dooit, tossing his tools back into the chest, “for that would make it look prettier. But ‘though I can paint it for you in three seconds it would take an hour to dry, and that’s a waste of time.”
“We don’t care how it looks,” said the shaggy man, “if only it will take us across the desert.”
“It will do that,” declared Johnny Dooit. “All you need worry about is tipping over. Did you ever sail a ship?”
“I’ve seen one sailed,” said the shaggy man.
“Good. Sail this boat the way you’ve seen a ship sailed, and you’ll be across the sands before you know it.”
With this he slammed down the lid of the chest, and the noise made them all wink. While they were winking the workman disappeared, tools and all.
12. The Deadly Desert Crossed
“Oh, that’s too bad!” cried Dorothy; “I wanted to thank Johnny Dooit for all his kindness to us.”
“He hasn’t time to listen to thanks,” replied the shaggy man; “but I’m sure he knows we are grateful. I suppose he is already at work in some other part of the world.”
They now looked more carefully at the sand-boat, and saw that the bottom was modeled with two sharp runners which would glide through the sand. The front of the sand-boat was pointed like the bow of a ship, and there was a rudder at the stern to steer by.
It had been built just at the edge of the desert, so that all its length lay upon the gray sand except the after part, which still rested on the strip of grass.
“Get in, my dears,” said the shaggy man; “I’m sure I can manage this boat as well as any sailor. All you need do is sit still in your places.”
Dorothy got in, Toto in her arms, and sat on the bottom of the boat just in front of the mast. Button-Bright sat in front of Dorothy, while Polly leaned over the bow. The shaggy man knelt behind the mast. When all were ready he raised the sail half-way. The wind caught it. At once the sand-boat started forward—slowly at first, then with added speed. The shaggy man pulled the sail way up, and they flew so fast over the Deadly Desert that every one held fast to the sides of the boat and scarcely dared to breathe.
The sand lay in billows, and was in places very uneven, so that the boat rocked dangerously from side to side; but it never quite tipped over, and the speed was so great that the shaggy man himself became frightened and began to wonder how he could make the ship go slower.
“It we’re spilled in this sand, in the middle of the desert,” Dorothy thought to herself, “we’ll be nothing but dust in a few minutes, and that will be the end of us.”
But they were not spilled, and by-and-by Polychrome, who was clinging to the bow and looking straight ahead, saw a dark line before them and wondered what it was. It grew plainer every second, until she discovered it to be a row of jagged rocks at the end of the desert, while high above these rocks she could see a tableland of green grass and beautiful trees.
“Look out!” she screamed to the shaggy man. “Go slowly, or we shall smash into the rocks.”
He heard her, and tried to pull down the sail; but the wind would not let go of the broad canvas and the ropes had become tangled.
Nearer and nearer they drew to the great rocks, and the shaggy man was in despair because he could do nothing to stop the wild rush of the sand-boat.
They reached the edge of the desert and bumped squarely into the rocks. There was a crash as Dorothy, Button-Bright, Toto and Polly flew up in the air in a curve like a skyrocket’s, one after another landing high upon the grass, where they rolled and tumbled for a time before they could stop themselves.
The shaggy man flew after them, head first, and lighted in a heap beside Toto, who, being much excited at the time, seized one of the donkey ears between his teeth and shook and worried it as hard as he could, growling angrily. The shaggy man made the little dog let go, and sat up to look around him.
Dorothy was feeling one of her front teeth, which was loosened by knocking against her knee as she fell. Polly was looking sorrowfully at a rent in her pretty gauze gown, and Button-Bright’s fox head had stuck fast in a gopher hole and he was wiggling his little fat legs frantically in an effort to get free.
Otherwise they were unhurt by the adventure; so the shaggy man stood up and pulled Button-Bright out of the hole and went to the edge of the desert to look at the sand-boat. It was a mere mass of splinters now, crushed out of shape against the rocks. The wind had torn away the sail and carried it to the top of a tall tree, where the fragments of it fluttered like a white flag.
“Well,” he said, cheerfully, “we’re here; but where the here is I don’t know.”
“It must be some part of the Land of Oz,” observed Dorothy, coming to his side.
“Must it?”
“‘Course it must. We’re across the desert, aren’t we? And somewhere in the middle of Oz is the Emerald City.”
“To be sure,” said the shaggy man, nodding. “Let’s go there.”
“But I don’t see any people about, to show us the way,” she continued.
“Let’s hunt for them,” he suggested. “There must be people somewhere; but perhaps they did not expect us, an
d so are not at hand to give us a welcome.”
13. The Truth Pond
They now made a more careful examination of the country around them. All was fresh and beautiful after the sultriness of the desert, and the sunshine and sweet, crisp air were delightful to the wanderers. Little mounds of yellowish green were away at the right, while on the left waved a group of tall leafy trees bearing yellow blossoms that looked like tassels and pompoms. Among the grasses carpeting the ground were pretty buttercups and cowslips and marigolds. After looking at these a moment Dorothy said reflectively:
“We must be in the Country of the Winkies, for the color of that country is yellow, and you will notice that ‘most everything here is yellow that has any color at all.”
“But I thought this was the Land of Oz,” replied the shaggy man, as if greatly disappointed.
“So it is,” she declared; “but there are four parts to the Land of Oz. The North Country is purple, and it’s the Country of the Gillikins. The East Country is blue, and that’s the Country of the Munchkins. Down at the South is the red Country of the Quadlings, and here, in the West, the yellow Country of the Winkies. This is the part that is ruled by the Tin Woodman, you know.”
“Who’s he?” asked Button-Bright.
“Why, he’s the tin man I told you about. His name is Nick Chopper, and he has a lovely heart given him by the wonderful Wizard.”
“Where does HE live?” asked the boy.
“The Wizard? Oh, he lives in the Emerald City, which is just in the middle of Oz, where the corners of the four countries meet.”
“Oh,” said Button-Bright, puzzled by this explanation.
“We must be some distance from the Emerald City,” remarked the shaggy man.
“That’s true,” she replied; “so we’d better start on and see if we can find any of the Winkies. They’re nice people,” she continued, as the little party began walking toward the group of trees, “and I came here once with my friends the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, to fight a wicked witch who had made all the Winkies her slaves.”
The Classic Children's Literature Collection: 39 Classic Novels Page 172
