LITMIR.BIZ

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ran the length of the house hanging these bark-tiles, each of which he would first carefully shape with his knife. The knight’s battle-axe lay on the ground beside an unused pile of twigs. It had clearly been used to chop and strip them and had been made to serve Little Bull’s purpose very well.

      At last Omri saw him straighten up, stretch his arm towards the ceiling, and open his mouth in a tremendous noisy yawn.

      “Tired?” he asked him.

      Little Bull got such a fright he almost fell off the longhouse roof, and the pony neighed and tugged at his rope. But then Little Bull looked up and saw Omri hanging over the crate far above him, and grinned.

      “Little Bull tired. Work many hour. Look! Make longhouse. Work for many braves. I make alone. Also not good tools. Axe Omri give heavy. Why no tomahawk?”

      Omri was getting used to his Indian’s ungrateful ways and was not offended. He showed him the tepee he’d made. “I suppose you won’t want this, now you’ve got your longhouse,” he said rather sadly.

      “Want! Want!” He seemed to have decided tepees had their uses after all. He circled it. “Good! Give paints. Make pictures.”

      Omri unearthed his poster paints. When he came back with them, he found Little Bull sitting cross-legged on the earth, facing the figure of the Chief which Omri had put next to the tepee. Little Bull was clearly puzzled.

      “Totem?” he asked.

      “No! It’s plastic.”

      “Plass-tick?”

      “Yes. I bought it in a shop.”

      Little Bull stared at the figure with its big feather headdress.

      “You make magic, get bow and arrows from plass-tick?”

      “Yes.”

      “Also make feathers real?” he asked, with a gleam in his eye.

      “You like that headdress?”

      “Little Bull like. But that for Chief. Little Bull not Chief till father die. Little Bull wear feathers of Chief now, spirits angry.”

      “But you could just try it on?”

      Little Bull looked doubtful but he nodded.

      “Make real. Then see.”

      Omri shut the Indian Chief into the cupboard. Before he turned the key, he leant down to where Little Bull was examining the (to him) enormous pots of paint.

      “Little Bull, are you lonely?”

      “Huh?”

      “Would you like a – friend?”

      “Got friend,” said the Indian, jerking his head towards the pony.

      “I meant, another Indian.”

      Little Bull looked up swiftly, his hands still. There was a long silence.

      “Wife?” he asked at last.

      “No, it’s a man,” said Omri. “The – Chief.”

      “Not want,” said Little Bull immediately, and went back to his work with a bent head.

      Omri was disappointed. He had thought it might be fun to have two Indians. But somehow he couldn’t do anything Little Bull didn’t want. He would have to treat this Chief as he had treated the knight – grab the weapons and turn him back into plastic again at once.

      Only this time it wasn’t quite so easy.

      When he opened the cupboard, the Chief was sitting on the shelf, looking about him in bewilderment, blinking as the light struck his eyes. Omri saw at once that he was a very old man, covered in wrinkles. He took the bow out of his hands quite easily. But the quiverful of arrows was hung round him on a leather thong, and as for actually lifting the feathered headdress off his grey old head, Omri found he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. It seemed so rude.

      The old man gazed up at him, blankly at first, and then with dawning terror. But he didn’t get up and he didn’t speak, though Omri saw his lips moving and noticed he had hardly any teeth.

      Omri somehow felt he should offer the old Chief some friendly word to reassure him. So he held up one hand, as white men sometimes did in films when they were treating Indian Chiefs with politeness, and said, “How.”

      The old Indian lifted a trembling hand, and then suddenly he slumped on to his side.

      “Little Bull! Little Bull! Quick, get on to my hand!”

      Omri reached down and Little Bull climbed on to his hand from the longhouse roof.

      “What?”

      “The old Indian – I think he’s fainted!”

      He carried Little Bull to the cupboard and Little Bull stepped off on to the shelf. He stooped beside the crumpled figure. Taking the single feather out of the back of his own headband he held it in front of the old man’s mouth. Then he shook his head.

      “Dead,” he said. “No breath. Heart stop. Old man. Gone to ancestors, very happy.” Without more ado, he began to strip the body, taking the headdress, the arrows, and the big, richly-decorated cloak for good measure.

      Omri was shocked.

      “Little Bull, stop. Surely you shouldn’t—”

      “Chief dead; I only other Indian here. No one else to be Chief. Little Bull Chief now,” he said, whirling the cloak about his own bare shoulders and clapping the splendid circle of feathers on to his head with a flourish. He picked up the quiver.

      “Omri give bow!” he commanded. And it was a command. Omri obeyed it without thinking. “Now! You make magic. Deer for Little Bull hunt. Fire for cook. Good meat!” He folded his arms, scowling up at Omri.

      Omri was quite taken aback by all this. While giving Little Bull every respect as a person, he was not about to be turned into his slave. He began to wonder if giving him those weapons, let alone letting him make himself into a Chief, was such a good idea.

      “Now look here, Little Bull—” he began, in a teacherish tone.

      “OMRI!”

      It was his father’s voice, fairly roaring at him from the foot of the stairs. Omri jumped, bumping the cupboard. Little Bull fell over backwards, considerably spoiling his dignity.

      “Yes?”

      “COME DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT!”

      Omri had no time for courtesies. He snatched Little Bull up, set him down near his half-finished longhouse, shut and locked the cupboard and ran downstairs.

      His father was waiting for him.

      “Omri, have you been in the greenhouse lately?”

      “Er—”

      “And did you, while you were there, remove a seed-tray planted out with marrow seeds, may I ask?”

      “Well, I—”

      “Yes or no.”

      “Well, yes, but—”

      “And is it possible that in addition you have been hacking at the trunk of the birch and torn off strips of bark?”

      “But Dad, it was only—”

      “Don’t you know trees can die if you strip too much of their bark off? It’s like their skin! As for the seed-tray, that is mine. You’ve no business taking things from the greenhouse and you know it. Now I want it back, and you’d better not have disturbed the seeds or heaven help you!”

      Omri swallowed hard. He and his father stared at each other.

      “I can’t

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