LITMIR.BIZ

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nothing more to say.

      A movement near the back of the house caught Omri’s eye. It was his mother, coming out to hang up some wet clothes. He thought she moved as if she were tired and fed up. She stood for a moment on the back balcony, looking at the sky. Then she sighed and began pegging the clothes to the line.

      On impulse Omri got up and went over to her.

      “You – you haven’t found anything of mine, have you?” he asked.

      “No – I don’t think so. What have you lost?”

      But Omri was too ashamed to admit he’d lost the key she’d told him to be so careful of. “Oh, nothing much,” he said.

      He went back to Patrick, who was showing the men an ant. Boone was trying to pat its head like a dog, but it wasn’t very responsive.

      “Well,” Omri said, “we might as well make the best of things. Why not bring the horses out and give the fellows a ride?”

      This cheered everyone up and Omri ran up and brought the two ponies down carefully in an empty box. Next Patrick stamped a small patch of the lawn hard to give the horses a really good gallop. Quite a large black beetle alighted on the flattened part, and Little Bull shot it dead with an arrow. This cheered him up a bit more (though not much). While the ponies grazed the fresh grass, he kept giving great love-sick sighs and Omri knew he was thinking of the woman.

      “Maybe you’d rather not stay the night now,” Omri said to Patrick.

      “I want to,” said Patrick. “If you don’t mind.”

      Omri felt too upset to care one way or the other. When they were called in to supper he noticed that Adiel was trying to be friendly, but he wouldn’t speak to him. Afterwards Adiel took him aside.

      “What’s up with you now? I’m trying to be nice. You got your silly old cupboard back.”

      “It’s no good without the key.”

      “Well, I’m sorry! It must have dropped out on the way up to the attic.”

      On the way up to the attic! Omri hadn’t thought of that. “Will you help me find it?” he asked eagerly. “Please! It’s terribly important!”

      “Oh… all right then.”

      The four of them hunted for half an hour. They didn’t find it.

      After that, Gillon and Adiel had to go out to some function at school, so Patrick and Omri had the television to themselves. They took out the two men and explained this new magic, and then they all watched together. First came a film about animals, which absolutely transfixed both the little men. Then a Western came on. Omri thought they ought to switch off, but Boone, in particular, set up such a hullabaloo that eventually Omri said, “Oh – all right. Just for ten minutes, then.”

      Little Bull was seated cross-legged on Omri’s knee, while Boone, who had somehow gravitated back to Patrick, preferred to stand in his breast-pocket, leaning his elbows along the pocket top with his hat on the back of his head, chewing a lump of tobacco he had had on him. Patrick, who’d heard something of cowboys’ habits, said, “Don’t you dare spit! There are no spittoons here, you know.”

      “Lemme listen to ’em talkin’, willya?” said Boone. “Ah jest cain’t git over how they talk!”

      Before the ten minutes was up, the Indians in the film started getting the worst of it. It was the usual sequence in which the pioneers’ wagons are drawn into a circle and the Indians are galloping round uttering savage whoops while the outnumbered men of the wagon train fire muzzle-loading guns at them through the wagon wheels. Omri could sense Little Bull was getting restive and tense. As brave after brave bit the dust, he suddenly leapt to his feet.

      “No good pictures!” he shouted.

      “Watcha talkin’ about, Injun?” Boone yelled tauntingly across the chasm dividing him from Little Bull. “That’s how it was! Mah maw and paw wuz in a fight like thet’n – mah paw tole me he done shot near’nuff fifteen-twenny of them dirty savages!”

      “White men move on to land! Use water! Kill game!”

      “So what? Let the best man win! And we won! Yippee!” he added as another television Indian went down with his horse on top of him.

      Omri was looking at the screen when it happened. In a lull on the soundtrack he heard a thin faint whistling sound, and heard Boone grunt. He looked back at Boone swiftly, and his blood froze. The cowboy had an arrow sticking out of his chest.

      For a couple of seconds he remained upright in Patrick’s breast pocket. Then, quite slowly, he fell forward.

      Omri had often marvelled at the way people in films, particularly girls and women, were given to letting out loud screams at dramatic or awful moments. Now he felt one rise in his own throat, and would have let it out only that Little Bull cried out first.

      Patrick, who had not noticed anything amiss till now, looked at Little Bull, saw where his bow-arm was still pointing, and looked down at his own pocket. Over the top of it Boone hung, head down, as limp as a piece of knotted string.

      “Boone! Boone!”

      “No!” snapped Omri. “Don’t touch him!”

      Ignoring Little Bull, who tumbled down his trouser-leg to the floor as he moved, Omri very carefully lifted Boone clear between finger and thumb, and laid him across the palm of his hand. The cowboy lay face up with the arrow still sticking out of his chest.

      “Is he – dead?” whispered Patrick in horror.

      “I don’t know.”

      “Shouldn’t we take the arrow out?’

      “We can’t. Little Bull must.”

      With infinite care and slowness, Omri laid his hand on the carpet. Boone lay perfectly still. With such a tiny body it was impossible to be sure whether the arrow was stuck in where his heart was, or a little higher up towards his shoulder – the arrow-shaft was so fine you could only make it out by the minute cluster of feathers.

      “Little Bull. Come here.”

      Omri’s voice was steely, a voice Mr Johnson himself might have envied – it commanded obedience.

      Little Bull, scrambling to his feet after his fall, walked unsteadily to Omri’s hand.

      “Get up there and see if you’ve killed him.”

      Without a word, Little Bull climbed on to the edge of Omri’s hand and knelt down beside the prostrate Boone. He laid his ear against his chest just below the arrow. He listened, then straightened up, but without looking at either of the boys.

      “Not killed,” he said sullenly.

      Omri felt his breath go out in relief.

      “Take the arrow out. Carefully. If he dies now, it’ll be doubly your fault.”

      Little Bull put one hand on Boone’s chest with his fingers on either side of the arrow, and with the other took hold of the shaft where it went into Boone’s body.

      “Blood come. Need stop up hole.”

      Omri’s mother kept boxes of tissues in every room, mainly so nobody would have an excuse to sit sniffing. Patrick jumped up and took one, tearing off a tiny corner and rolling it into a wad no bigger than a pinhead.

      “Now it’s got germs on it from your hand,” said Omri.

      “Where’s the disinfectant?”

      “In the bathroom cupboard. Don’t let my mum see you!”

      While Patrick was gone, Omri sat motionless and silent, his eyes fixed on Little Bull, still poised to pull out the arrow.

      After a very long minute,

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