LITMIR.BIZ

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you have a wedding feast with only two Indians?”

      “Yes… not good. Omri make more Indian, come to feast?” he asked hopefully. When Omri shook his head, Little Bull’s face fell.

      “Little Bull, wouldn’t you rather have your wedding feast at home with your own tribe?”

      Little Bull was no fool. He understood at once. He stood still, staring at Omri.

      “Omri put in box. Send back,” he said. His voice was very flat – Omri couldn’t tell if he liked the idea or not.

      “What do you think? Wouldn’t it be better?”

      Very slowly, the Indian nodded his head. “And Boone?”

      “Boone too.”

      “Make him my brother first.”

      “Yes. Then I’ll send you all back.”

      “When?”

      “When Boone’s well enough.”

      Now that Omri had decided, every day that passed was important because it was one day nearer to the last.

      Patrick was as sad as he was, but he didn’t argue against Omri’s decision.

      “It’s the only way, really,” Patrick said. After that he didn’t talk about it any more, he just tried to be at Omri’s house as much as possible.

      He couldn’t do things with Boone much, of course, even though, in a day or two, Boone was sitting up in the longhouse and demanding to talk to his horse (which was brought to the entrance for the purpose) and whining for all sorts of special food. And drink.

      “Ah cain’t be expected t’git muh strength back if ya won’t gimme some o’ the hard stuff,” he nagged. He even pretended to have a relapse. Omri pinched a nose-dropperful of whisky from his parents’ drinks cupboard and squeezed two large drops down Boone’s throat before the Indian girl (whose name was Twin Stars, a reference to her bright eyes, Omri supposed) succeeded in conveying the fact that Boone was perfectly all right and that his faint was faked.

      Still, after he’d had his drink Boone seemed so much better that Omri and Patrick decided it wouldn’t do him any harm (“He’s used to it, after all!”) and thereafter Boone got a liquor ration three times a day. And did very well on it.

      “He’ll be ready to go back tomorrow,” said Omri on the fourth day, when Boone, having had a leg up from Little Bull, managed to ride his horse round the seedbox at a steady walk. “They’ll probably look after him better than we can, in his own time.”

      A thought struck him, and he fished out of his pocket the drawing Boone had done.

      “Boone, is this your home town?”

      “Shore is!”

      Omri studied it closely under the magnifying glass. Away up the street he saw a little sign reading ‘Doctor’.

      “Is he a good doctor?”

      “’Bout as good as any out West, Ah reckon. Fish a bullet out of a man’s arm or cut his foot off fer snake-bite as neat as kin be. I seen him bring a pal o’ mine back from the dead, near enough, by puttin’ a hot coal in his belly-button. He never operates till a man’s dead drunk, and he don’t charge extry for the likker neither!”

      Omri and Patrick looked at each other. “You’d feel that you were in good hands, with this – er – doctor looking after you?” Patrick asked worriedly.

      “Shore would! Anyhow, don’t need no sawbones now, m’wound’s healin’ up fine. S’long as Ah git mah whisky, Ah’ll be as good as new.”

      Boone bore not the slightest ill-will towards Little Bull for having shot him.

      “That there’s a Injun’s natural nature. Pore simple critter c’d no more help himself than Ah kin keep away from muh horse and muh bottle!”

      The night before Omri had decided to send them back, they held the blood-brotherhood ceremony.

      “I wish we could ask our brothers!” said Patrick to Omri at school that day. “Supposing we tell them one day about this – they’ll never believe us.”

      “Sending them back,” said Omri slowly, “doesn’t mean the magic won’t work any more. I’m going to put the key away somewhere so I won’t be tempted; but it will always be there.”

      Patrick looked at him wonderingly. “I never thought of that,” he said slowly. “So there’d be nothing to stop us – months or even years from now – from bringing Boone and Little Bull back again. To visit.”

      “I don’t know,” said Omri. “Maybe their time is different from ours. It would be awful if they were old, or—” But he couldn’t say “or dead”. Both Boone and Little Bull came from such dangerous times. Omri shivered and changed the subject.

      “As for our brothers coming,” he said, “all I want of my brothers is to keep that rat in its cage.” The rat had been caught by Omri after a long, patient wait with cheese and a fishing-net, and Omri had threatened Gillon with the worst fate imaginable if he let it get away again.

      The two boys went to Yapp’s after school and bought feast-food for the ceremony – salted nuts, crisps, Hula Hoops and chocolate. Omri bought a quarter of a pound of best mince at the butcher’s for tiny hamburgers (a teaspoonful would have been enough, but the butcher wasn’t interested in that). They got bread, biscuits, cake and Coke from Omri’s mother, and Omri sneaked another dropperful of ‘the hard stuff’, without which Boone would certainly not consider it a festive occasion at all.

      Omri was rather surprised Boone had agreed to be blood-brother to a ‘stinkin’ redskin’ at all, but he actually seemed rather to fancy the idea.

      “T’ain’t jest anyone gits ter be blood-brother to an Injun chief, y’know,” he said proudly, as he rolled up his sleeve and Twin Stars carefully swabbed his arm with soap and water. But when he saw Little Bull sharpening his knife on a pebble he turned pale.

      “Hell! It’ll hurt!” he muttered, but Patrick told him not to be a coward.

      “It’s only a nick, it’s nothing at all!”

      “Easy fer you!” retorted Boone. “I ain’t sure this is sich a nice idee, after all…”

      But he cheered up when he saw the campfire being kindled, and smelt the meat Twin Stars was cooking on a pointed stick; and when Omri gave him a good swig from the dropper he swaggered up to Little Bull and offered his arm with a drunken flourish.

      “Chop away, brother!” he said loudly.

      Little Bull went through a whole routine first, cleaning himself, offering up loud chanting prayers to the spirits and performing a marvellous stamping dance round the fire. Then he nicked his own wrist with the point of his knife. The blood welled up. Boone took one look and burst into tears.

      “Ah don’t wanna! Ah changed m’mind!” he bawled. But it was too late for that. Little Bull seized his arm, and before Boone knew what was happening the deed was done.

      Twin Stars bound their wrists together with a strip of hide torn from the hem of her red dress. Boone looked at it in a bemused way and said, “Gee whiz. We done it! I’m part-Injun! Wal… Ah guess Ah cain’t say nothin’ ’gainst ’em in the future.”

      Then the two ‘brothers’ sat on the ground. Little Bull took out a short-stemmed pipe and some rather evil-smelling tobacco, and he and Boone took it in turns to puff at it. Twin Stars served them the cooked meat, and all the rest of the feast. Patrick and Omri offered their congratulations and tucked into their own food. They kept the campfire going with tiny bits of broken matchsticks and a bit of coal-dust Omri had collected from the outside bunker, which, when sprinkled on the flame, made it spit minute sparks. Looking

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