The Indian in the Cupboard. Lynne Banks Reid
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“What? Why not?”
“Good tepee, but no good Iroquois brave. See?” He pointed to the painted symbols. “Not Iroquois signs. Algonquin. Enemy. Little Bull sleep there, Iroquois spirits angry.”
“Oh,” said Omri, disappointed.
“Little Bull like Omri tepee. Need paint. Make strong pictures – Iroquois signs. Please spirits of ancestors.”
Omri’s disappointment melted into intense pride. He had made a tepee which satisfied his Indian! “It’s not finished,” he said. “I’ll take it to school and finish it in my handicrafts lesson. I’ll take out the pins and sew it up properly. Then when I come home I’ll give you poster-paints and you can paint your symbols.”
“I paint. But must have longhouse. Tepee no good for Iroquois.”
“Just for now?”
Little Bull scowled. “Yes,” he said. “But very short. Now eat.”
“Er … Yes. What do you like to eat in the mornings?”
“Meat,” said the Indian immediately.
“Wouldn’t you like some bread and cheese?”
“Meat.”
“Or corn? Or some egg?”
The Indian folded his arms uncompromisingly across his chest.
“Meat,” said Omri with a sigh. “Yes. Well, I’ll have to see what I can do. In the meantime, I think I’d better put you down on the ground.”
“Not on ground now?”
“No. You’re high above the ground. Go to the edge and look – but don’t fall!”
The Indian took no chances. Lying on his stomach he crawled, commando-fashion, to the edge of the chest-of-drawers and peered over.
“Big mountain,” he commented at last.
“Well …” But it seemed too difficult to explain. “May I lift you down?”
Little Bull stood up and looked at Omri measuringly. “Not hold tight?” he asked.
“No. I won’t hold you at all. You can ride in my hand.”
He laid his hand palm up next to Little Bull, who, after only a moment’s hesitation, stepped on to it and, for greater stability, sat down cross-legged. Omri gently transported him to the floor. The Indian rose lithely to his feet and jumped off on to the grey carpet.
At once he began looking about with suspicion. He dropped to his knees, felt the carpet and smelt it.
“Not ground,” he said. “Blanket.”
“Little Bull, look up.”
He obeyed, narrowing his eyes and peering.
“Do you see the sky? Or the sun?”
The Indian shook his head, puzzled.
“That’s because we’re not outdoors. We’re in a room, in a house. A house big enough for people my size. You’re not even in America. You’re in England.”
The Indian’s face lit up. “English good! Iroquois fight with English against French!”
“Really?” asked Omri, wishing he had read more. “Did you fight?”
“Fight? Little Bull fight like mountain lion! Take many scalps.”
Scalps? Omri swallowed. “How many?”
Little Bull proudly held up all ten fingers. Then he closed his fists, opening them again with another lot of ten, and another.
“I don’t believe you killed so many people!” said Omri, shocked.
“Little Bull not lie. Great hunter. Great fighter. How show him son of Chief without many scalps?”
“Any white ones?” Omri ventured to ask.
“Some. French. Not take English scalps. Englishmen friends to Iroquois. Help Indian fight Algonquin enemy.”
Omri stared at him. He suddenly wanted to get away. “I’ll go and get you some – meat,” he said in a choking voice.
He went out of his room, closing the bedroom door behind him.
For a moment he did not move, but leant back against the door. He was sweating slightly. This was a bit more than he had bargained for!
Not only was his Indian no mere toy come to life; he was a real person, somehow magicked out of the past of over two hundred years ago. He was also a savage. It occurred to Omri for the first time that his idea of Red Indians, taken entirely from Western films, had been somehow false. After all, those had all been actors playing Indians, and afterwards wiping their war-paint off and going home for their dinners, not in tepees but in houses like his. Civilized men, pretending to be primitive, pretending to be cruel …
Little Bull was no actor. Omri swallowed hard. Thirty scalps … phew! Of course things were different in those days. Those tribes were always making war on each other, and come to that the English and French (whatever they thought they were doing, fighting in America) were probably no better, killing each other like mad as often as they could …
Come to that, weren’t soldiers of today doing the same thing? Weren’t there wars and battles and terrorism going on all over the place? You couldn’t switch on television without seeing news about people killing and being killed … Was thirty scalps, even including some French ones, taken hundreds of years ago, so very bad after all?
Still, when he tried to imagine Little Bull, full size, bent over some French soldier, holding his hair in one hand and running the point of his scalping-knife … Yuk!
Omri pushed away from the door and walked rather unsteadily downstairs. No wonder he had felt, from the first, slightly afraid of his Indian. He asked himself, swallowing repeatedly and feeling that just the same he might be sick, whether he wouldn’t do better to put Little Bull back in the cupboard, lock the door and turn him back into plastic, knife and all.
Down in the kitchen he ransacked his mother’s store-cupboard for a tin of meat. He found some corned beef at last and opened it with the tin-opener on the wall. He dug a chunk out with a teaspoon, put it absently into his own mouth and stood there chewing it.
The Indian hadn’t seemed very surprised about being in a giant house in England. He had shown that he was very superstitious, believing in magic and good and evil spirits. Perhaps he thought of Omri as – well, some kind of genie, or whatever Indians believed in instead. The wonder was that he wasn’t more frightened of him then, for genies, or giants, or Great Spirits, or whatever, were always supposed to be very powerful and often wicked. Omri supposed that if one happened to be the son of an Indian Chief, one simply didn’t get scared as easily as ordinary people. Especially, perhaps, if one had taken thirty scalps …
Maybe Omri ought to tell someone about Little Bull.
The trouble was that although grown-ups usually knew what to do, what they did was very seldom what children wanted to be done. What if he took the Indian to – say, some scientists, or – whoever knew about strange things like that, to question him and examine him and probably keep him in a laboratory or something of that sort? They would certainly want to take the cupboard away too, and then Omri wouldn’t be able to have any more fun with it at all.
Just when his mind was seething with ideas, such as putting in plastic bows and arrows, and horses, and maybe even other little people – well, no, probably that was too risky, who knew what sort you might land up with? They might start fighting each other! But still, he knew for certain he didn’t want to give up his secret, not yet, no matter how many Frenchmen had been scalped.
Having made his decision, for the