Out of Gaper's Gulch
Now the Gapers were not dead, but only sleeping, and soon the dormant
natives of this strange Hibernation lifted up their headstones and
began blinking out indignantly to see what and who had got loose in
their quiet valley.
"Silence! Cease! Desist!" shuddered Sleeperoo the Great and Snorious,
holding up his headstone with one hand and waving his other arm feebly
at Kabumpo. "A bit more of that racket and we'll be roused for months.
Who are you? And what is the meaning of all this Hah Hoh Humbuggery?"
Gaping ten times in quick succession, Sleeperoo stuck out his lip at
the Elegant Elephant. Kabumpo, startled by the spectacle of a hundred
lifted headstones and the round dirty moonlike faces gaping up at him,
said nothing for a whole minute. Then, stepping over to the Chief
Gaper, he burst out angrily:
"I am a traveler whom your guards stuck full of arrows and then tried
to bury. The young King who was with me has disappeared. I, the Elegant
Elephant of Oz and Pumperdink, DEMAND his release. What have you done
with the King of Regalia? Produce him at once, or I'll stand here and
trumpet till doomsday!"
To show he meant what he said, Kabumpo let out such a terrific blast
the headstones of his listeners rocked and shivered.
"Oh, my head! My ears! My ears, my dears! Give him what he's yelling
for," sobbed Sleeperoo, crouching under his headstone as Kabumpo lifted
his trunk for another trumpet.
"Is this--a--king?" called a fretful voice, and, lurching round,
Kabumpo saw a fat old Gaper now half-way above ground. Balancing his
stone on his fat head, he held Randy out at arm's length. "Instead of
digging him a proper bed, they stuck him in with me," he complained.
"Here, take him--he kicks like a mule and I can't abide a kicker."
With a relieved grunt, Kabumpo snatched Randy from the Gaper's damp
clutches, thankful the boy still had strength enough to kick. Randy's
face was quite pale and covered with dirt, but after a few anxious
shakes he opened his eyes and looked confusedly round him.
"It's nothing," sniffed Kabumpo. "It's quite all right, my boy. You've
just been buried to the ears and sleeping with a ground-hog."
"Buried?" shivered Randy, as Kabumpo set him gently on his back.
"Not buried at all, just lying dormant as a sensible body should,"
corrected the old Gaper, dropping out of sight with a slam of his
headstone.
"Go away! Please go away!" begged Sleeperoo, as Kabumpo began stepping
gingerly between the stones. "You're ruining our rest, you big bullying
Behemoth!"
"I'll not stir a step till you send a guide to lead me out of this
gulch," declared Kabumpo. "Call a guard or I'll call one myself."
"No. No! Please NOT! Torpy Snorpy--I say, Torpy," wheezed Sleeperoo,
stretching up his thin neck. "Come, come all of you at once. At ONCE!"
As quickly as they had vanished, the Wakes slid from behind boulders
and trees and up out of rocky crevices, their buttons twinkling
cheerfully in the dark.
"Conduct these travelers to the head of the valley," ordered Sleeperoo,
with a weak wave at the Gaper Guards.
"I thought this was a gulch," yawned Kabumpo, while Randy began to
shake the dirt from his hair and ears.
"A gulch is a valley," sniffed Sleeperoo, lowering himself crossly.
"Look it up in any pictionary. A gulch is a valley or chasm."
"And Gaper's Gulch is a yawning chasm," mumbled Kabumpo, as the Chief
Gaper and all the others began ducking back into their holes like
rabbits into warrens. "Good night to you," he added, as the last stone
slammed down. "Now, then, you boys fetch my head-piece and robe from
that pit and let's start on."
Kabumpo spoke so sharply ten Wakes sprang to obey, and after they
had brought them and both had been adjusted to Kabumpo's liking, he
signaled imperiously for Torpy and Snorpy to lead the way, and their
companions took thankfully to their heels. For a while the two little
Wakes marched ahead in a subdued silence as the Elegant Elephant picked
his way around rocks and tree stumps.
"Not mad, I hope?" Torpy, most talkative of the two, looked anxiously
over his shoulder.
"No, no--certainly not. I don't know when I've spent a more delightful
evening," Kabumpo said. "Being stuck full of arrows and then buried
alive is such splendid entertainment."
"Oh, I say now, we cannot all be alike," put in Snorpy, coming to the
rescue of his embarrassed companion. "If those arrows had taken effect,
you'd have been dead asleep before we buried you, and known nothing for
six months. That's a lot of sleep to miss, Mister--er--Mister?"
"Kabumpo," chuckled Randy, who was now wide awake and quite recovered
from his harrowing experience. "But you see, Kabumpo and I sleep every
night and not all in one stretch as you do."
"More trouble that way," murmured Snorpy, shaking his head
disapprovingly. "Keeps you hopping up and down all the time. In the
Gulch we sleep half the year and then we are done with it."
"And what do you do when you are not sleeping?" inquired Kabumpo,
stifling a yawn with his trunk.
"We eat," grinned Snorpy, his eyes twinkling brighter than his buttons.
"Breakfast from July first to August thirty-first; lunch from September
first till October thirty-first; and dinner from November first till
New Year's."
"You mean you eat straight through without stopping?" gasped Randy,
raising himself on one elbow. "All the time you're awake? Don't you
ever work, play or go on journeys?"
"I do not know what you mean by 'work, play and going on journeys,'
but whatever they are, we don't. We eat and sleep, sleep and eat and
everything is perfectly gorgeous," confided the Wake with a satisfied
skip.
"Gorging is gorgeous to some people, I suppose." Kabumpo tossed his
head to show it was not his way. "Then how is it you fellows are not
sleeping along with the other Gapers?"
"Oh, we're trained to sleep in summer and fall and to eat in winter and
spring. The Winks are not so clever at staying awake as we are, but
they'll learn, and meanwhile the pebbles keep them fairly active."
"Yes, active enough to shoot at visitors," grunted Kabumpo, winking
back at Randy. "Do you shoot one another asleep or is that a special
treat you reserve for travelers?"
"We just shoot at travelers," admitted Snorpy, quite cheerfully.
"Otherwise they would interfere with our customs, interrupt our
sleeping and eating and wake us up out of season."
"Just as we did," chuckled Randy. "I suppose we interrupted your
dinner, this being one of the dinner months?" Both Guards nodded,
exchanging pleased little smiles.
"Come on back and have a bite with us," invited Snorpy generously.
"We've weak fish for the first week, chops for the second--"
Randy, tugging at Kabumpo's collar, begged him to stop, for Randy was
hungry as a brace of bears, but the Elegant Elephant, shaking his
head till all his jewels rattled, declined the invitation with great
firmness.
"No knowing what will come of it," he whispered to his disappointed
young comrade. "Might put us to sleep for a century and it's about all
I can do to keep my eyes open now. Wait till we're out of this goopy
gulch, my lad, and we'll eat and sleep like gentlemen. After all, we
are gentlemen and not ground-hogs."
Urging his guides to greater speed, the weary beast pushed doggedly
on through the brush and stubble. Snorpy and Torpy, insulted by the
shortness with which the Elegant Elephant had refused their invitation,
had little more to say, and in less than an hour had brought the
travelers to the end of the rocky little valley. From where they stood,
a crooked path wound crazily upward, and with a silent wave aloft the
two Wakes turned and ran.
"Back to their dinner," sighed Randy, looking hungrily after them.
But Kabumpo, charmed to see the last of the ghostly gulch and its
inhabitants, began to ascend the path, not even stopping for breath
till he had come to the top. Even after this, he traveled on for about
five miles to make sure no sleepy vapors or Gapers would trouble them
again. The moon had waned and the stars grown faint as he stopped
at last in a small patch of woodland. Here, without removing his
head-piece or robe, Kabumpo braced his back against a mighty oak
and fell asleep on his feet, and Randy, soothed and rocked by his
tremendous snores, soon closed his eyes and slept also.