[Illustration: THIS BOOK BELONGS TO]
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The Gnome King of Oz
THE GNOME KING
_of_ OZ
_By_
RUTH PLUMLY THOMPSON
Founded on and continuing the Famous Oz Stories
_By_
L. FRANK BAUM
“Royal Historian of Oz”
[Illustration]
_Illustrated by_
JOHN R. NEILL
The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago
Copyright 1927
_by_
The Reilly & Lee Co.
_All Rights Reserved_
_Made in U. S. A._
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Well, Boys and Girls! After Betsy’s adventures last year with the
Hungry Tiger and the Prince of Rash, I did think _everything exciting_
that could happen _had_ happened in the Land of OZ. I rather expected
this year’s history would be a drowsy record of birthdays, visitings
and trips to undiscovered countries.
But scarcely had I begun on the first birthday, which happened to be
Cap’n Bill’s and which Dorothy had written me all about, when a special
radiogram arrived from the Emerald City. Ruggedo, the old Gnome King,
had escaped from Runaway Island. The Patchwork Girl had disappeared
from the Capital. You can imagine how anxiously I waited for further
news. Would Ruggedo succeed in capturing Oz? Where was Scraps? How
would the adventure end?
Well, even I did not guess the way it _did_ end, and as you are
probably as curious as I was, I’ll only say that it’s the most
unexpected and mysterious happening yet! Really! There’s a treasure
ship, a new little boy from Philadelphia, a magic cloak and an Oztrich
in it!
How are you all? Happy? As for me,
I kinda feel like Scraps to-day, full of rhymes and jingles.
I feel that way
When I think of you and the folks I’ve met in Oz and the
letters I’m sure to get
When you’ve read this book. Three cheers! Hurray!
I’m looking for letters. Looking right your way!
RUTH PLUMLY THOMPSON
254 S. Farragut Terrace,
West Philadelphia, Penna.
May, 1927.
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_This Book Is Dedicated to My Nephew Richard Shuff Thompson, Jr._
With lots of love and a little laugh,
For a little boy almost three and a half!
If I had a wish, I’d wish it quick
And keep him always “Little Dick.”
R. P. T.
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List of Chapters
Chapter Page
1 Queen Cross Patch Flits 15
2 The New Queen of the Quilties 35
3 Duties of the Quilty Queen 51
4 Peter Flies with an Odd Bird 67
5 Sea Tips Upside Down in Quake 85
6 Ruggedo Discovers Pirate’s Treasure 97
7 Kaliko Falls as King of Gnomes 111
8 Peter Meets Kuma Party 129
9 Queen Scraps Meets Peter 143
10 Escape from Patch at Last 155
11 Scraps Meets Sultan of Suds 169
12 Friend Oztrich Offers to Help 185
13 Tune Town Sings The Wanderers Onward 199
14 Ozwold and His Friends Rush On 213
15 Wumbo, Wonder Worker, at Home 227
16 Kuma’s Hand Is at Work Again 239
17 Mystery in the Emerald City 243
18 The Theft of the Magic Belt 261
19 The Wizard Makes the Gnome King Visible 271
20 Peter Is Made a Prince of Oz 277
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CHAPTER 1 Queen Cross Patch Flits
Queen Cross Patch, the Sixth, stood at her castle window staring
crossly down at her cross-patch country. From above it looked like a
huge patch-work quilt, spread over the rolling hills of the Winkie
Country in Oz. Each of her subjects had a separate cotton-patch, and as
each patch produced a different color of cotton and each patch-worker
dressed himself and his family in the color of his patch and painted
his house the same color too, you can imagine the odd appearance of the
Kingdom itself. The Quilties, as the people of Patch were pleased to
call themselves, did most of the patch-work in Oz and, as the Kingdoms
of Oz are nearly all old-fashioned enough to use and appreciate
patch-work quilts, there was plenty of work to be done. Not only did
the industrious Quilties gather the small cotton-patches from their
garden patches and stitch them into gay quilts but they did mending and
darning as well.
For miles around people brought their old clothes to Queen Cross Patch
for repairs, so that Patch was as busy and prosperous a little Kingdom
as you would find anywhere, but by no means a pleasant one. Constant
picking of the scraps in their garden patches had made the Quilty men
exceedingly scrappy, and constant stitching upon the patch-work quilts
had made the Quilty ladies extremely cross and crotchety. Indeed,
everything about this little country was cross and patchy. All the
roads were cross roads, and the houses as patched and shabby as the
clothes of the people who lived in them.
But perhaps, of all the Quilties, the Queen, herself, was the crossest
and patchiest. She even had a patch over her eye. She had strained it
from too much fine sewing. Just now she was straining the other one in
an effort to see that all of her subjects were hard at work. Finding
that they were, she flounced across the room and sat down at her sewing
table. Here, grumbling and scolding to herself, she began sorting
patches into separate piles, according to their size and color. Except
for her Majesty’s mumbles and the occasional snores of a scissor bird,
who dozed on a perch by the window, there was not a sound in the great
chamber. But suddenly, with a shrill scream, the Queen flung a handful
of patches into the air, toppled off her three-legged throne and went
entirely to pieces--extremely small pieces, too.
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“Help!” shrieked the Scissor Bird, wakening with a bounce. “Help! Help!
The Queen has gone to pieces!” At the Scissor Bird’s sharp outcries,
the Prime Piecer and Chief Scrapper of Patch fairly rushed through the
doorway.
“I’ve been expecting this!” groaned the Prime Piecer, and taking a huge
bite from the chunk of beeswax he held in one hand began to chew it
gloomily.
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“Well, if you’ve been expecting it you’re not surprised,” sniffed the
Chief Scrapper crossly, “but it’s too bad to have it happen at the
busiest season of the year. Now we’ll have to stop everything and find
a new ruler. Hold your bill, Nipper!”
Stamping his foot at the Scissor Bird, the Chief Scrapper of Patch
marched stiffly from the room. Neither the Prime Piecer nor the Chief
Scrapper seemed to think it queer for the Queen to go to pieces. And
no doubt this is because, sooner or later, all of the Quilties do this
very thing. Living in a fairy country and being magically constructed
they cannot die, so when they wear out, they simply go to pieces. When
a Quilty goes to pieces, his relatives or friends sweep up the scraps
and put them away in a tidy scrap-bag and in ten years or so he comes
out of the bag as good as ever. This does seem a curious custom, but
curious or not, that is exactly what happens, and while Scrapper went
to fetch the Royal scrap-bag and Piecer the Royal dust-pan, the Scissor
Bird flew out of the window to break the news to the patchworking
populace.
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In a huge sewing circle, the Quilty Dames were stitching upon a quilt
and in their separate garden patches, the Quilty men were busily
picking cotton-patches. But as the Scissor Bird flew screaming overhead
and they realized that Queen Cross Patch had gone to pieces at last,
they all stopped working and looked fearfully at one another. Who would
be the next ruler of Patch? Whenever a ruler went to pieces another was
immediately chosen by the method laid down in the Imperial Scrap Book
and always one of the Quilties had been chosen.
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Now, curiously enough, no one wanted to be King or Queen, for the ruler
of this cross little country had to work six times as hard as anyone
else and consequently went to pieces six times faster. Therefore,
dropping their thimbles and scissors, the Quilties started to run
in every direction, pelting into houses and down cellars, creeping
into barrels and hiding themselves behind trees,--so that when Piecer
and Scrapper issued from the palace not a person was in sight. They
had carefully swept up Queen Cross Patch and hung her in a closet,
and now, grumbling a little--for choosing a new sovereign was always
a troublesome matter--they stepped sternly toward the cotton-wood
to the left of the palace. In this wood grew hundreds of spool
cotton-trees--enough, in fact, to furnish all the thread used in the
Kingdom. There were pink spool cotton-trees, red spool cotton-trees,
green spool cotton-trees, orange spool cotton-trees, and every other
color you could imagine. In the center of the little cotton-wood grew a
somewhat taller tree, bearing always one golden spool. It was to this
tree that the Prime Ministers of Patch hurried, for this golden spool
was the royal spool of succession, and when cut from the tree led
directly to the next ruler of the Kingdom.
[Illustration]
Piecer had a large rag-bag over his shoulder, for it was usually
necessary to capture a ruler by force; Scrapper had a pair of gold
shears and now, standing on tiptoe, he snipped the golden spool from
the golden branch and held it expectantly in his hand. There was a
regular speech written out in the Royal Scrap Book, and as Scrapper had
already chosen three rulers, he knew it by heart.
“Unwind, Oh, Royal Spool of Succession,” commanded the little Quilty
importantly, “Unwind and lead us to the Imperial Potentate of Patch!”
As he came to the word “patch,” Scrapper set the spool on the ground
and, keeping hold of the golden thread, waited solemnly for something
to happen. For a moment the spool lay quietly where he had placed
it--then with a little bounce it began to unwind. Letting the gold
thread slip through his fingers, Scrapper skipped nimbly after the
spool, Piecer following earnestly behind him. Up one cross road and
down another rolled the Royal Spool of Succession, past the patched
palace, past a dozen patched cottages, on and on and on.
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As it passed each cottage, the Quilties within would give a roar of
relief, for they knew that for the present the danger of being King
or Queen had passed the members of their household. Sometimes the
golden spool would roll right into the front door of a cottage and
Scrapper and Piecer, thinking their search over, would prepare to seize
a sovereign but, just as they did, the spool would whirl out the back
door and roll on merrily down the road. But never before in the history
of Patch had it gone so far nor so fast, so that soon the fat Quilty
ministers, panting along after it, were completely out of breath and
temper. Now the cotton-patches grew thinner and thinner, the little
cottages farther and farther apart, and before they half realized it,
the golden spool was rolling briskly down a yellow brick highway and
the Kingdom of Patch lay far behind them.
[Illustration]
“Stop!” grunted Piecer, letting go Scrapper’s coat-tails to which he up
to this time had dutifully clung. “Stop! I can go no farther.”
“Don’t leave me,” wailed poor Scrapper, rolling his eyes backward in
great distress. Neither of the Quilties had been out of Patch before
and the prospect was truly terrifying. Now, whether the magic spool
heard the two conversing is hard to tell but, quite suddenly, it
stopped and sinking down by the roadway, Piecer and Scrapper began to
mop their foreheads with their patched handkerchiefs and fan themselves
with their hats.
“Let’s go back,” quavered Piecer in a low voice.
“But we cannot go back without a ruler,” objected Scrapper, who was the
bolder of the two. “If we do not find a ruler in four days you very
well know that Patch and all of the Quilties will go to pieces. Do you
want to go to pieces?” he asked severely.
“No!” said Piecer mournfully, “I don’t, but we’ll go to pieces anyway,
running on at this rate. Something is wrong,” puffed the Prime Piecer
dolefully. “The spool never took us out of the Kingdom before. It’s
twisted, I tell you, and dear knows where it will take us.”
“It will take us to the next ruler,” declared Scrapper, who had
recovered some of his breath and most of his courage. “It is our duty
to follow. Come!”
“Oh, very well,” sighed Piecer, rising to his feet with a great groan,
“but don’t blame me if it leads us into a forest and we are torn to
bits by bears.”
As Piecer finished this cheering speech the thread in Scrapper’s hand
gave a little pull. The golden spool had started off again. This time,
however, it rolled along more slowly and, in spite of their uneasiness,
the two Quilties cast interested glances to the right and left. It was
all so different from their own patched and shabby little Kingdom.
Pleasant yellow cottages and farms dotted the landscape, and the
fields and meadows, full of buttercups and daisies, did not look a bit
dangerous. On the hill a splendid tin castle shone and glittered in the
sun, and though Scrapper and Piecer were quite unaware of it, this was
the residence of the Tin Woodman, who ruled over The Land of the East.
Nowhere in Oz is there a more cheerful land than the Country of
the Winkies. But just as the two travellers were beginning to enjoy
themselves, the spool turned sharply off the highway and plunged down
a steep hill. The first jerk flung Scrapper on his face, and as Piecer
had hold of his coat-tails he lost his balance too, and over and over
they rolled to the bottom.
“Now for the next ruler!” gasped Scrapper. Scrambling to his feet, and
without pausing to brush off the dust, he bounded after the spool. It
was fairly whistling ahead now, bouncing over rocks and tree stumps, so
that the two Patchy Statesmen, in their endeavor to keep up with it,
looked like a couple of boys playing leap frog. When it did stop Piecer
was too giddy to see, but Scrapper gave a loud roar of anger.
“I don’t care what it says,” shouted the little Quilty angrily, “I
refuse to take orders from a cow. Is this our future sovereign?” he
demanded indignantly. The spool had stopped indeed, and under the very
horns of a cross brown cow.
“Moo!” bellowed the cow, lowering her head threateningly.
“That’s just what we will do,” sniffed Scrapper, “move on!” At
Scrapper’s words, the Spool of Succession, as if it had been waiting
for a signal, zipped under the cow, dragging both ministers along, and
from the way it behaved in the next half hour, I am convinced that some
mighty bad magic had gone into its making. It rushed furiously under
fences, over which the breathless Quilties were forced to climb, ’round
and ’round trees, till they were almost too dizzy to stand, up hills
and down hills, through stickery bushes and over sharp stones. It even
dragged them head first into a muddy river.
“Let’s go home,” blubbered Piecer, shaking himself like a big dog.
Fortunately the Quilties could swim, but swimming in quilted trousers
and coats was no fun at all and, dripping water and mud, the two
sovereign seekers felt more depressed than ever.
“It’s bewitched,” insisted Piecer, tugging at Scrapper’s coat-tails.
“Let’s go back!”
But Scrapper stubbornly shook his head and trudged stubbornly after the
mischievous Spool of Succession. It was unwinding quite deliberately
now, but leading them deep into a dangerous looking forest.
“I wish Cross Patch had never gone to pieces,” moaned Piecer dismally.
“I don’t care who’s Imperial Potentate. I wish someone else had my
position. I wish--”
“There’s a sign,” interrupted Scrapper. “Look! It says ‘Emerald City,
thirty-five miles’.”
“Emerald City!” panted Piecer, forgetting his weariness for a moment.
“Why, that’s the capital of Oz. Patches and pincushions! Why, I never
expected to see the Emerald City! Maybe our next Queen’s in the
capital, old fellow!”
“Well, then she ought to make a capital Queen,” sighed Scrapper,
leaning over to untwine a bramble from his left shin, “but who wants to
walk thirty-five miles?”
As he straightened up, the gold spool whirled between two tall trees
and came to a complete standstill on a short foot-path. A rustic
railing ran along the edge of the path and, taking hold of the railing,
Scrapper began looking anxiously around for the future ruler of Patch.
“Do you see anything?” he queried, looking over his shoulder.
“No, but I feel something,” grunted Piecer, peering anxiously down at
his feet. “Beeswax and basting threads!”
Next instant both Quilties leapt into the air. Then, taking a firmer
hold upon the railing and on each other, they clung desperately
together, for the foot-path, rising up on its hundred broad feet, was
rushing like the wind through the gloomy forest.
“Are--we--going--to--pieces?” shouted the Prime Piecer, not daring to
open his eyes.
[Illustration]
Cautiously Scrapper opened one eye and the first thing that met his
gaze was a neat notice tacked on the rustic railing. It was only a
blur, so fast were they travelling, but opening the other eye he
managed to decipher it.
“This foot-path runs straight to the Emerald City. Hold tight. No
stamping or kicking allowed.
“Private Property of the Wizard of Oz.”
[Illustration]
“Well, hurrah!” exclaimed Scrapper, thumping his companion on the
chest. “We’re not going to pieces, we’re going to the Emerald City!
Going! Going! Why, here we are!”
And they were too. Right at the gates of the loveliest city in Oz.
The foot-path, having accomplished its journey in less than a minute,
now tilted its passengers rudely off and, coiling up like a serpent,
went to sleep under a lime drop tree. Too overcome to do anything but
blink at the gleaming spires and turrets of the capital, the two simple
Quilties stood stunned and still. But a business-like tug from the gold
thread brought them out of their trance.
The Spool of Succession had slid off the path with them and was now
rolling gaily through the gates of the city. Holding fast to one
another, and scarcely daring to breathe, the fat little ministers of
Patch went tiptoeing after the golden spool.
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