“Wait – wait—” breathed Patrick.
It was torture to wait. The rat had stopped moving when all the scuffling and footsteps had started, that was something; but now it was quiet again, Omri imagined it creeping towards its prey, its pink nose twitching, its albino whiskers trembling hungrily… Oh, how, how could he have let Little Bull go down there? Boone’s death would at least not have been his fault, but if Little Bull was killed Omri knew he would never forgive himself.
At long, long last the living-room door closed and both boys stole out of bed again. Patrick reached the light first. Omri grabbed it, but Patrick insisted on looking first to see if Boone was still breathing. He was… They rolled back the carpet and lifted the board again, terrified that each movement would attract the grown-ups below. The home-made candle was burning away in the gloom, like a little torch in a disused mine, throwing its eerie light down the tunnel.
Omri lay down flat. He didn’t raise his voice, but he called softly: “Little Bull! Are you there? Come back! You’re in terrible danger!”
Silence.
“Oh God! Why doesn’t he come?” Omri whispered frenziedly.
At that moment they did hear something. It was hard to identify the sound – it was the rat all right, but what was it doing? There was no running sound, just a sort of tiny shock, as if it had made one short, sudden movement.
A pounce?
Omri’s heart was in his mouth. Then there were other sounds. If he had not got used to straining his ears to catch the voices of the little men, he might not have heard it. But he did hear it, and hope nearly lifted him off the ground. It was a faint, light scrambling sound, the sound of a small body getting through a hole in a hell of a hurry.
Omri pulled the lamp back out of the hole and thrust his arm in instead, his hand open. Almost at once, he felt Little Bull run into it. Omri closed his fingers, just as something warm and furry brushed against their backs. He snatched his arm out, grazing his knuckles against the splintery wood.
There was something else in his hands – something cold and knobbly, twice as heavy as Little Bull. He opened his fingers, and both boys leant over to look.
Sitting on Omri’s palm, filthy and bedraggled but triumphant, was Little Bull, and cradled in his arms, trailing cobwebs and a red satin ribbon, was the missing key.
“You’ve done it! Oh, Little Bull – good for you! Now – quick – Patrick, get the candle up and put the floor back. I’ll find the Red-Cross man.”
Reckless now, they switched the top light on. Patrick, being as quiet as he could, replaced the floorboard and the carpet, while Omri looked through the figures jumbled up in the biscuit tin. Luckily the figure of the army medical orderly was right on top, still holding his precious doctor’s bag. Little Bull, meanwhile, stood beside the pallet-bed on which Boone was lying, staring down at him, still clutching the key in his arms.
Omri took it from him, thrust the plastic man into the cupboard, and turned the key. He made himself count to ten while Patrick watched, pop-eyed and scarcely breathing. Then he opened the door.
There stood his old friend Tommy, his bag at his feet, rubbing his eyes and frowning around him.
His face cleared as he saw Omri.
“Cor! Well! It’s you again. I don’t half pick my moments to drop off to sleep, I must say! Thundering great Minnie whining over – thought I was a gonner!”
“What’s a Minnie?” asked Patrick in a croaky voice.
“What, another of you?” asked Tommy, gaping. “I must’ve eaten too much cheese for me dinner! Shouldn’t give us cheese before a big attack… very hard on the stomach, especially when it’s churned up anyway, with nerves. What’s a Minnie? It’s our name for a minnenwerfer – that’s one of them big German shells. Make an ’orrible row they do, even before they land, a sort of whistle which gets louder and louder, and then – KERBOOM! Then blokes with my job has to pick themselves up and run as quick as you like to where it fell, if it fell in a trench, to take care of the wounded.”
“We’ve got a wounded man here we want you to take care of,” said Omri quickly.
“Oh, yes? The old redskin again, is it?”
“No, it’s another one. Could you step on to my hand?”
Omri lifted him to where Boone lay, and Tommy at once knelt down and began a professional examination.
“He’s in a bad way,” he said after a few moments. “Could do with a blood transfusion really. I’ll have to have this plaster off and look at his wound…” He was cutting it off with a minute pair of scissors as he spoke. The anxious watchers saw that the tuft of tissue underneath was now red with blood, but Tommy said, “Bleeding’s stopped, that’s one good thing. What was it, a bullet?”
“An arrow,” said Omri, and Little Bull shivered all over.
“Oh yes – of course – I see that now. Well, I’m not much up on arrow-wounds. Head’s not still in there, I hope?”
“No, it was pulled out.”
“Good, good. Lucky it missed his heart. Well, I’ll see what I can do.” He got the hypodermic out of his bag and fiddled with it for a moment, then plunged the needle into Boone’s chest. After that he stitched up the wound, put a field-dressing on it, and got Little Bull to help him peel off the rest of the old, blood-stained plaster.
“You a pal of his, are you?” he asked the Indian.
Little Bull stared at him, but did not deny it.
“Then look here. When he wakes up, you keep giving him these here pills. They’re iron, see? Build him up. And these as well, they’re for the pain. What we have to hope is that there won’t be no infection.”
“We need penicillin for him,” said Patrick, who had once had a bad cut on his foot which had turned septic.
Tommy looked at him blankly. “Penicillin? What’s that when it’s at home?”
Omri nudged Patrick. “They hadn’t invented it in his time,” he whispered.
“Best thing I can suggest is a drop of brandy,” said Tommy, and, taking out a flask, poured something down Boone’s throat. “Look there,” he said cheerfully, “he’s getting a better colour already. He’ll open his eyes soon, I wouldn’t wonder. Keep him warm, that’s the ticket. Now I must be getting back – waking up, I mean. If that there Minnie’s landed, I’ll be in demand, and no mistake!”
Omri carried him back to the cupboard.
“Tommy,” he said. “What if – what if the Minnie had fallen on you?”
“Couldn’t a done, could it? If it had’ve, I wouldn’t be having this here dream, would I, I’d be singing with an ’eavenly choir! Cheeribye – cor, hurry up and shut that door, I think I can hear ’em calling ‘Stretcher-bearer’ already!”
Omri smiled gratefully at him. He hated to send him back, but obviously he wanted to go.
“Goodbye, Tommy – thanks. And good luck!” And he shut the door.
From the other end of the table, Little Bull suddenly called, “Omri come! Boone open eyes! Boone wake up!”
Omri and Patrick turned. Sure enough, there was Boone, staring up into Little Bull’s face.
“What happened?” he got out in a faint, shaky voice.
Nobody liked to tell him, but at last Little Bull had to confess.
“Me shoot,” he said.
“Watcha