L. Frank Baum - Oz 18 Read online

  Grampa In Oz (Oz 18) L. Frank Baum

  This book is dedicated, with deep affection, to Uncle Billy (Major William J. Hammer) Author, inventor and second cousin to Santa Claus

  -Ruth Plumly Thompson

  CHAPTER 1: A Rainy Day in Ragbad

  KING FUMBO of Ragbad shook in his carpet slippers. He had removed his red shoes, so he could not very well shake in them.

  “My dear,” quavered the King, flattening his nose against the cracked pane, “will you just look out of this window and tell me what you see?”

  “My Dear” was really the Queen of Ragbad and years ago, when she had first come to the old red castle on the hill, she had worn her crown every day and was always addressed as “Your Majesty!” But as time passed and affairs in the kingdom had gone from bad to worse, My Dear, like many another Queen, had taken off her crown, put on her thimble and become plain Mrs. Sew-and-Sew, and with all her sewing she had barely been able to keep the kingdom from falling to pieces. She was stitching a patch on the King’s Thursday cloak at this very minute I am telling you about.

  “What now!” gasped the poor lady, and rushing to the window she also pressed her nose to the pane.

  “Do you see what I see?” choked King Fumbo, clutching at her hand.

  “I see a great cloud rolling overRedMountain,” panted Mrs. Sew-and-Sew. “I see the red geese flying before the wind. I see-” Here she gave a great bounce and brushed past her husband- “I see my best patch work quilt blowing down the highway!” moaned Mrs. Sew-and-Sew, stumbling across the room.

  “Ruination!” spluttered the King as the door slammed after his wife. “Shut the bells! Ring the windows; fetch Prince Tatters and call my red umbrella! Grampa! Scroggles! Where is every Ragbad-body?”

  Grampa, as it happened, was in the garden and Grampa was an old soldier with a game leg who had fought in nine hundred and eighty Ragbad battles and beaten everything, including the drum. Just now he was beating the carpet. Tatters, the young Prince of Ragbad, was off on a picnic with the Redsmith, and Scroggles, the footman-of-all-work about the castle, was mending a hole in the roof, so none of them heard the King’s calls.

  Finally, seeing that no one was coming to carry out his commands, Fumbo began to carry them out himself. First he clutched his red beard and jumped clear out of his carpet slippers. Next he slammed the window on his thumb. With his thumb in his mouth he hurled himself upon the bell rope, pulling it so violently the cord broke and dropped him upon his back. Having failed to ring the bell, he wrung his hands-and well he might, for the room had grown dark as pitch and the wind was howling down the chimney like a pack of hungry gollywockers.

  “I’ll get my umbrella,” muttered King Fumbo, scrambling to his feet, but just as he reached the door, ten thousand pounds of thunder clapped the castle on the back and so startled poor Fumbo that he fell through the door and all the way down ten flights of steps. And worse still, when he finally did pick himself up, instead of running into the throne room, he plunged out into the garden and the storm broke right over his head-broke with such flashing of lightning and crashing of thunder, and lashing of tree tops, that the King and such other luckless Ragbadians as were out were flung flat on their noses, and the ones who were indoors crept under beds and into cupboards and wished they had been better than they had been. Even Grampa-who was far and away the bravest man in the country-even Grampa, after one look at the sky, rolled himself in the carpet he had been beating and lay trembling like a tobacco leaf.

  “This will certainly spoil the rag crop, sighed Grampa dismally, and as he spoke right out in this frank fashion of the chief industry of Ragbad, I’d better tell you a bit more about the country itself, for I can see your nose curling with curiosity and curly noses are not nearly so becoming as they used to be.

  To begin with, Ragbad is in OZ-a small patch of a kingdom way down in the south-western corner of the Quadling country. In the reign of Fumbo’s father it had been famous for its chintz and tapis trees, its red ginghams and calico vines, its cotton fields and its fine linens and lawns. Indeed, at one time, all the dress goods in Oz had been grown in the gardens of Ragbad.

  But when Fumbo came to the throne, he began to spend so much time reading and so much money for books and tobacco that he soon emptied the treasury and had no money to pay the chintz and gingham pickers, nor to send the lawns to the laundry-they were always slightly dusty from being trodden on-and one after another the workers of Ragbad had been forced to seek a living in other lands, so that now there were only twenty-seven families left, and the cotton fields and calico bushes, the chintz and tapis trees, from lack of care and cultivation, ran perfectly wild and yielded-instead of fine bolts of material-nothing but shreds, tatters and rags.

  The twenty-seven remaining Ragbadians, including the Redsmith, the Miller, the Baker and twenty-four rustic laborers, after a vain attempt to do the work of twenty-seven hundred, gave up in despair and became common rag-pickers. From these rags, which fortunately were still plentiful, Mrs.. Sew-and-Sew and the good wives of Ragbad made all the clothing worn in the kingdom, besides countless rag rugs, and the money obtained from the sale of these rugs was all that kept the little country from absolute and utter ruin.

  Of the splendid courtiers and servitors surrounding Fumbo’s father only three remained, for I regret to say that neither the servants nor the old nobility had been able to stand the hardships attendant upon poverty, and they had left in a body the first morning Mrs. Sew-and-Sew had served oatmeal without cream for breakfast. The army, too, had deserted and marched off to Jinxland because the King could not buy them new uniforms, so that only three retainers were left in the old red castle on the hill. Pudge, the oldest and fattest of the wise men, had stayed because he was fond of his room in the tower and of Mrs. Sew-and-Sew’s coffee. Scroggles, the second footman, had stayed because he had old-fashioned notions of his duty, and Grampa, though long since discharged from active service, had stuck to his post like the gallant old soldier he was, and as there were no battles to fight, he tended the furnace, weeded the gardens and helped King Fumbo and Mrs. Sew-and-Sew bring up their son to as fine a young Prince as any in Oz.

  It was of Prince Tatters during all this bluster-that Grampa was thinking as he lay shivering under the carpet, and as soon as the thunder stopped hammering in his ears he stuck out his head. The wind, after snatching off ten roofs, the wings from the red mill and shaking all the little cottages till their very chimneys chattered, had rushed away overRedMountain. It was still raining, but Grampa, seeing that the worst was over, crawled out of the carpet and began to look for trouble. And what do you s’pose he found? Why, the King, or at least, the best part of the King!

  “Ragamercy!” shrieked the old soldier, jumping behind a tapis tree, a thing he had never done in all of those nine hundred and eighty battles. But his conduct does not surprise me at all, for Fumbo had lost his head in the storm, and was running wildly around without it-stumbling over bushes and vines and stamping his stockinged feet in a perfect frenzy of fright and fury. Now, of course, you will say at once that Fumbo is not the first King to lose his head and I can only answer that he is the first I ever heard of who went on living without it, and if Ragbad were not in the wonderful land of Oz I should say at once that the thing was impossible. In Oz, however, one may come apart, but no one ever dies; so here was poor Fumbo, with his head clean off, as live and lively as ever.

  Breathing hard Grampa peered around the tapis tree again to see whether his eyes had deceived him. But no, it was the King, without a doubt, and without his head.

  “Whatever will Mrs. Sew-and-Sew do now,” groaned Grampa, and pulling his campaign hat well down over his ears he dashed out and seizing Fumbo’s arm began s
plashing through the garden, dragging the King along after him. Mrs. Sew-and-Sew had already reached the castle and was sitting on the broken-springed sofa that served for a throne, sneezing violently. She had not only rescued her quilt, but she had caught a frightful cold.

  All the colors in the quilt had run together, and this last calamity so upset the poor lady that she began sobbing and sneezing by turns. But right in the middle of the fifteenth sneeze, she looked up and saw the old soldier with the game leg standing in the doorway.

  “Now don’t be frightened,” begged Grampa, advancing stiffly and dripping water all over the rug. “Don’t be alarmed, but at the same time prepare yourself for a blow.”

  Mrs. Sew-and-Sew, with her damp kerchief in her hand, had already been preparing herself for a blow, but now, dropping the handkerchief, she sneezed instead and when, glancing over Grampa’s shoulder she caught sight of the King, she sneezed again and fainted dead away and rolled under the sofa.

  “This is worse than a battle,” puffed Grampa, dashing between the King and the Queen, for every time he tried to help Mrs. Sew-and-Sew the King fell over a chair or upset a table.

  “Halt! About face and wheel to your left, can’t you?” roared the old soldier, mopping his forehead. But to these instructions Fumbo, having no face about him, paid no attention. Instead he wheeled to the right and swept all the ornaments from the mantel down on the old soldier’s head, and then jumped on Grampa’s good foot so hard that Grampa forgot for a moment he was a King, and thumped him in the ribs. Then, muttering apologies, the old soldier seized a curtain cord and tied Fumbo to a red pillar.

  This done, he reached under the sofa, pulled out Mrs. Sew-and-Sew, and having nothing else handy gave her a huge pinch of snuff. Just as she came to, in from the garden, splashing water in every direction, rushed Prince Tatters and in from the kitchen pelted Pudge, the aged Wise Man.

  “The rag crop is ruined and the King will lose his head!” panted Pudge, who had a bad habit of predicting events after they had occurred.

  “Has lost his head,” corrected Grampa, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

  “But Grampa!” Stumbling across the room, Prince Tatters shook the old soldier by the arm.

  “When-how-why-what will he do?”

  “Do without it,” sighed the old soldier, glancing uneasily at Fumbo. “The King has lost his head, long live his body!” wheezed Pudge, rolling up his eyes. “Now don’t cry, my dear!” begged Grampa, scowling reprovingly at Pudge and patting Mrs. Sew-and-Sew on the shoulder. “Having no head really saves one no end of trouble. No face to wash! No more headaches, no ear aches, no tooth aches!” Grampa’s voice grew more and more cheerful. “No lectures to listen to, no spectacles to hunt, no hair to lose, no more colds to catch in it. Why he is really better off without a head!”

  But Mrs. Sew-and-Sew refused to be comforted and rocking to and fro moaned, “What shall we do! What shall we do? What shall we do?”

  “I tell you,” proposed Pudge, pursing up his lips importantly. “Let’s all have a strong cup of coffee.” As this seemed a sensible suggestion they all filed into the big red kitchen of the castle, leaving Fumbo kicking his heels against the stone pillar.

  CHAPTER 2: The Wise Man Speaks

  “I SUPPOSE,” sighed the old soldier, stirring his coffee with the handle of his sword, “it would do no good to hunt for the King’s head in the garden?”

  Drying out before the blazing fire in the kitchen stove and sipping Mrs. Sew-and-Sew’s fragrant coffee the little company had grown more calm.

  “I’ll just have a look,” said Prince Tatters, pushing back his chair, but the old Wise Man shook an impatient finger at the very idea of such a thing.

  “When a King’s head goes off it goes off,” declared Pudge huskily-“Way off as far off as it can go.

  “How far is that?” asked the old soldier. “And-”

  “Hush, I am thinking,” wheezed

  Pudge, ruffling up his hair with one hand and holding out his coffee cup with the other. “I am thinking and presently I shall speak. Another cup of coffee, ma’am!” This was his seventh cup and after he had sipped it deliberately, scraped all the sugar out of the bottom and licked the spoon, he set down both cup and saucer, flung up his hands and spoke.

  “Let Prince Tatters go in search of his father’s head,” said the old Wise Man of Ragbad.

  “Let him seek at the same time his fortune, or a Princess with a fortune, for otherwise he will end as a common rag-picker.”

  “But suppose,” objected Grampa, who tho’ an old bachelor himself had romantic ideas about marriage, suppose he cannot love a Princess with a fortune. Suppose-”

  “It is not wisdom to suppose!” sniffed Pudge. “Hush! I am thinking and presently I shall speak again.” He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his forehead and after a short silence, during which Mrs. Sew-and-Sew took a quick swallow of coffee and Grampa a hasty pinch of snuff, he spoke again. “It is the rainy day,” announced Pudge in his most solemn voice, “the rainy day I have long predicted. As the King has lost his head we must ourselves see what he has saved up for it. Come!”

  Marching to the King’s best bed chamber, Pudge flung open the cupboard and there beside Fumbo’s worn cloak hung the only thing he had saved up for a rainy day-a huge red umbrella.

  “And must Tatters go out into Oz with only this to protect him from danger?” wailed Mrs. Sew-and-Sew, beginning to sneeze again.

  “No!” declared Grampa, stamping his good foot. “I myself will accompany him!”

  “Oh, Grampa!” cried the Prince, who was too young to realize the dangers of head hunting or the hardship of fortune finding, “may we start at once?”

  “Hush!” mumbled Pudge, holding up his finger, “I am thinking.” Blowing out his cheeks, he stood perfectly quiet for about as long as it would take to count ten.

  “Tomorrow morning will be the time to start,” said the old Wise Man. “Let us return to the King.” Sobering a bit at the thought of his unfortunate father, Prince Tatters followed them down stairs, but every now and then he gave a little hop, for the idea of setting out upon such an adventure thrilled him tremendously. When they reached the throne room, Fumbo was leaning quietly against the post. He had evidently become more used to the loss of his head and was busily twiddling his thumbs.

  “If we could just get him a false head till we find his own,” sighed Granpa, thumping the King affectionately on the back, “he would look more natural. Ah, I have it!” Plunging out into the wet garden, the old soldier plucked a huge cabbage and hurrying back set it upon the King’s shoulders. But no sooner had he done so than Fumbo broke the cord tying him to the pillar, rushed to the kitchen and tried to climb into the soup pot! Indeed, Mrs. Sew-and-Sew snatched off his cabbage head just in time to save him from this further calamity.

  Panting a little from the exertion and surprise they all sat down to think again. But by this time the news had spread into the village, and the twenty-four rustic laborers, the Miller, and the Baker and the Redsmith came hurrying to the castle to offer their services.

  They were subjects to be proud of, let me tell you, though a little odd looking in their patched and many colored garments. They listened in respectful silence while Grampa told all he knew of the strange plight of King Fumbo.

  “I will make the King an iron head,” volunteered the Redsmith eagerly. He had a forge next to the mill and did all the iron work in Ragbad.

  “No, no!” protested Grampa. “Iron is too hard. Do you want Mrs. Sew-and-Sew to break her knuckles?” he finished indignantly, then dodged behind a pillar, because it was not generally known that Mrs. Sew-and-Sew boxed the King’s ears every morning.

  “I will make the King a new bun -er-head,” puffed the Baker, stepping forward importantly, “a head as good as his own!”

  “You mean a doughnut?” asked Grampa in astonishment. “Why, that would be splendid!” Fortunately no one heard him this time and as Mrs. Sew-and-Sew w
as pleased with the idea the Baker hurried into the kitchen and with several raisins, some flour, spices, milk and butter, kneaded up and baked a head that was the image of Fumbo’s own. It had melancholy prune eyes, red icing for hair and cinnamon whiskers. Once it had been glued on the King’s shoulders everyone drew a deep sigh of relief and Fumbo himself walked calmly to his throne and sat down. Promising to bake new heads as they were needed, the Baker said good-night, and as it was growing late the others said good-night too and marched back to the village to repair the damage done by the storm.

  But in the castle itself, there was little sleep that night. King Fumbo never closed his prune eyes, for the Baker had given him no eyelids. Prince Tatters, though packed off early to bed, could do nothing but twist and turn and think of the wonderful adventures he would have seeking his fortune. Mrs. Sew-and-Sew sat up till the morning star rose over Red Mountain, mending and piecing the few poor garments the Prince possessed, and thinking up good advice to give him with his breakfast.

  Grampa, too, had much to occupy him, oiling his gun, packing his knapsack and polishing his sword and game leg. Many old soldiers do a lot of talking about game legs, but Grampa had the real genuine article. It buckled on at the knee and was an oblong red and white ivory box that opened out like a checker board when one wanted to play. Jointed neatly on the end of this was another red box that Grampa used for a foot, and that contained the little red figures one used for playing. The game itself was known as scrum and was a great favorite in Ragbad, being a bit like checkers, a bit like parchesi and a bit like chess.