In a flash they were in Mudge—every single person the clown had touched. And the sight that met their eyes was simply terrifying.
Chapter 20
The Cowardly Lion's Peril
To understand how the Cowardly Lion made the journey to Mudge in one day instead of three, we must go back to the afternoon he started down the mountain with the Stone Man of Oz. Crunch, as he tramped along beside the Cowardly Lion, was thinking harder than in all the stone ages of his hard life. The Wizard Wam had given him brains of a sort, and though they had not been used before the events of the afternoon had brought them quite suddenly into action.
The mountain where Crunch had stood for so many centuries, while quite near the Emerald City, was never visited by anyone, so that the Stone Man knew very little of life as it was lived in Oz. Notta's suggestions had aroused his curiosity, and for the Cowardly Lion he was developing a great fondness. As the afternoon progressed the Cowardly Lion grew positively embarrassed by his terms of endearment.