“How are you going to cross the desert?” inquired Kaliko. Angry as he was at the old Gnome King, he could not help feeling curious about his plans.
“Magic! Old Cauliflower! Magic! How do you suppose I got off the island?” wheezed Ruggedo haughtily. “Don’t stand there stuttering. Fetch me a new suit and hurry along with the lunch.”
Shrugging his thin shoulders, and turning up his eyes, Kaliko did as he was told, and in less than an hour Peter and the Gnome King were wending their way over the rocky hills of Ev. Ruggedo had the magic cloak tucked carefully under his arm and Peter carried a small basket of provisions.
“How are we going to cross this desert?” asked Peter, looking with interest down toward the beach where the gnomes were busily at work unloading the treasure from the Blunderoo.
“I don’t know,” confessed Ruggedo quite frankly, “but if Kaliko had discovered I had not magic enough to cross the desert, he would have roused the gnomes and kicked us out of the kingdom.”
“Is there no other way to Oz?” sighed Peter. He was growing a little anxious about ever reaching Philadelphia in time for the baseball game.
“Nope!” puffed the Gnome King, trudging along sturdily. “The Deadly Desert surrounds the whole country. It’s supposed to keep people out of Oz,” he finished with a malicious wink. “But it has been crossed before and can be crossed again, though I’m sure I don’t know how.”
The entrance of the Gnome King’s caverns was quite near the edge of the Deadly Desert, so it was not long before they reached this dangerous expanse of burning sand and sat down on a boulder to try and devise some means of crossing over.
“Can’t you think of anything?” snapped Ruggedo, as Peter sat kicking his heels against the boulder. “If this silly old cloak weren’t torn, I’d skim across in no time. A skudge on those pesky pirates anyway! Sa—ay?” Opening his eyes very wide, Ruggedo thrust his face close to Peter’s. “What else was in that casket?”