CHAPTER 4
Out of Gaper's Gulch
Now the Gapers were not dead, but only sleeping, and soon the dormant natives of this strange Hibernation lifted up their headstones and began blinking out indignantly to see what and who had got loose in their quiet valley.
"Silence! Cease! Desist!" shuddered Sleeperoo the Great and Snorious, holding up his headstone with one hand and waving his other arm feebly at Kabumpo. "A bit more of that racket and we'll be roused for months. Who are you? And what is the meaning of all this Hah Hoh Humbuggery?"
Gaping ten times in quick succession, Sleeperoo stuck out his lip at the Elegant Elephant. Kabumpo, startled by the spectacle of a hundred lifted headstones and the round dirty moonlike faces gaping up at him, said nothing for a whole minute. Then, stepping over to the Chief Gaper, he burst out angrily:
"I am a traveler whom your guards stuck full of arrows and then tried to bury. The young King who was with me has disappeared. I, the Elegant Elephant of Oz and Pumperdink, DEMAND his release. What have you done with the King of Regalia? Produce him at once, or I'll stand here and trumpet till doomsday!"
To show he meant what he said, Kabumpo let out such a terrific blast the headstones of his listeners rocked and shivered.
"Oh, my head! My ears! My ears, my dears! Give him what he's yelling for," sobbed Sleeperoo, crouching under his headstone as Kabumpo lifted his trunk for another trumpet.
"Is this—a—king?" called a fretful voice, and, lurching round, Kabumpo saw a fat old Gaper now half-way above ground. Balancing his stone on his fat head, he held Randy out at arm's length. "Instead of digging him a proper bed, they stuck him in with me," he complained. "Here, take him—he kicks like a mule and I can't abide a kicker." With a relieved grunt, Kabumpo snatched Randy from the Gaper's damp clutches, thankful the boy still had strength enough to kick. Randy's face was quite pale and covered with dirt, but after a few anxious shakes he opened his eyes and looked confusedly round him.