Some of the men had started off when they heard Boris; the others who had been about to rescue Elmer ran out of the cave in terror.
Elmer shouted “Boris!” and raced back through the tunnel.
The fifteen dragons surged toward the entrance, found where the men had pulled aside the net and poured through the opening, trampling out the campfire as they came. Into the sky they zoomed, still blowing their whistles and horns. Then they disappeared into the darkness, leaving thirteen men scattered over the meadows where they had fled, and three men sitting in the lake water where they had jumped.
“What happened?” said Frank to Albert.
Chapter Eleven
“THE DRAGON AFFAIR”
Elmer ran up to the tunnel to Boris and away they flew long before the noise had stopped echoing among the mountains.
“Well, that’s that!” said Elmer, panting for breath and reaching for his second box of Fig Newtons.
“Gosh, Elmer, I can’t thank you enough!” said the dragon.
“Never mind that. I never had so much fun in my life. But you’ll have to hurry me back to Seaweed City. I’ve got to take the train home as fast as possible.”
Over the desert they flew, and the wind grew stronger and stung Elmer’s face.
“I think a storm’s coming up,” said the dragon. “I can smell the sand in the air.”
“Wonderful!” cried Elmer. “The men will have to leave Blueland, and maybe you’ll never be bothered again.”
Over Spiky Mountain Range they sped, reaching the outskirts of Seaweed City at midnight.
“How about leaving you on top of the monument?” suggested the dragon. “Then I won’t have to land on the ground.”
“Fine,” said Elmer, and the dragon glided onto the top of Seaweed City Monument overlooking the center of the city.
“Goodbye for the last time,” said Elmer. “I’m sorry that I never really got to see your family. They must be magnificent! But tell them from me that nobody will ever know more about them than they do right now, except for our friend the old alley cat. I’ll tell her all about it.”
“Goodbye! I’d better hurry home, too,” sobbed the happy baby dragon. He clumsily hugged Elmer, and off he flew.
Elmer finished up the Fig Newtons, saving one box for the train, and climbed down the monument. Quickly he walked to the railroad station and asked for a ticket to Nevergreen City.
“Isn’t it rather late for a boy of your size to be taking the train alone?” asked the ticket agent.
“I suppose so,” answered Elmer, giving the man $7.27.
The man shrugged his shoulders and handed Elmer a ticket. “I can’t get used to boys these days,” he muttered. “By the way, there’s a train in twenty minutes. Gets you down in Nevergreen at noon.”
“Thanks,” said Elmer, jingling the nine cents he had left in his pocket as if he were used to taking trains in the middle of the night.
When the train thundered into the station Elmer climbed aboard. “What are you doing, running away from home?” asked the conductor suspiciously.
“Oh, no sir. On the contrary, I’m on my way there now,” said Elmer, looking the conductor straight in the eye.
“Have it your own way,” said the conductor, punching the ticket.
Elmer slept right through to Nevergreen City. He walked up the front steps of his home just as his mother was making herself some lunch. “Elmer, Elmer, you’re back! But you look half-starved!”
“I am!” said Elmer, hugging his mother and sitting down at the table. He ate three bowls of tomato soup, five slices of pumpernickel bread, four glasses of milk, six fried eggs, and two huge pieces of sponge cake. Then he went to talk to the cat.
It wasn’t until the next morning that the “dragon affair” came out in the “Nevergreen City News.”
“Listen to this!” yelled Mr. Elevator, reading aloud at breakfast: “ ‘A fantastic and unexplainable escape took place in the great, high mountains of Blueland late Sunday night. Fifteen dragons, a wonder in themselves as they have long been believed extinct …’ ” and the newspaper story went on to tell about the brave men who had fought their way back through treacherous sandstorms to tell “the most momentous story of our time.”
“ ‘Unbelievers who doubt this story,’ ” continued Mr. Elevator, reading aloud from the paper, “ ‘will find it difficult to dismiss the following supporting evidence of the presence of dragons in this region.’ ” Then he proceeded to read about a ship stationed off the coast of Popsicornia which twice had sighted a strange flying beast, once with a boy atop it. And about a certain Mr. Wagonwheel who claimed also to have seen it twice, once on the ground near his farm, and once in the air with a boy aboard, over Seaweed City. And about Chester DeWitt, a small boy who also claimed he’d seen the dragon over the city the preceding Thursday evening. Lastly, there was a short bit about the conductor and the ticket agent, who wondered if the boy they had seen late Sunday night could have had anything to do with the case, and so on.
Mr. Elevator dropped the paper and stared at Elmer. “Did you have anything to do with all this? I just don’t understand your strange trips away from home.”
“Me?” said Elmer, choking on a piece of toast. “Why, Father, you don’t mean you really believe all that nonsense, do you?”
THE END
About the Author
RUTH STILES GANNETT wrote My Father’s Dragon after her graduation from Vassar College in 1944. It was an immediate success and was named a Newbery Honor Book. Elmer and the Dragon and The Dragons of Blueland appeared soon thereafter. The author’s other books include Katie and the Sad Noise and The Wonderful House-Boat-Train. She was married to the late Peter Kahn, an artist and calligrapher. They had seven daughters. Ms. Gannett has eight grandchildren.
About the Illustrator
RUTH CHRISMAN GANNETT was already a well-established illustrator when she began collaboration with her stepdaughter on My Father’s Dragon. Her illustrations can also be seen in the first edition of John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat and in Miss Hickory by Carolyn S. Bailey. Mrs. Gannett was married to the late Lewis Gannett, daily book critic for the New York Herald Tribune. She died in 1979.
Ruth Stiles Gannett, Three Tales of My Father's Dragon
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