The Wishing Horse of Oz was written by Ruth Plumly Thompson and L. Frank Baum and follows more of Dorothy’s exciting adventures. This time, there’s horses.
Way for the Emperor!
“Here, give her water! Give her air! Stand back, everybody. Now, then, what’s the matter, child?” The Scarecrow bent solicitously over the little girl who had rushed into the banquet hall screaming hysterically about disappearances and white horses and fallen breathlessly into the chair beside him. “Come, tell uncle all about it,” begged the Scarecrow, patting Dorothy clumsily on the head.
“Tell you!” choked poor Dorothy, twisting her best handkerchief into a hard knot. “Do I have to tell you? Can’t you see for yourselves that Ozma is missing, that the Wizard and Jinnicky are gone, that Glinda and the Tin Woodman, that the King and Queen of the Gillikens and the King and Queen of the Munchkins have vanished entirely! And yet, here you sit, singing and laughing as if nothing at all had happened. Can’t you understand that something dreadful has happened to Ozma and that a big, fat, funny-looking man and a white horse are sitting on the throne of Oz?”
“Ozma, Ozma—who’s she?” murmured the banqueters, looking vaguely at Dorothy and then at each other.
“She’s feverish, that’s what.” Herby, the Medicine Man, leaned over to touch Dorothy expertly on the forehead. “I’d advise you to go upstairs and lie down, my dear.”
“Yes, why don’t you?” urged Bettsy Bobbin, coming over to put her arm around Dorothy’s waist. “I’ll go up with you and lend you my very best smelling salts.”
“Lie down—with that big fat interloper on the throne of Oz!” wailed Dorothy. Squirming out of Bettsy’s embrace, she started indignantly to her feet. “You must be crazy! Camy! Kabumpo! Snufferbux! Toto! You—you’ll believe me, won’t you?” Hurrying over to the second table, Dorothy looked pleadingly down the long board from the Hungry Tiger at the head to the Cowardly Lion at the foot.
“There, there,” mumbled Kabumpo, lifting Dorothy up in his trunk. “Don’t go on so, my dear, we all have these little funny spells. Here, sit up on my back so you’ll have a good view of the Emperor when he arrives. Hi—there he comes now! Ray! Ray! Way for Skamperoo, Emperor of Oz!” Waving Dorothy in his trunk as if she had been a flag, Kabumpo plopped down on his knees and banged his big head three times on the polished floor. From her precarious position Dorothy saw the same fat imposter who had been in the throne room riding his white charger pompously into the Banquet Hall, the horse nodding to the left and right and grinning like a Cheshire Cat.
Cheers, bows and a loud burst of applause and music made his entry so noisy Dorothy’s angry protests and cries were entirely drowned out. Disgusted, confused and completely bewildered by the behavior of Ozma’s subjects and her own best friends, Dorothy jerked away from Kabumpo and darted through a long French window into the garden. What could it mean? What could have happened? Had all her former memories of Oz been a dream? No, no! Violently Dorothy decided against such an idea. Rather was this fat emperor a dream—a maddening nightmare from which she would presently awaken. Leaning dizzily against a golden faun set near a crystal garden pool, Dorothy tried to find some reasonable explanation of the whole dreadful mixup. And here, several minutes later, Pigasus, the winged Pig, found her.
“Thought a little fly over the tree tops might help your head,” grunted Pigasus, looking unhappily down his pink snout. “Nothing like a little fly for a headache, my girl!”
“My head’s all right,” answered Dorothy sullenly. “It’s the rest of you who have lost your heads or your senses. How in Oz you could stand in there cheering that big, fat fraud, I’ll never, never understand. Piggins, Piggins, dear—” Dorothy bent coaxingly over him—”surely you remember Ozma and the Wizard and Glinda.” Instead of answering at once, Pigasus stared thoughtfully at his reflection in the pool.
“Suppose you sit on my back and then we can talk without being heard,” he suggested brightly. “Up in the air we can air our views in safety, as it were.”
“To tell the truth, I don’t much care where I go now,” sighed Dorothy, seating herself disconsolately on the pig’s broad back.
“Hey Hey, we’re bewitched and enchanted, I knew it!
With you on my back, I can think and see through it!”
squealed Pigasus, and flapping his huge wings he soared high over the flowering plum trees in Ozma’s garden.
“Of course Ozma’s Queen, not this big Skamperoo
The Ruler of Oz and the whole royal crew
Have been kidnapped—bewitched, or put out of the way—
We’ll fly off for help and we’ll start right away.”
“Oh, Piggins!” Dorothy threw both arms round the pig’s neck and almost wept for joy:
“Oh Pigasus to think you remember them, too,
But where have they gone? What in Oz shall we do?”
“We’ll find them, wherever they are they’ll be found,
But we’d best make our plans with our feet on the ground,”
muttered Pigasus, looking below for a likely spot to land. There was one disadvantage about Pigasus, though some did not regard it as such. Like the winged horse Pegasus, whoever caught him and rode on his back at once became a poet and unable to speak anything but rhymes. The poetic pig could not only tell what they were thinking, but he often spoke his own mind in verse as well. At times this grew terribly tiresome, but except for his jingles, a more cheerful loyal little fellow could not be found in the length or breadth of the country. Raised and bred by the Red Jinn, he had been given to the Duke of Dork. The Duke had given him to the Philadelphia boy, Peter, who in the course of a voyage with Samuel Salt, the Pirate, had captured the Duke’s splendid castle boat. The capture had been quite a social and friendly affair and the Duke had traded Pigasus for a Bananny Goat. Peter had later brought the flying pig to the Emerald City, where he was petted and admired by the whole court.
Now, slanting down into a quiet grove, Pigasus came to a gentle stop and Dorothy tumbled jubilantly off his back.
“Oh, Pigasus, isn’t it lucky you were in the Emerald City? Nobody else can remember Ozma or the others at all.”
“And I only remembered them because you sat on my back,” confessed the pig, twitching his nose thoughtfully. “It was my thought-reading gift that did the trick, and I am more than ever convinced that we are under some mischievous spell or enchantment. What I don’t understand, my dear, is how you yourself escaped or chanced to remember things as they were. You know, before I came out here, it seemed perfectly right and natural for that roly poly pudding of an Emperor to be sitting at the head of the table. I knew no more about Ozma, or Glinda, or my former master Jinnicky than a new-born baby. By the way, Jinnicky’s gone too, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Dorothy shook her head sorrowfully, “and without him or the Wizard to help we’ll have a hard time, I guess. What shall we do first, Piggins?”
“How about having a try at some of the Wizard’s magic?” proposed the pink pig, daringly, “then we might look in Ozma’s magic picture and ask it to show us where all of our missing friends are now.”
“Now, why didn’t I think of that myself?” cried Dorothy, and springing up she started off on a run.
“Wait! Wait!” grunted Pigasus, pattering breathlessly after her. “Remember, we must be very careful, my dear. No questions about Ozma, no remarks that will arouse the anger of this scalawag Emperor, or we’ll both be clapped in a dungeon. We must pretend that we have forgotten, too, and get away quietly later tonight.”
This seemed so sensible a plan, Dorothy readily agreed to it, and without attracting any attention at all they re-entered the palace and hurried immediately to Ozma’s small sitting room. But if they expected the magic picture to solve their problem they were soon doomed to disappointment. The picture was gone from its accustomed place and the safe where Ozma kept her magic treasures and other valuables was wide open and quite empty. A quick search of the Wizard’s laboratory proved equally discouraging. The Wizard’s famous black bag was nowhere in sight, the little hanging closet where he stored his transformation powders and wishing pills was bare as the cupboard of old Mother Hubbard.
“Whoever planned this thought of everything,” wheezed Pigasus, sitting heavily back on his haunches. “There is nothing here for us, Dorothy. If I were you, I’d get a few things together and we’ll leave right away before anyone misses you.” From the cheers, shouts, and hilarious singing coming from the banquet hall it seemed probable that the celebration would go on for hours. No one in that gay and foolish company even thought of or missed the little girl and the pink pig stealing so quietly through the dim halls of the palace.
“Ozma’s palace,” reflected Dorothy, looking resentfully over her shoulder; but now it seemed strange, alien and completely unfriendly. With a little shiver Dorothy drew her cloak more closely about her and stepped resolutely out into the night. Pigasus pattered on ahead, snorting a bit from sheer nervousness.
“Maybe we’d better fly,” he grunted uneasily as Dorothy caught up with him. “It’s safer and it’s faster, and the faster we get away from here the better, I’m thinking.”
“I’ve been thinking, too,” answered Dorothy in a low voice, “perhaps only the people in the Emerald City are under this forgetting spell, Pigasus; perhaps if we fly to the Winkie Country, the Winkies will remember their Emperor, the Tin Woodman, and will help us raise an army so we can come back, conquer this old Skamperoo, and make him tell where he has hidden all the proper rulers of Oz and the other celebrities.”
“That’s the talk! That’s the talk!” approved the pig, twinkling his little blue eyes joyfully. “Up with you, up with you, my girl, but remember, if you grow sleepy, let me know at once, so I can descend. If you fall asleep, you might fall off my back, and think how I’d feel then.”
“Think how I’d feel!” laughed Dorothy, her spirits lifting a bit at the pink pig’s comical conversation and enthusiastic seconding of her plans. Seating herself carefully on his plump back, she quickly gave the signal to start. Then up soared Pigasus, over the palace garden, over the City Walls and away toward the East and the Yellow Lands of the Winkies.
“Oh, I believe everything is going to be all right,” thought Dorothy, settling herself cozily between his wings.
“So do I,” sniffed the pink pig, peering mischievously over his shoulder.
“I forgot you could read
All the thoughts, Goodness Gracious!
Of those on your back,
Do you mind it Pigasus?”
“Not when they’re nice thoughts like yours,” puffed the little pig in answer to Dorothy’s surprised rhyme, and winking his eye jovially he zoomed like a small pink Zeppelin through the sky.