Free The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks Page B

down and find he was dangling over empty space.
    His hat came off and fell, slowly like a leaf, down, down, down to the floor so infinitely far below. The cowboy gave a yell, and scrabbled with his feet against the back of Patrick’s hand, hanging on for dear life to the ridge beside his thumbnail.
    “Hold your hands still!” Omri commanded Patrick, who in his excitement was jerking them nervously about. There was a moment of stillness. The horse stood up, trembling all over, prancing about with terror. Beside his hooves was some tiny black thing. Omri peered closer. It was the pistol.
    The cowboy had now recovered a little. He scrambled back through the finger gap and said something to the horse that sounded like, “Whoaback, steady fella.” Then he slid down and grabbed the reins, holding them just below the horse’s nose. He patted its face. That seemed to calm it. Then, looking around swiftly but not apparently noticing the enormous faces hanging over him, he reached cautiously down and picked the pistol up from between the horse’s hooves.
    “Whoa there! Stand—”
    Omri watched like a person hypnotized. He wanted to cry out to Patrick that it was a real gun, but somehow he couldn’t. He could only think that the sound of his voice would throw the horse once more into a panic and that horse or man would get hurt. Instead he watched while the cowboy pointed the gun in various directions warily. Then he lowered it. Still holding the reins he moved until he could press his hand against Patrick’s skin. Then he let his eyes move upward toward the curved fingers just level with the top of his head.
    “What the dawggone heck—” he said. “It sure looks like a great big—aw, what’m Ah talkin’ about? It cain’t be. Hell, it just ain’t possible!” But the more he looked, the more certain he must have become that he was, indeed, in a pair of cupped hands. And finally, after scratching his gingery head for a moment, he ventured to look right up past the fingers, and then of course he saw Patrick’s face looking at him.
    There was a petrified moment when he couldn’t move. Then he raised his pistol in a flash.
    “Patrick! Shut your eyes!”
    Bang!
    It was only a little bang, but it was a real bang, and a puff of real, gun-smelling smoke appeared. Patrick shouted with pain and surprise and would have dropped the pair if Omri hadn’t thrust his hand underneath to catch them. Patrick’s own hand had clapped itself to his cheek.
    “Ow! Ow! He’s shot me!” Patrick screamed.
    Omri was not much bothered about Patrick at that moment. He was furious with him, and very anxious about the little man and his horse. Quickly he put them down on the bed, saying, like the cowboy himself, “Steady! Whoa! I won’t hurt you! It’s okay!”
    “Ow!” Patrick kept yelling. “It hurts! Ow!”
    “Serves you right, I warned you,” said Omri. Then he felt sorry and said, “Let’s have a look.”
    Gingerly Patrick took his hand down. A drop of blood had been smeared on his cheek, and by peering very close Omri could see something very like a bee’s stinger embedded in his skin.
    “Hang on! I see it—I’ll squeeze it out—”
    “OW!”
    A quick squeeze between his thumbnails and the almost invisiblespeck of black metal, which had only just penetrated the skin, popped out.

    “He—he shot me!” Patrick got out again in a shocked voice.
    “I
told
you. My Indian stuck a knife in me,” said Omri, not to be outdone. “I think we ought to put him back—your cowboy I mean, of course, not my Indian.”
    “Put him back where?”
    Omri explained how the cupboard could change him back to plastic again, but Patrick wasn’t having any of that.
    “Oh no! I want him! He’s terrific. Look at him now—!”
    Patrick feasted his eyes admiringly on the little cowboy, who, ignoring the “giants,” whom he clearly thought he must have imagined, was doggedly dragging his horse across Omri’s quilt as if he were wading