THE END OF THE CHASE
IT MUST be admitted that there were tears in the little boy’s eyes, tears that overflowed and made damp, messy places on his wide shirt-collar before they could be ordered back where they belonged.
They were tears of disappointment rather than fear, although certain thoughts of bears and walruses and even great sharp-billed Arctic owls insisted on following one another very rapidly through his mind.
But when five minutes passed and no bears nor other terrifying creatures appeared Billy began to take heart.
“They’re sure to miss me,” he said aloud, for it was comforting to hear a sound, even if it were only that of his own voice. “And when they do miss me they’ll find me. They are fairies, and they can find anything.”
“Anything but the Evening Star,” said a deep voice beside him. “They haven’t found her yet, remember.”
Billy jumped almost out of his shoes, he was so startled, but he looked bravely in the direction of the voice just the same, and to his amazement he saw the Equine Ox standing knee deep in snow and switching his tail vigorously as hehad learned to switch it in the tropics where the flies are bad. It made Billy laugh to see him do it in the Arctic Circle. But the Equine Ox said it was a warming process.
“I repeat,” said the Equine Ox, “that they haven’t found the Evening Star. That is chiefly because they refused to ask me to help them.”
“But,” said Billy, “you are supposed to be back there with the conductor and the motorman.”
“They were not interesting,” said the Equine Ox. “No doubt they are very worthy people, but they are not interesting. They talked about pie and cheese sandwiches and fried beefsteak and other things I do not care for, so I came up here. I knew I would have to, anyway, before they found the Evening Star.”
“How in the world did you get here?” asked Billy.
“I didn’t,” said the Equine Ox.
“But you’re here, so you must have got here,” insisted Billy.
“You asked,” said the Equine Ox placidly, “how in the world I got here. I didn’t get here in the world. I got here out of the world. I came by way of the Big Dipper.”
“Oh!” said Billy; “I suppose I see. Anyway, it would not be polite to keep on asking you questions, even if I don’t understand.”
“An Equine Ox,” said the other, “can go anywhere he pleases, on the world or off of it. I hadn’t seen the BigDipper for some time, so I went up there, took a drink and came down here. I know of nothing easier to do than that, do you?”
Billy knew of a great many things that would have been easier for him to do; so many, in fact, that it would be too great a task to enumerate them, so he kept silent.
“I do hope you can help them find the Evening Star,” he said at length.
“Certainly I can,” said the Equine Ox. “There she is now.”
“Where?” cried Billy.
“Over across the lake on the other side of the mountain”—and the Equine Ox pointed with his tail to the southward. “Just now she is frozen in a glacier.”
“Mercy!” said Billy; “and there is no one to help us to get her out.”
“Unless you count us,” said the conductor. “But I suppose, of course, you don’t.”
He was standing right at Billy’s elbow, and directly behind him was the motorman.
“The Equine Ox ran away on us again,” explained the conductor, noticing Billy’s astonishment.
“Ran away on you?” inquired Billy.
“He means off of them,” said the Equine Ox. “He’s dreadfully ungrammatical.”
“Don’t you call me names,” said the conductor threateningly.
“Please don’t quarrel,” said Billy. “The Evening Star is in that glacier over yonder, and we must get her out of it or she’ll freeze to death.”
“Then let’s,” said the motorman.
Billy excitedly hurried to the glacier, and the others followed as fast as they could.
It was plain that somebody was confined within its green depths, for a form could be distinctly seen by the whole party, who flattened their noses against the cliff-like side of the glacier and gazed eagerly into it.
“I think you had better begin to batter in the ice with your horns,” said the motorman, “and we’ll follow you up and throw out the loose ice.”
The Equine Ox, thus addressed, fell energetically to work and soon had broken a fair-sized hole in the ice wall.
Into it dashed the conductor and the motorman, and they threw out the fragments of ice broken off by the sharp horns, while Billy, unable to do anything or to find any place to work at all, stood and wrung his hands in impatience.
It was a hard task, but the three kept steadily at it, and in a very little while only a thin wall separated them from the object of their search.
Suddenly the last film of ice was broken through, and then they all fell back in blank amazement, for itwas not the Evening Star at all who came forth, but Jack Frost, looking rather chilly and very much ashamed.
“Jack Frost!” cried the Equine Ox. “Jack Frost, by all that’s astonishing!”
“Well, I never!” said the conductor.
“Me neither,” said the motorman, “and many of ’em.”
“How in the world did you get in there, Jack Frost?” asked Billy.
“Well, I hate to admit it,” said Jack Frost, “but I froze myself in. It was all a mistake.”
“Mistakes will happen,” said the motorman. “The best of us are sure to make ’em at times. I hate to run over dogs, but sometimes I do it.”
“You see,” said Jack Frost, “I was in a hurry to rebuild that glacier, and I got so interested I didn’t leave myself any place to get out till it was all done.”
“But why didn’t you build it from the outside?” asked Billy.
“That’s the way men build things,” said Jack Frost. “It’s different with us Nature people. Did you ever see a tree built from the outside? Or a tomato?”
Billy couldn’t remember that he ever had.
“And now,” continued Jack Frost, “I wish you would tell me the news. Has the Equator got the Evening Star yet?”
“I don’t know,” said Billy.
“Why haven’t you been finding out?”
“Look here, Jack Frost,” said the Equine Ox impatiently, “that’s a nice question for you to be asking. If we had been finding out, what would have become of you?”
“I suppose, of course, you knew it was I who was in here when you started digging?” said Jack Frost.
“Ho, ho!” roared the motorman. “He’s got the critter on that one.”
The Equine Ox tossed his horns indifferently and stalked away.
“Where are you going?” asked Billy.
“Back to the place where the Equator ought to be,” said the Equine Ox. “I’m tired of this business. I wish I’d never come.”
“He means that he wishes he’d never came,” said the conductor to the motorman. “Somehow that sentiment hits me—hits me hard.”
“It hits me like a pile driver,” said the motorman. “Let’s go back with him.”
“Hurry, if you are coming,” said the Equine Ox, who had overheard them. “I’ll give you a lift as far as—where do you live, anyway?”
“Suburbia,” said the conductor.
“All right,” said the Equine Ox; “climb on my back and we’ll be in Suburbia in time for supper. Jack Frost, you can send Nimbus back with the car.”
“All right,” cried Jack Frost after them, “as soon as we find the Equator.”
For a little while Billy, standing beside Jack Frost, watched them as they galloped off toward where the blue of the sky met the white of the snowfields. The Equine Ox seemed not to mind the load he carried, and just as Billy turned away the conductor and the motorman were lighting their pipes preparatory to settling down for a comfortable ride. Then Jack Frost spoke to him and Billy saw them no more.
“What is that on the snow mountain over there?” Jack Frost was saying.
“Let’s go and see,” said Billy, even before he turned to look.
The snow mountain was only a little way off, and upon its summit some dark object seemed to move as if fluttering in the wind.
“You go ahead,” said Jack Frost, “and I’ll be with you in a minute. I forgot to stop up that hole you fellows dug in the glacier. If the Equator ever gets in there he’ll destroy the whole thing again in a second.”
“All right,” said Billy; “but don’t be long, for I may need help.”
Jack Frost turned back, and Billy set out alone for the snow mountain, and soon got close enough to get a good view.
At first he was overjoyed, for upon the mountain he sawthe Evening Star, and he felt that the long quest for her was as good as ended.
A few steps further, however, brought him to the brink of a circular abyss, too wide to leap over and far too deep to fall into. It shut him off completely from the peak that rose in its center.
“Jack Frost will be able to make an ice bridge across it when he comes,” said Billy, so he patiently sat down to wait.
In another instant he cried out in alarm.
Overhead sounded a crackling and snapping, and swiftly the Equator dropped down from a great height and began to hover directly over the head of the Evening Star.
Already the ice under her had begun to melt. Soon it would melt away altogether and then Billy knew that the Equator, kept at a distance now by fear of the cold snow, would fall upon her and bear her away, and perhaps turn her into a Comet right before his horrified eyes.