WHEN THE LITTLE OKIE reached the tunnel she galloped down it on her hands and feet like a monkey, instead of crawling the way a larger person had to do. No wonder she’d gotten away so quickly that other time when she’d seemed to disappear as if by magic. In no time at all she was out of sight. Cat turned back toward the cottage—and noticed the pail again.
The beat-up old oilcan pail was still sitting just outside the cottage door. Inside the pail were three walnuts, a small shriveled orange, and a chunk of very stale bread. Cat poked at the stuff with the tip of one finger. The kid’s lunch, no doubt, or maybe—Cat smiled ruefully—some more gifts for Marianne. For Marianne-Lillybelle. Suddenly Cat ran toward the tunnel.
It was slow going crawling through the narrow passageway carrying a pail, and when Cat got to her feet outside the thicket there was no one in sight. But the kid couldn’t have gotten far. “Sammy! Wait a minute!” Cat yelled, and started to run. She’d only gone a few steps when, dodging around a large boulder, she came to a skidding stop and jumped back. But it was too late. They’d seen her.
Leaning against the boulder, her heart thudding, she heard someone say, “Well, well. If it ain’t Cat Kinsey,” and a moment later there he was, Zane Perkins. And not just Zane. Behind him was what seemed to be a whole crowd of smaller Zane Perkinses. A regular herd of ragged, barefoot little Okies in scruffy overalls, all of them grinning in the same ornery way. All grinning, that is, except Sammy, who still looked tearful and terrified. Grabbing Zane’s hand Sammy tugged at it and whimpered, “Come on. Let’s go home. Please, Zane.”
Cat stepped away from the boulder casually, as if she’d just happened to jump back there to look at something and hadn’t been trying to hide at all. As the mob of Okies crowded in around her (four of them, actually—it had seemed like more at first) she lifted her chin and calmly stared back into the grinning faces. Then she held the pail out toward Sammy. “Here,” she said, “this must be yours. You forgot to take it with you. You left it up there—beside the creek. Right up there by the creek,” she repeated loudly, hoping to remind Sammy that she’d promised not to tell anyone about the grotto.
They all looked at Sammy and Sammy looked at the pail. Reaching out timidly as if she were afraid that Cat might grab her, she took it, looked in it, and started to cry again.
Zane was frowning. “What’s the matter?” he said. “What’re you bawling about?” Then he turned to Cat. “What’s Sammy bawling about? You do something to Sammy?”
Cat sighed indignantly. “Of course not. I didn’t do anything to her—” She caught herself and changed it to “to him.” But the damage had been done. Zane glared at Sammy and she cried louder.
“Her?” Zane asked. “She calling you her, Sammy?”
“I didn’t tell her,” Sammy wailed.
“She didn’t tell me she’s a girl,” Cat said, “if that’s what you’re talking about. I just guessed.”
But Zane went on frowning. “Sammy,” he said, “Ma told you and told you—”
“Look,” Cat said, “it’s not her fault. And besides, it’s pretty stupid to think it’s all right to let her run around all by herself all day, just because she’s dressed like a boy. What’s she doing way out here alone, anyway? No kid that little ought to be way up here all alone, whether she’s a girl or a boy.”
His grin was mocking. “You some kind of expert on rearin’ young-uns?” he asked. Then he grabbed Sammy, wiped her face with her shirttail, and said, “Shh. Hush up now. I ain’t going to tell Ma.” He wiped her face again and bent over her, whispering something in her ear.
While Zane was still talking to Sammy one of the other boys came up to Cat. It was the one next biggest to Zane—the same coloring and lanky build. And the same dark-framed eyes, too, but maybe not quite so devilish looking. “Sammy warn’t left all alone, she jist run off,” he said. “This here old lady in the camp s’posed to be mindin’ her, but she ain’t doin’ too good a job, I guess. When Zane and Roddy and me got home from school jist now Granny didn’t know where Sammy’d got to. But I knowed she likes to play up thisaway, so we come a’lookin’ for her.” He grinned at Cat. “Right glad you found her.”
Cat examined the grin for sarcasm but didn’t find any. “Who’re you?” she asked warily.
“Spence,” he said. “Name’s Spence Perkins.”
Cat nodded. She vaguely remembered seeing him before at school. Third grader, she thought, or maybe fourth. “And the other one. What’s his name?” She looked for the smaller boy and suddenly noticed that he’d disappeared. “Where is he, anyway?”
“Roddy.” Spence looked around. “Where’d he git to now?” Turning in a circle he called, “Roddy!” several times. When he’d turned back around to Cat his raised eyebrows and shrug said something like That’s Roddy for you.
Just then Zane, who’d been talking to Sammy, got back into the conversation. “Where’d Roddy go?” he asked.
“Don’t ask me,” Spence said. “He was here a minute ago. Must of gone thataway. I’ll find him.”
Watching Spence disappear around the boulder Cat suddenly froze. The tunnel was only a few yards away and she hadn’t taken the time to bend the sapling screen back down over the entrance. What if ...
“Hey,” she yelled. “Come back here.” But at that moment the littlest boy came dashing back. Grabbing Zane’s arm he yelled, “Come ’ere, Zane. Come quick. Wait’ll you see what I found.”
Cat’s heart sank. “Hey,” she said. “Don’t ... Come back here. You can’t ... But no one was paying any attention. Ignoring Cat altogether they followed the prancing, grinning Roddy around the boulder, past the first small clump of saplings, past the beginning of the thicket—and right to the entrance of the tunnel. Dropping down to his hands and knees he disappeared down the narrow passageway, and as Cat continued to protest, the others followed one by one. Zane first and then Spence and then Sammy too. Sammy, too, but not before she’d stopped at the tunnel entrance, looked back at Cat, rolled her big eyes wildly, sobbed, hiccupped, dropped to her hands and feet, and started after her brothers.
Cat followed. There was nothing else she could do.
Inside the grotto they were everywhere, picking up the elephant and the horses, looking at the books, and running in and out of the cottage.
She couldn’t stand it. “Stop it!” she screamed. “Get out! Get out of here. Get out of here or I’ll tell the sheriff.”
They stopped, but only for a minute. Roddy put the elephant back on its shelf—and then picked it up again. Spence came out of the cottage and then went back in. Zane strolled toward Cat, doing his wide, mocking grin.
“This here your property?” he asked. “Your pa got papers on this land?”
Cat had to consciously unclench her teeth in order to answer. “No. Not on this land. But all this stuff is mine. I brought it here and I built the house, and it’s mine. And my father knows Sheriff Dunn real well and if you don’t get out of here I’m going to tell him you’re all a bunch of thieves and he’ll put you in jail—and throw your folks out of Okietown”—Cat’s voice was getting higher and more shrill—“and expel you from school and ...
Zane didn’t try to argue. Instead he just stood there nodding slowly and doing his insulting grin. When Cat finally stopped to catch her breath he made a kind of snorting noise and said, “Well, if you’re anywheres near runnin’ down I got a thing or two to say. First off, we got no interest in coming back here. Roddy and Spence and me ain’t got no interest in playin’ house or”—he nodded toward the shelves at the back of the grotto—“or fooling around with little-kid stuff like that. Ain’t that right, Roddy?”
Roddy looked at the elephant regretfully for just a moment before he reached up to put it back on the shelf. Then he swaggered over to stand beside Zane. “That’s right.” He pulled himself up to his full seven- or eight-year-old height. “We got no use for kid stuff like that,” he said. “Huh, Spence? Huh?”
Spence was walking toward them. He was holding a book in his hands, but when Zane and Roddy turned to look at him he put it behind his back. “That’s right. We got no use for—”
But just then Zane interrupted. “Where’s Sammy?” he said. He looked around the grotto and then at Spence. “Where’s Sammy? She was here a minute ago. Wasn’t she?”
Spence shrugged. “In there,” he said, nodding toward the cottage, “with the playbaby.”
She was there again, all right, just like she’d been before, sitting on the floor beside the crib with Marianne-Lillybelle in her arms. Just before he got to the cottage door Zane had been saying again how none of the Perkinses had any use for Cat’s “little-kid stuff,” but he stopped talking when he saw Sammy with the doll.
They stood there for quite a while before Zane stopped watching Sammy and looked at Cat instead. “Hey,” he said. “Who knows? Maybe won’t none of us come back here no more, and then agin—maybe we will. You gonna sic the law on Sammy, Cat Kinsey?”