  There was no answer to Handy's loud knocks, and pausing to catch her breath and blow on her fingers, the Goat Girl wondered what to try next. Then, in spite of Nox's warning bellow, she began to shove and push the wet planks with her shoulder. But that did no good either, so she felt in her pocket for something to use as a wedge. Almost at once her fingers closed on the silver hammer they had ploughed up in Keretaria. While the hammer would not do for a wedge, it would at least save her knuckles, so, lifting it high above her head, Handy Mandy brought it down with a resounding whack. A shower of silver sparks followed the hammer blow, and Nox, peering through the waterfall saw a gnarled and crooked elf with a purple beard dancing madly round the startled girl. "I am the elf of the hammer, who Must do whatever you ask me to," sang the elf between his high leaps and prances. "Then open this door," directed Handy, spinning round in a circle herself to get a good look at the little fellow. "My—y, how funny Oz is! Magic horns, Topsies, Hook Noses and now you! Don't tell me a little body like you can really open this great heavy door?" "Pick up the hammer and doubt no more— Himself, the elf, will now open the door." In a daze Handy Mandy picked up the hammer and put it back in her pocket, and Nox, thunderstruck by the whole proceeding thrust his head through the waterfall just in time to see the knobby little gnome push the door open with one thump of his brown fist. Quick as a flash Handy was on the other side. "Come on! Come on!" she called hoarsely to Nox. "Can't you see it's closing? Oh mercy—ercy, do you want to leave me here all alone?" "Yes!" snorted Nox in an exasperated voice, but jumping as he snorted. "I'd like nothing better." As he came to 'better,' he landed on the other side of the waterfall and skidded through the open door into the mountain. He had just time to tuck in his tail, when the door with an ominous creak slammed shut. "Now, see what you've done!" gasped Nox, eyeing the gloomy interior with distaste and foreboding. "I—thought—you—were going to be a help to me and all—puff—splutter—you do is get me into trouble! What sort of place is this anyway?" "A c-c-ave," quavered Handy, wrapping all her arms tightly round herself. "My—y, it's so high—igh, I can hardly see the top. Where's that elf?" "Gone!" sighed the Ox, taking a cautious step forward. "But I expect he'll come back at the first tap of that hammer. All very puzzling if you ask me." "Well, shall I call him back?" asked Handy uneasily. "It's kinda lonely in here and maybe Himself could tell us where we are." "Better wait till we need him," advised the Ox. "After all, we know we are in a cave, seems to be of silver rock, too. Just cast your eye at those stalactites, m'lass." "So that's what you call 'em," the Goat Girl glanced curiously up at the silver icicles hanging in jagged points from the ceiling. "We have caves on Mt. Mern, but nothing like this." She looked apprehensively round the silent cavern, from which a perfect honeycomb of passageways branched off in all directions. "A fine place to get lost, I'd call it," she shivered, moving as close as she could to her companion. "What makes this lavender light? I see no lamps." "Jewels!" confided the Ox in a hushed voice. "See, there are hundreds of amethysts embedded in those rocks, each glowing like—" "An eye!" finished Handy nervously. "And all watching us, I dare say. My—y, do you suppose anyone lives here? But they must—" Unwinding her arms, Handy suddenly began snapping all thirty-five of her fingers. "Nox, Nox!" she cried excitedly. "I've just thought of something!" "Can't you think without shouting?" asked the Ox, flashing his eyes suspiciously from left to right. "No," said Handy triumphantly, "for this is something to shout about. Look, old Toggins, if this is a silver cave, why wouldn't a Silver Mountain be on top? All we have to do is open that door and start climbing again." "As I remember there was a sheer precipice back of the waterfall, how could we climb that? No, no! The best thing for us to do is to travel down one of the passageways and hope it will bring us out on the side of the mountain itself." "Yes, but which one?" demanded the Goat Girl. "There are about a hundred it seems to me." "Let's try that first one to the right," proposed the Ox judiciously. Their voices echoed and reverberated back and forth so uncannily in the big hollow cavern that almost without realizing it they began to talk in whispers and tread as softly as thieves in the night. Half-way to their destination they stopped, rigid with horror and consternation. Thumping footsteps were coming toward them from the labyrinth on the left. "Someone does live here, after all," said the Goat Girl. "Someone who weighs a ton. Hark to that!" "Watch yourself!" warned Nox, planting all four feet and making ready to charge if the cave dweller proved unfriendly. "Oh, my aunt—a GIANT!" With a shrill scream Handy flung all her arms round Nox's neck and buried her face in his shoulder. Poor Nox, nearly strangled by the Goat Girl's embrace could neither move nor speak and could scarcely breathe. With rolling eyes and quaking legs he watched the monster approach. The Giant's body, almost ten times the size of a grizzly bear, was encased in a tight purple uniform with bells instead of buttons that jingled whenever he moved. He wore a huge silver helmet, and his neck, almost a foot long, kept darting up and down as he shot his head in this direction and that. "Ho! THERE you are!" he roared, suddenly catching sight of the two travellers trembling together in the center of the cavern. "How dare you enter the cave of the King of the Silver Mountain without invitation or permission?" "Then this really IS the Silver Mountain!" marveled Handy, twisting her apron nervously in her wooden fingers. "Of course!" yelled the giant, thumping the floor with an enormous silver club. "And I, Snorpus the Mighty, am Keeper of the Hidden Door. I am OUTKEEPER for this whole mountain," he boasted truculently expanding his chest and looking complacently down at the two midgets at his feet. But something in his manner began to reassure the Goat Girl. "I'll bet he's dumb as he's big," she confided hurriedly to Nox. Then raising her voice and all of her arms, she called up loudly, "Then you must indeed be strong and sturdy!" "Oh, I AM!" bawled the Giant, twirling his silver moustache and fixing Handy for a moment with his glittering eye. "Snorpus the Door Keeper is strong as an OX!" There was something very peculiar about the eye of the Giant. It seemed to revolve on a moving belt, peering out as it passed through the four wide open lids set at intervals round the top of his head, so that half the time he was looking the other way. "Did you ever see an ox?" inquired Handy politely as the eye of Snorpus again flashed by. "No, but I'd like to," admitted the Giant, shooting his head out to the side. "Well, this is an ox," cried Handy, tapping the anxious beast at her side with a rubber hand. "And if you are strong as an ox you are strong as Nox and nothing much can stop you." "How strong is he?" asked Snorpus, lowering himself stiffly to one knee in order to get a look at what he had first supposed to be a small and insignificant animal. "So strong," explained the Goat Girl impressively, as she pointed with all hands to the side of the cave, "that if he so much as bumped into that wall yonder, this whole cavern would collapse like a pack of cards." "Then I hope he'll be very careful," faltered Snorpus, taking out a huge silk handkerchief to mop his forehead. "It would annoy the King frightfully if you destroyed his cavern, and I might even lose my head and position here." "Oh, he'll be careful," promised Handy Mandy generously. "He, being an ox, and you being strong as an ox, makes us all friends, doesn't it?" "I—I suppose so," muttered Snorpus, tapping his knee uncertainly with his club. "But just the same, I am still the outkeeper and must do my duty at all hazards. AT ALL HAZARDS!" he shouted, standing up to give himself courage and puffing out his cheeks like a porpoise. "But you have done your duty," bellowed Nox in a voice even louder than the door keeper's. "If we were outside the mountain it would be your plain duty to keep us there, but since we are already inside, you have nothing more to do with us. Isn't that so?" Lowering his head, Nox made a little lunge at the Giant's shins. And backing away, Snorpus gave the pair several long puzzled looks. "Well, then," he decided finally, "if I have nothing more to do with you, you had best come along to the King." "That is exactly what we wish to do," answered the Goat Girl promptly. "My, you are brave, aren't you?" The Giant's eye flashed for a moment in real admiration upon Handy Mandy, then, picking up his club, he began clumping away to the left. "Now I wonder what he meant by that?" puffed Nox, for they both had to run to even keep the Giant in sight. "I don't know," gasped Handy, "but never mind what he means. We still have your golden horn and the silver hammer and will manage somehow. But imagine getting right inside the Silver Mountain and never knowing it!" "Yes, and we may go out the same way," predicted the Royal Ox gloomily, following the Giant down the wide glittering corridor. "I never did like these tunnely places or people." |
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