The last dragon

AFTER the dragon had finished his luncheon, he became very warm—so warm that those on his back felt like pieces of browning toast, so it was suggested that they should all go to a cave that the dragon knew about, and step off on something more comfortable.

The cave was over the volcano and then away to the west on the side of a black, black lake. It was a very large cave filled with stalagmites and stalactites that formed many gaily colored columns, and many fantastic rooms. Through this cave a black river ran, slowly and sadly.

When the dragon entered the cave, everything was pitch black, but all the dragon had to do was open his mouth and out leaped a flaming torch that lit up the cave a great distance all around. Way, way back in the earth, around the first bend, or the second bend, or the third—(really, Johnathan couldn’t count all the bends, they were so confusing) the dragon had a very cozy apartment of three rooms—a parlor, a bedroom and a kitchen. Of course, everything was cozy on a very large scale. The three rooms were big enough to accommodate all the Baxter house and leave room to spare for a garage and a back yard; and yet the dragon said it was considered a modest dwelling. All his relatives lived in much larger and much more handsome quarters. He was just a modest dragon with a modest income, and without much of a reputation, not a bit like St. George’s dragon, for instance.

“Now, make yourselves perfectly at home,” said the dragon, lying down flat on the parlor floor and stretching until he groaned. “I’m pretty tired from that long run backwards.”

“I can well believe so!” exclaimed Grandma, fumbling in her mysterious knitting bag and drawing forth a little bottle which she proceeded to shake, vigorously. “What you need is a good alcohol rub and I’m going to give it to you.”

“Oh, no!” protested the dragon. “There’s too much of me to rub. You’d be exhausted in no time.”

“Exhausted? Stuff and nonsense!” snapped Grandma. “Besides, the children can help.”

“Oh, yes, yes!” they cried, and rushed all around the reclining dragon.

Grandma poured a little clear liquid in each outstretched palm, and then they all began to rub up and down, back and across—rubbed and rubbed and rubbed. They rubbed his back. They rubbed his chest. They rubbed his ribs and the length of his tail and the tired soles of his feet. And how the dragon adored those kind hands rubbing him! He lay back and purred like a kitten when it is having its fur rubbed the right way. Indeed, you had to rub the dragon’s scales the right way too, or else you tickled him and he rolled about in spasms of laughter.

And as they rubbed him, so intently occupied, they did not notice a little round door open in the side of the room, and a little head as brown as a hazel nut and shaped rather like a hazel nut too, came poking out cautiously, like a mouse pokes from a hole before it darts for the cupboard where the cheese is kept. Then followed the round, fat stomach of a tiny old man dressed all in brown, the color of the earth. He was only about twelve inches high but carried himself with a great deal of dignity, as most little things do, if you’ve ever noticed. His face and hands were all lumpy as if they had pebbles in them, and his tiny eyes looked like bright creek-pebbles stuck in the face of a mud-pie man.

Still unnoticed, he walked pompously over to the dragon, and stood by the great beast’s pointed ear (he could have crawled into it easily) and bending down he whispered something in a voice that sounded like the buzz of a gnat.

At once, the dragon grinned from ear to ear and sat up, exclaiming: “Crubby! My old friend Crubby!” And he took the tiny man up in one of his golden claws and held him close to one of his enormous eyes, and studied him carefully. The little man looked very serious and severe and demanded, “Where have you been, sir? Give an account of yourself.”

And the dragon explained, meekly: “I’ve been looking ahead, Crubby.”

“Oh, yes,” said Crubby, sarcastically, the most knowing expression on his old, old face, “you always were ahead of your time.”

“Yes,” agreed the dragon, tears threatening to roll down his cheeks, “but I got too far ahead, this trip.”

Crubby seemed to be grimly delighted. “Umm, I thought so! I thought so! Well, smarty, what did you learn by looking ahead?”

“Very little that was pleasant,” the dragon admitted, sadly. “I found myself all out-of-date and very, very lonesome. That is, lonesome until I found Grandame and the children.”

“Oh,” muttered the tiny man, not at all pleased.

The dragon hastened on to explain. “You see, they believed in me, Crubby. They gave me a place in their world, do you understand? So I might have stayed up there in the future all the time, if their mother and their father hadn’t sent me back to the Dark Ages again.”

“It’s just as well that they did!” said Crubby. “You don’t belong there for one moment.”

The dragon sighed. “Maybe not—maybe not—but, Crubby, let me introduce you to my new friends, fresh from the future. Turn around, Crubby.”

Crubby didn’t seem at all excited about meeting Grandma and the children. He took his time about turning around on the dragon’s palm, and then he stood just like a Fourth of July orator on a platform, and bowed very distantly, with his right hand pressed to his chest, the fingers spread out.

“This is Crubby,” announced the dragon with a great deal of pride. “He’s my most intimate friend.” And Johnathan instantly thought of a mouse and an elephant, although mice and elephants are really not supposed to be friendly the least little bit.

“Oh, isn’t he the cutest little fellow!” cried Janet Jane, really meaning it, but Crubby did not seem to like this a bit. His pride was hurt, and he deliberately snubbed Janet Jane and all the rest, for that matter, by turning his back. He faced the dragon once more, and the dragon looked lovingly at him and said, “Dear old Crubby, I’m so happy to see you again, and I’m so grateful I didn’t take you with me when I was looking ahead.”

“I wouldn’t have gone if you’d asked me,” said the impudent little mite, turning his pimple-of-a-nose up in the air.

“You would have had a most miserable time,” the dragon went on.

“I don’t doubt it,” snapped Crubby, “judging by what it’s done to you!”

“Now, just how do you mean that, Crubby?” asked the dragon. “Do I look so terrible?”

“You certainly do!”

“How? Have I lost my good looks?” The dragon was really distressed, and Grandma couldn’t help whispering to Peter that she thought Crubby had a very mean disposition.

“In the first place,” Crubby continued, relentlessly, “you’re all out of condition. Imagine you, a perfectly healthy, athletic dragon being exhausted after a little run like that! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

The dragon looked sheepish and tried to defend himself: “It wasn’t a little run, Crubby. It was a very long run, clear from 1927 back to 1227.”

But Crubby waived that excuse aside and said, testily, “Don’t talk nonsense. I’m going to run you up the volcano and back, every morning before breakfast, to harden up your muscles again. What would become of you now if a knight should take it into his head to do battle with you?”

“Am I really as soft as that?” queried the dragon, pathetically. “My, you make me afraid!”

“You ought to be! You’re soft and you’re fat!”

“Fat?” exclaimed the dragon. “How could that be, when I was almost starved, living on grass?”

“No more excuses!” commanded the little man, wagging a finger in the dragon’s face. “For let me tell you, this is no time for you to be making excuses!”

“Just what do you mean by that, Crubby? Tell me, what has happened since I’ve been away?”

“Oh, a terrible thing,” said Crubby, “and it’s all your fault for delving into the future.”

Surely, here was excitement and adventure beginning already, and the children, led by Grams, tiptoed up closer to catch every tiny chirp of the little brown gnome.

“What do you mean?—tell me, Crubby!” begged the dragon, but Crubby took his time, cleared his throat, adjusted his brown belt, took a few turns up and down, and then said planting himself very firmly with his legs wide apart, “Your Princess Silver Toes is gone.”

“What?” cried the dragon—“Silver Toes gone? And I was saving her as a beautiful surprise for the children. But how could she be gone? She was enchanted!”

“Yes, she was enchanted, but an enchanted princess can be stolen, can’t she, you idiotic fellow!” fairly screamed the irritable little man—“Oh, I warned you never to go looking ahead.”

“But who has stolen her, Crubby? Who has stolen my Silver Toes?” The dragon was really distressed.

“Now, who do you suppose? Have you forgotten your enemies so soon?”

“Yes, I have,” admitted the dragon, ready to weep. “I’ve forgotten my enemies and I’ve forgotten the magic formula that changes my shape and makes me invisible.”

“Oh, my beard and my nose!” cried Crubby, although he didn’t have a beard. “Such a thing I’ve never, never heard. Now suppose I’d forgotten it? You’d be in a nice muddle, wouldn’t you?”

“But you haven’t, Crubby! Oh, please say you haven’t!”

“Well,” drawled the tiny man, keeping the dragon in terrible suspense—“Well,—I just wonder now—I just wonder. Maybe I have.”

“But your memory was always much better than mine, Crubby. You know you haven’t forgotten it,” stammered the poor dragon.

Finally Crubby gave in. “No, I really haven’t,” he admitted, “which is certainly fortunate for you. However, that isn’t important, right at this moment.”

The dragon agreed. “The important thing is Silver Toes. Who stole her, Crubby? Please tell me.”

For another agonizing minute, Crubby kept them all in suspense; then he said to the dragon, “Come to the door with me,” and the dragon obeyed. Grandma and the children followed, puzzled and excited.

In the thick mud by the river bank, just where the black water flowed from the cave, Crubby pointed down to a large footprint that was shaped for all the world, Johnathan thought, like a four-leaf clover or a shamrock.

“Now, what does that look like?” demanded Crubby, and the dragon said immediately, his brow all puckered—“Why, that’s the footprint of Dallahan, the Irish dragon.”

“Yes!” hissed Crubby, “Dallahan! Now what do you think of that?”

The dragon clasped his brow, and swayed back and forth like somebody gone suddenly dizzy, and nearly fell into the river. “Dallahan! Oh, me, oh, my! Oh, zounds, oh, woe! Dallahan is the most powerful and resourceful dragon in the whole Dark Ages. What can we do about it?”

“Do about it? Why, we’ll just find him and take the princess away from him!” screamed the little man, thumping his puffed up chest with his fists; and then turning to the little Baxters and Grandma, he pointed a stern finger right in their amazed faces—“And you’ll help us!” adding as they stared at him, speechless—“Oh, don’t think you can go backwards, way into the Dark Ages, without risking your lives. You’re going to get your share of adventure—lots of it!”

Grandma put her hands on her hips and thrust out her sharp chin. “Don’t think you can frighten us!” she snapped. “Adventure was what we all came out to find!” And her fearful expression of defiance so startled the little mite that he fell back and rubbed his chin in a most perplexed manner. From then on, he had a deep respect for Grandma and listened to everything she had to say.