The Road to Oz | Page 4

mouth, which he
chewed slowly as if it tasted good; but it didn't. There was an apple-tree
beside the house, and some apples had fallen to the ground. The shaggy
man thought they would taste better than the oat-straw, so he walked
over to get some. A little black dog with bright brown eyes dashed out
of the farm-house and ran madly toward the shaggy man, who had
already picked up three apples and put them in one of the big wide
pockets of his shaggy coat. The little dog barked and made a dive for
the shaggy man's leg; but he grabbed the dog by the neck and put it in
his big pocket along with the apples. He took more apples, afterward,
for many were on the ground; and each one that he tossed into his
pocket hit the little dog somewhere upon the head or back, and made
him growl. The little dog's name was Toto, and he was sorry he had
been put in the shaggy man's pocket.
Pretty soon Dorothy came out of the house with her sunbonnet, and she
called out:
"Come on, Shaggy Man, if you want me to show you the road to
Butterfield." She climbed the fence into the ten-acre lot and he
followed her, walking slowly and stumbling over the little hillocks in
the pasture as if he was thinking of something else and did not notice
them.
"My, but you're clumsy!" said the little girl. "Are your feet tired?"
"No, miss; it's my whiskers; they tire very easily in this warm weather,"
said he. "I wish it would snow, don't you?"
"'Course not, Shaggy Man," replied Dorothy, giving him a severe look.
"If it snowed in August it would spoil the corn and the oats and the
wheat; and then Uncle Henry wouldn't have any crops; and that would
make him poor; and--"
"Never mind," said the shaggy man. "It won't snow, I guess. Is this the
lane?"
"Yes," replied Dorothy, climbing another fence; "I'll go as far as the

highway with you."
"Thankee, miss; you're very kind for your size, I'm sure," said he
gratefully.
"It isn't everyone who knows the road to Butterfield," Dorothy
remarked as she tripped along the lane; "but I've driven there many a
time with Uncle Henry, and so I b'lieve I could find it blindfolded."
"Don't do that, miss," said the shaggy man earnestly; "you might make
a mistake."
"I won't," she answered, laughing. "Here's the highway. Now it's the
second--no, the third turn to the left--or else it's the fourth. Let's see.
The first one is by the elm tree, and the second is by the gopher holes;
and then--"
"Then what?" he inquired, putting his hands in his coat pockets. Toto
grabbed a finger and bit it; the shaggy man took his hand out of that
pocket quickly, and said "Oh!"
Dorothy did not notice. She was shading her eyes from the sun with her
arm, looking anxiously down the road.
"Come on," she commanded. "It's only a little way farther, so I may as
well show you."
After a while, they came to the place where five roads branched in
different directions; Dorothy pointed to one, and said:
"That's it, Shaggy Man."
"I'm much obliged, miss," he said, and started along another road.
"Not that one!" she cried; "you're going wrong."
He stopped.
"I thought you said that other was the road to Butterfield," said he,

running his fingers through his shaggy whiskers in a puzzled way.
"So it is."
"But I don't want to go to Butterfield, miss."
"You don't?"
"Of course not. I wanted you to show me the road, so I shouldn't go
there by mistake."
"Oh! Where DO you want to go, then?"
"I'm not particular, miss."
This answer astonished the little girl; and it made her provoked, too, to
think she had taken all this trouble for nothing.
"There are a good many roads here," observed the shaggy man, turning
slowly around, like a human windmill. "Seems to me a person could go
'most anywhere, from this place."
Dorothy turned around too, and gazed in surprise. There WERE a good
many roads; more than she had ever seen before. She tried to count
them, knowing there ought to be five, but when she had counted
seventeen she grew bewildered and stopped, for the roads were as
many as the spokes of a wheel and ran in every direction from the place
where they stood; so if she kept on counting she was likely to count
some of the roads twice.
"Dear me!" she exclaimed. "There used to be only five roads, highway
and all. And now--why, where's the highway, Shaggy Man?"
"Can't say, miss," he responded, sitting down upon the ground as if
tired with standing.