The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks

Author:Lynne Reid Banks [Banks, Lynne Reid]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
ISBN: 9780307576248
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2010-07-06T23:00:00+00:00

Breakfast Truce

He crept downstairs. The house was still asleep. He decided to cook breakfast for himself and his cowboy and Indian. He was quite a good cook, but he’d mostly done sweet stuff before; however, any fool, he felt sure, could fry an egg. The steaks were out of the question, but beans were no problem. Omri put butter in the frying pan on the stove. The fat began to smoke. Omri broke an egg into it, or tried to, but the shell, instead of coming cleanly apart, crumpled up somehow in his hand and landed in the hot fat mixed up with the egg

H’m. Not as easy as he’d thought. Leaving the mess to cook, shell and all, he got a tin of beans out of the cupboard and opened it without trouble. Then he got a saucepan and began pouring the beans in. Some of them got into the eggpan somehow and seemed to explode. The egg was beginning to curl and the pan was still smoking. Alarmed, he turned off the heat. The center of the egg still wasn’t cooked and the beans in the pan were stone cold, but the smell in the kitchen was beginning to worry him—he didn’t want his mother coming down. He tipped the whole lot into a bowl, hacked a lopsided slice off the loaf of bread, and tiptoed up the stairs again.

Little Bear was standing outside his longhouse with hands on hips, waiting for him.

“You bring food?” he asked in his usual bossy way.

“Yes.”

“First, Little Bear want ride.”

“First, you must eat while it’s hot, I’ve been to a lot of trouble to cook it for you,” Omri said, sounding like his mother.

Little Bear didn’t know how to take this, so he burst into a rather forced laugh and pointed at him scornfully. “Omri cook—Omri woman!” he teased. But Omri wasn’t bothered.

“All the best cooks are men,” he retorted. “Come on, you’re going to eat with Boone.”

Little Bear’s laughter died instantly.

“Who Boone?”

“You know who he is. The cowboy.”

The Indian’s hands came off his hips and one of them went for his knife.

“Oh knock it off, Little Bear! Have a truce for breakfast, otherwise you won’t get any.”

Leaving him with that thought to chew over, Omri crossed to the crate, in which Boone was grooming his white horse with a wisp of cloth he’d found clinging to a splinter. He’d taken off the little saddle, but the bridle was still on.

“Boone! I’ve brought something to eat,” said Omri.

“Yup. Ah thought Ah smelt some’n good,” said Boone. “Let’s git to it.”

Omri put his hand down. “Climb on.”

“Aw shucks—where’m Ah goin’? Why cain’t Ah eat in mah box, where it’s safe?” whined Boone. But he clambered up into Omri’s palm and sat grumpily with his back against his middle finger.

“You’re going to eat with the Indian,” said Omri.

Boone leaped up so suddenly he nearly fell off, and had to grab hold of a thumb to steady himself.

“Hell no, Ah ain’t!” he yelled. “You jest

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