The Oz Series
Chapter 51
Part of the Ozma of Oz: The Land of Ev and the Nome King arc.
What happens
Walking back from the water toward the grove of trees, Dorothy comes to a flat stretch of white sand marked with queer signs, as if written with a stick. She asks the yellow hen what it says, but Billina cannot read, never having been to school. Dorothy, who has been to school, examines each big, far-apart letter and spells out the words: "BEWARE THE WHEELERS!" Neither knows what the Wheelers are. Dorothy guesses folks that wheel, with wheelbarrows, baby-cabs, or hand-carts; Billina suggests automobiles, dangerous things that have run over several of her friends. Dorothy rejects automobiles, reasoning this is a new, wild country without trolley-cars or telephones, where the people have not been discovered yet, if there are any people at all.
Dorothy heads over to the trees to find fruit or nuts. Skirting a little rocky hill, she reaches the forest edge, at first disappointed that the nearer trees—punita, cotton-wood, and eucalyptus—bear no fruit or nuts. Almost in despair, she comes upon two remarkable trees. One is full of square paper boxes growing in clusters, the biggest and ripest reading "Lunch" in neat raised letters; the tree bears all year, with lunch-box blossoms and tiny green lunch-boxes not yet fit to eat, and its leaves are paper napkins. The next tree is even more wonderful, bearing quantities of tin dinner-pails so heavy the branches bend, ranging from small dark-brown ones to dull tin to the really ripe pails of bright shining tin. Dorothy is delighted and even Billina is surprised.
Dorothy picks one of the nicest, biggest lunch-boxes, sits down, and opens it, finding inside, wrapped in white papers, a ham sandwich, sponge-cake, a pickle, a slice of new cheese, and an apple—each on a separate stem to be picked off the box side. She eats every bit and finds it all delicious. She remarks that a lunch is not exactly breakfast, but a hungry person can eat even supper in the morning. Billina anxiously hopes the lunch-box was ripe, since eating green things causes sickness; Dorothy is sure it was ripe except the pickle, which has to be green, and declares everything splendid. She decides to pick a dinner-pail for later hunger and then explore the country.
When Billina asks what country this is, Dorothy has no idea but is sure it is a fairy country, since lunch-boxes and dinner-pails would not grow on trees otherwise, and Billina, being a hen, could not talk in a civilized country like Kansas where no fairies live. Billina suggests they may be in the Land of Oz, but Dorothy says it cannot be, because Oz is surrounded by a horrid impassable desert; she explains she once escaped Oz by a pair of silver shoes that carried her through the air, which she lost, and adds that there is no seashore near the Land of Oz, so this must be some other fairy country. She selects a bright dinner-pail with a stout handle and picks it, then walks with the yellow hen out of the tree shadows toward the sea-shore.
Part way across the sands, Billina cries in terror, "What's that?" Dorothy turns to see the most peculiar person she has ever beheld coming out of a path from between the trees. It has the form of a man but walks or rolls on all fours, with legs the same length as its arms giving it the appearance of a four-legged beast; yet it is no beast, being clothed gorgeously in embroidered garments of many colors and wearing a straw hat perched jauntily on the side of its head. Instead of hands and feet, round wheels grow at the ends of its arms and legs, letting it roll swiftly over level ground; Dorothy later learns these wheels are of the same hard substance as finger-nails and toe-nails and that this race is born in that fashion, though at first she thinks the personage is on roller-skates. Billina screams for Dorothy to run, identifying it as a Wheeler, and reminds her of the warning in the sand. Dorothy runs, and the Wheeler gives a sharp, wild cry and gives full chase. Looking over her shoulder, Dorothy sees a great procession of dozens of Wheelers emerging from the forest, all in splendid tight-fitting garments, rolling swiftly toward her with wild cries. Fearing they will catch her while she still carries the heavy dinner-pail, Dorothy follows Billina's advice to climb the nearby heap of loose, jagged rocks, half climbing and half tumbling up the rugged steep. She is none too soon, for the foremost Wheeler reaches the hill just after her but stops short with howls of rage and disappointment, its wheels unable to roll on the rough rocks. Billina laughs in her cackling way, assuring Dorothy they are safe among the rocks, and Dorothy sits on a boulder, out of breath. The rest of the Wheelers reach the foot of the hill but cannot follow onto the jagged rocks; they circle the little hill, making the child and Billina fast prisoners who cannot come down without capture. The Wheelers shake their front wheels threateningly and, proving able to speak, shout that they will get Dorothy in time and tear her into little bits. Dorothy asks why they are so cruel to a harmless stranger; the leader, in a gorgeous suit, accuses her of picking their lunch-boxes and dinner-pails and still holding a stolen dinner-pail, declaring it the law that whoever picks a dinner-pail without permission must die immediately. Dorothy protests she only picked one of each while hungry and ignorant that the trees were theirs. Billina advises her not to believe the leader, suspecting the trees do not belong to the creatures, who are fit for any mischief and would try to kill them regardless. Dorothy agrees and asks what to do; Billina advises staying where they are, since they are safe from the Wheelers until they starve, and before that time a good many things can happen.