The Oz Series
Chapter 90
Part of the The Road to Oz: The Shaggy Man's Journey to Ozma's Birthday arc.
What happens
A shaggy man approaches Dorothy at the farm and asks the road to Butterfield. Dorothy, noting his pleasant twinkling eye despite his shaggy appearance, begins giving complicated directions across the ten-acre lot to the highway and north to five branches, becoming confused among the willow stump, gopher holes, and other landmarks, and finally offers to show him the way after fetching her sunbonnet. While she is inside, the shaggy man, chewing an oat-straw he does not enjoy, gathers fallen apples from an apple-tree beside the house and puts them in the wide pockets of his shaggy coat. A little black dog named Toto with bright brown eyes dashes out barking and dives for his leg; the shaggy man grabs Toto by the neck and puts him in his pocket with the apples, each tossed apple hitting the dog and making him growl.
Dorothy returns and leads the shaggy man across the fields, teasing him for clumsiness; he explains his whiskers tire easily in warm weather and wishes it would snow, which Dorothy rejects because August snow would ruin Uncle Henry's corn, oats, and wheat. She climbs fences toward the highway, boasting she could find Butterfield blindfolded from driving there with Uncle Henry. Reaching the highway, she debates whether the turn is the second, third, or fourth. Toto bites the shaggy man's finger inside the pocket, making him exclaim, unnoticed by Dorothy, who is shading her eyes down the road.
At the place where five roads branch, Dorothy points out the road to Butterfield, but the shaggy man starts down a different road; when corrected, he reveals he does not want to go to Butterfield but wanted the road shown so he would not go there by mistake, because a man there owes him fifteen cents and would want to repay him. He observes there are many roads. Dorothy turns and, to her surprise, sees far more than the expected five roads, counting seventeen before growing bewildered; the roads radiate like wheel spokes in every direction, and the highway, gopher holes, and dead stump are gone. The shaggy man drops Toto from his pocket after eating an apple, explaining he brought the dog to guard his apples; Toto runs joyfully to Dorothy.
Dorothy realizes she can find no familiar landmark and cannot even tell which direction the farm-house lies, and she becomes anxious, admitting they are lost. The shaggy man is unconcerned, saying each road must lead somewhere. Dorothy wants to go home but does not know which road; the shaggy man, calling himself a stranger there, offers an apple, which she declines, and suggests Toto might lead them back. Toto dashes up one road but returns questioningly, tries another and another, finding each strange, and finally gives up, sitting panting beside the shaggy man; Dorothy sits, thoughtful, reflecting this is the queerest of her adventures—getting lost in fifteen minutes near her home in the unromantic State of Kansas.
The shaggy man asks whether her folks will worry, and Dorothy says Uncle Henry believes something always happens to her but she always comes home safe. The shaggy man reassures her that good little girls never come to harm and that he too is good, so nothing hurts him. When Dorothy asks again why he avoided Butterfield, he repeats the fifteen-cent debt and declares money makes people proud and haughty; all he wants is to be loved, and as long as he owns the Love Magnet, everyone he meets loves him dearly.
He secretly shows Dorothy the Love Magnet, unwrapping from paper and string a dull brown horseshoe-shaped piece of metal, given him by an Eskimo in the Sandwich Islands, which causes every living thing he meets to love him dearly. He explains the Eskimo tired of being loved and wanted to be hated, gave up the Magnet, and was eaten by a grizzly bear the next day; the shaggy man used to play ball with that bear in the Caviar Islands and could not blame it for eating the Eskimo since it was its nature and the bear had no Conscience. Dorothy recounts a Hungry Tiger who longed to eat fat babies but never did because he had a Conscience. The shaggy man asks Dorothy's name, learns it, and suggests they take the seventh road because seven is a lucky number for girls named Dorothy; she counts seven roads, and he starts confidently down the seventh with Dorothy and Toto following.
Who is in play
- Dorothy
- the Shaggy Man
- the Love Magnet
- Kansas
- road_to_oz_traveling_party
- Toto
- Uncle Henry
- immense Tiger
- Butterfield