The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck Page A

why takest thou the shovel? Is there gold, perhaps?”
    The boy’s face grew hard with the seriousness of his purpose. “I go to dig for the little people who live in the earth.”
    Now Pancho was filled with horrified excitement. “Do not go, Little Frog! Listen to your old friend, your father in God, and do not go! Out in the sage I found thee and saved thee from the devils, thy relatives. Thou art a little brother of Jesus now. Go not back to thine own people! Listen to an old man, Little Frog!”
    Tularecito stared hard at the ground and drilled his old thoughts with this new information. “Thou hast said they are my people,” he exclaimed. “I am not like the others at the school or here. I know that. I have loneliness for my own people who live deep in the cool earth. When I pass a squirrel hole, I wish to crawl into it and hide myself. My own people are like me, and they have called me. I must go home to them, Pancho.”
    Pancho stepped back and held up crossed fingers. “Go back to the devil, thy father, then. I am not good enough to fight this evil. It would take a saint. But see! At least I make the sign against thee and against all thy race.” He drew the cross of protection in the air in front of him.
    Tularecito smiled sadly, and turning, trudged off into the hills.
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    The heart of Tularecito gushed with joy at his homecoming. All his life he had been an alien, a lonely outcast, and now he was going home. As always, he heard the voices of the earth—the far-off clang of cow bells, the muttering of disturbed quail, the little whine of a coyote who would not sing this night, the nocturnes of a million insects. But Tularecito was listening for another sound, the movement of two-footed creatures, and the hushed voices of the hidden people.
    Once he stopped and called, “My father, I have come home,” and he heard no answer. Into squirrel holes he whispered, “Where are you, my people? It is only Tularecito come home.” But there was no reply. Worse, he had no feeling that the gnomes were near. He knew that a doe and fawn were feeding near him; he knew a wildcat was stalking a rabbit behind a bush, although he could not see them, but from the gnomes he had no message.
    A sugar-moon arose out of the hills.
    â€œNow the animals will come out to feed,” Tularecito said in the papery whisper of the half witless. “Now the people will come out, too.”
    The brush stopped at the edge of a little valley and an orchard took its place. The trees were thick with leaves, and the land finely cultivated. It was Bert Munroe’s orchard. Often, when the land was deserted and ghost-ridden, Tularecito had come here in the night to lie on the ground under the trees and pick the stars with gentle fingers.
    The moment he walked into the orchard he knew he was nearing home. He could not hear them, but he knew the gnomes were near. Over and over he called to them, but they did not come.
    â€œPerhaps they do not like the moonlight,” he said.
    At the foot of a large peach tree he dug his hole—three feet across and very deep. All night he worked on it, stopping to listen awhile and then digging deeper and deeper into the cool earth. Although he heard nothing, he was positive that he was nearing them. Only when the daylight came did he give up and retire into the bushes to sleep.
    In midmorning Bert Munroe walked out to look at a coyote trap and found the hole at the foot of the tree. “What the devil!” he said. “Some kids must have been digging a tunnel. That’s dangerous! It’ll cave in on them, or somebody will fall into it and get hurt.” He walked back to the house, got a shovel and filled up the hole.
    â€œManny,” he said to his youngest boy, “you haven’t been digging in the orchard, have you?”
    â€œUh-uh!” said Manny.
    â€œWell, do you know who has?”
    â€œUh-uh!” said