And the two tough pony girls, the two limber prairie girls, went away humming a little humpty dumpty song across the moonshine gold on the tops of the rainpools. [Illustration] [Illustration] How Hot Balloons and His Pigeon Daughters Crossed Over into the Rootabaga Country Hot Balloons was a man who lived all alone among people who sell slips, flips, flicks and chicks by the dozen, by the box, by the box car job lot, back and forth to each other. Hot Balloons used to open the window in the morning and say to the rag pickers and the rag handlers, “Far, far away the pigeons are calling; far, far away the white wings are dipping in the blue, in the sky blue.” And the rag pickers and the rag handlers looked up from their rag bags and said, “Far, far away the rags are flying; far, far away the rags are whistling in the wind, in the sky wind.” Now two pigeons came walking up to the door, the door knob and the door bell under the window of Hot Balloons. One of the pigeons rang the bell. The other pigeon, too, stepped up to the bell and gave it a ring. Then they waited, tying the shoe strings on their shoes and the bonnet strings under their chins, while they waited. Hot Balloons opened the door. And they flew into his hands, one pigeon apiece in each of his hands, flipping and fluttering their wings, calling, “Ka loo, ka loo, ka lo, ka lo,” leaving a letter in his hands and then flying away fast. [Illustration: One of the pigeons rang the bell] Hot Balloons stepped out on the front steps to read the letter where the light was good in the daylight because it was so early in the morning. The letter was on paper scribbled over in pigeon foot blue handwriting with many secrets and syllables. After Hot Balloons read the letter, he said to himself, “I wonder if those two pigeons are my two runaway daughters, Dippy the Wisp and Slip Me Liz. When they ran away they said they would cross the Shampoo river and go away into the Rootabaga country to live. And I have heard it is a law of the Rootabaga country whenever a girl crosses the Shampoo river to come back where she used to be, she changes into a pigeon—and she stays a pigeon till she crosses back over the Shampoo river into the Rootabaga country again.” And he shaded his eyes with his hands and looked far, far away in the blue, in the sky blue. And by looking long and hard he saw far, far away in the sky blue, the two white pigeons dipping their wings in the blue, flying fast, circling and circling higher and higher, toward the Shampoo river, toward the Rootabaga country. “I wonder, I guess, I think so,” he said to himself, “I wonder, I think so, it must be those two pigeons are my two runaway daughters, my two girls, Dippy the Wisp and Slip Me Liz.”