"Well, do I surprise you?" inquired Winks, shaking the pebbles from his shoulders and rubbing his eyes with his yellow-gloved hands. Kabumpo, too amused to speak, nodded. "And you surprise me," admitted the guard, gaping three times just to prove it, "you big, enormous, impossible whatever you are--you! Why, you should have been underground months ago! But that'll all be taken care of," he added smoothly. "Just follow the arrows and you cannot miss--just follow the arrows--just fol--" As Kabumpo, fuming from what he considered a mortal insult, lunged forward, the little soldier's eyes fell shut again. Held more by curiosity than by a desire to continue the conversation, Kabumpo waited for the next bucket of pebbles to shower over the guard. "'Low the arrows," went on Winks as calmly as if he had not been interrupted at all. "There are forty guards to point the way. Forty Winks," he repeated, closing one eye. "Ha, Ha! To point the way. Ha, Ha! HOH, HUM! Do you get the point?" As Kabumpo started off with a little snort of disgust, he felt a slight prick in his left hind leg, for Winks, just as he feel asleep, let fly an arrow from his old-fashioned bow. Before Kabumpo had reached the end of the passageway he had passed forty of the Gaper Guards. After his experience with the first, he did not stop for further talk, but made the best speed possible, resolved to rush through Gaper's Gulch when he came to it without even pausing to express his contempt. The pebble awakeners were so neatly timed, each guard had a chance to speed an arrow after the flying elephant, and by the time Kabumpo reached the opening at the other end of the rocky pass, he had forty arrows pricking through his robe or stuck here and there in his ears and ankles. With his tough hide, they hurt no more than pin pricks, but vastly indignant at such treatment, the Elegant Elephant began jerking them out with his trunk. "What do they think I am, a pincushion? Hoh!" he snorted, pulling out the last one, and relieved to note that Randy had escaped the missiles entirely. Indeed, the young King of Regalia was sleeping as placidly as if he were home in his own castle. Kabumpo, too, felt unaccountably drowsy, and as he pushed his way down into the rocky little glen his steps grew slower and slower. So far as he could see by the light of the fast waning moon, there were neither houses nor people in Gaper's Gulch. In the center of the valley the rough stones and brush had been cleared away and a series of flat rocks were spaced out almost like a gigantic checker-board. Pausing beside the largest rock, Kabumpo spelled out the name of Sleeperoo the Great and Snorious. "What is this, a cemetery?" gulped the Elegant Elephant. "But that could not be, for no one in Oz ever dies. Ho, Hum!"