Archie and the North Wind Read Online Free Page A

like to have some fun as well as the boys?’
    ‘Oh yes.’
    ‘Well, come on. You jump on my back and we can have a nice run around the meadow and you’ll love it.’
    ‘Oh no, no, I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘Oh, I’m frightened to go on your back. You’re too big.’
    ‘I’m not really big,’ the bull says. ‘And anyway, I’ll kneel down and then you can get on my back,’ he says. ‘You’ll love it. Come on.’
    And after a while he persuades her – circling round about her in that way, he sort of mesmerised her, you see.
    She says, ‘All right.’
    So the bull kneels down, this white bull. And she got gets his back as he says, ‘Now hold on to my horns.’
    She held on to the horns, but this bull took off with her. And it kept going and it kept going until it came to the shore. It was then that the boys noticed. And they ran and ran, thinking they would catch it, because they never thought it would go into the water, you see. But it did go into the water and it kept going into the water and it kept going. And she’s holding on to the horns and shouting, ‘Let me down, let me down, let me down.’
    And this bull says, ‘No, you’re not getting down.’
    And these boys, when they finally reached to the shore, the last thing they saw was their sister and the bull disappearing over the horizon, over the water. So they were terrified to go home and tell their father and their mother. But they just had to. So the king and the queen were absolutely hysterical about their wee lassie – and so were the boys. They all just loved her.
    The king was getting on a bit by this time, you see, quite unable to go in search for her. So the three oldest boys, they say, ‘Look, Father, we’ll go and we’ll get her.’
    And the oldest one, his name was Jack, he says, ‘I’ll not come back, Father, until I get her. I promise you that.’
    So off the boys went.
    Now they had been well taught with swordsmanship and all the things boys were taught at that time, you see. So they took their swords and things with them and away they went.
    And they went from one place to another, from one place to another, till their money went down and their feet were sore with walking. The horses were worn out. They had to give them up. And they started walking and walking and their feet were terribly sore. Their hair was growing long. Now and then they would stop and have a shave in some old body’s house, because they would ask any old person if they needed wood chopped or whatever and get a wee bit of food and a bed for themselves in exchange, you see.
    And this went on for years until the younger son says, ‘This is no use. We’re never going to find her. We may as well face the fact,’ he says. ‘I’m going home.’
    So his brother Jack says, ‘Well, please yourself. I don’t blame you.’
    So the younger one he went away home.
    And the other two kept going on and on and on, across ferries and across water and into different countries and all over. But no word could they get of the bull or their sister.
    Until the second oldest one, he says, ‘It’s no use, Jack, I’m going home too.’
    Well, Jack says, ‘I’m keeping going on. I promised to go on till I found her. I’m going to do just that.’
    So the second-oldest laddie, he went away home to his father and mother with the sad news. But Jack he kept on and on and on. And every day he always found a wee bite from somebody. And one day this old henwife that he was working for, when she was giving him a bowl of porridge and that, and a cup of tea, and he was telling her his story – you see, he told everybody that he met in case someone had heard of the bull.
    ‘No, laddie,’ she says, ‘I never heard nothing of a white bull or wee lassie. I never even heard mention of them no way,’ she says. ‘But see that mountain there?’
    He says, ‘Yes?’
    ‘Well,’ she says, ‘up there in that mountain there’s a wind trapped into a hole,’ she says. ‘It’s