As soon as they had left Proville, the companions found themselves once more deep in the forest, where the road of Purple Brick was in bad repair, and very hard to follow, for the trees on each side of the road grew up very high, and came together overhead, so that the sun could not be seen.
In the very middle of the forest, they heard a wild growling on either side of them, and the Lion shrank up against the Woodsfan, shivering.
"Why, what are you afraid of?" asked the Tin Fan, when the Lion nearly knocked him over with his fright and shaking.
"There's -- there's Kalidahs out there, in the forest!" stuttered the Lion, his teeth chattering.
"Whatever are Kalidahs?" asked Dorothy.
The Lion quieted down somewhat as he began to see that nobody else was afraid, and that they were all listening to him. "Oh, you've probably never heard of them in the outside world," he said. "They are fierce, gigantic beasts who attack travellers in the forest. They'll attack us too!"
"Have they ever attacked you before?" asked the Scarecrow.
"No -- of course not. Do you think I'd be here if they had? No, thank Ghu, I've never even seen one of the monsters." With this, he wiped his brow with his tail in relief.
"But if you've never seen one, how do you know they are so terrible? I bet you don't really know anything more about them than we do," said the Tin Woodsfan, scoffing at the poor frightened Lion.
"Well," said the Lion, looking very small for such a great animal, "you just wait until they attack us, and you can see for yourself what they are like!"
Just then there was a terrible roar from right behind them, and the Lion took to vibrating again.
"They're coming after us!" he shouted. "Hurry, hurry, let's run!"
"They do sound very frightening," said Dorothy uncertainly.
Then the Lion screamed in terror, for he had just heard a rustling in the brush behind them. "They're coming, they're coming!" he screamed, covering his eyes with his paws. "They'll get us!"
The Tin Fan and the Scarecrow were leaning over the frightened Lion, talking to him, when out of the brush on all sides came a dozen animals about the size of a small dog, with big ears and heads like gramophone speakers. They looked for all the world like Donkeys, and they were jumping up and down yelling, "HOOHAW! HOOHAW!" very loudly. The Scarecrow, the Lion, and the Tin Woodsfan looked up and saw them, and none of them could believe their eyes.
The Lion, seeing the tiny animals, frowned angrily at his fright of them, and rearing up on his hind legs he let out a terrific roar at them.
The little animals had been making enough noise for a thousand monsters, but when the Lion roared, they backed up against one another, and looked very small.
When everything was quiet, the Lion asked them who they were, and the leader said in a very small voice, "We are the fierce Kalidahs, the -- the conquerers of the forest kingdom."
At this, the Lion laughed so loudly that all the Kalidahs tumbled over each other to get out of the way, for they thought he would eat them. "You're nothing but loud-mouthed jackasses," he told them. "You only think you are great conquerors because you frighten people away before they can see you. Anyone who saw what you really were would laugh."
"Yes," said the Scarecrow, "and speaking for myself, I wasn't a bit afraid of you just from hearing you. All your roaring and bellowing did to me was to make me mad at all the noise."
This hurt the Kalidahs very much, and one of them said, "Oh dear, it's very humiliating to be laughed at."
This touched Dorothy, who was a kind girl, and hated to see anyone made fun of. "Maybe your megaphone heads are only a stage you are going through," she said. "When you grow older you may change, like pollywogs, and you'll shed your big mouths and be normal, friendly little animals."
The Loud-mouthed jackasses thought about this for a moment, but then one of them said, "That's silly! Who are you to tell us anything? After all, we're the conquerors of the forest kingdom!" And the loud-mouthed jackasses sniffed haughtily at the travellers and strutted off, braying "HOOHAW! HOOHAW!" at the top of their voices.
(Data entered by Judy Bemis)