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CO- o CD; en ai- I \C:-i CENTi '^ r.-^y. fa'-* MCGAW "- ARTHUR E.McFARLANE ,-^* ■*■'■}. l ■ r. .^i^-.^>S^^/;i^^mCM^^^S^ :-;:.;:■;&: -qe-*^' ^■■r"- " It was Red alone that finished the job " Frontispiece. See page 1 20 k c \K \'\' X 1": ! i! ♦i .**^ vx. REDN£Y McGAW A Story of the Big Show and the Cheerful Spirit ARTHUR E. McFARL. JE ILLl. ;.ATED PY ARTHUR WILUAM BROWN A BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1909 1^ Copyright, igog. By Perry Mason Company. Copyright, igog. By Little, Brown, and Company. All rights reserved Published October, 1909 S. J. Pabkhill & Co., Boston, U. 8. A. r.^,,.A. ■)i■kJ ^ L .' ^ L * . .- ag g^^ !F from this small book there breaches a spirit of optimism, it is for the writer to own at once and honorably that It optimism can hardly be called his own, since it has been lent to him by certain other people. Were a last analysis made c ■^n of philosophers, it might be found that their happy or unhappy speaking of mortal things came less from within than from without ; that the little, clutching circle of persons and things that made their world was kind or unkind, and they delivered themselves upon all things and all persons accordingly. At any rate such is the truth in the very unphilosophic present case. And the merit of those whom I may call the "optimizers** in the present case should shine the more brightly, inasmuch as they have given increasingly of their help and trust, even as, by reason of intimacy, they must have felt increasingly that the writer was giving them the less cause therefor. Since this is the little, almost trifling book it is, my " optimizers" may still live happy and unidentified, save to themselves by their own good consciences. But if I shall ever be empowered to produce a volume in any wise worthy, then, — in the menacing phrase of the speaker of the British House of Commons,— I shall not hesitate "to name them." A. E. McF. Birch Cliff, Canada, June, 1909. CONTENTS Chaptes Page 1. SoviE Explanations and a Beginning 1 II. Diplomacy 9 III. The Performers' Tent 24 IV. The Animal Men 41 V. A Fight 53 VI. On the Jump 67 VII. The Pole Wagon 78 VIII. The Big Top 93 IX. Pluto 109 X. The Hero 121 XI. The Trestle 138 XII. The Yellow Candle 152 XIII. A Red-Lined Jacket 162 XIV. The Whistles Blow 174 XV. Deva on a Marathon 187 XVI. The Freak Car 198 vii CONTENTS Chapter Pack XVII. An Elepiiant Hunt 213 XVIII. Some Thrills and Shivers ... 223 XIX. The Last of Fat 235 XX. Two Arrivals 248 XXI. Farewell 257 vni V.fe:;:16a.= •« ^a vsmm... ■s ILLUSTRATIONS " It was Ked alone that finished the job " FrontUpiece Page " ' Mr. McAdam, allow me to persent a distin- guished citizen of Buffalo '" 25 " This cure cook the form of making the nsw- comer the Human Egg " 32 "•Say, are you Madam Rosalinda, the lion tamer ^"' 81 "The Older gymnasts always gathered in as 'safety men'" 98 " Ke toppled over backwards " 161 "1 hey heard a story which seemed to them a little the most astounding ever told in Michigan" 197 « Again and again they flipped him over " . . 243 "The most remarkable letter that came through the mails, or did nH!" 269 '.•"Sftjf *( -^^ REDNEY McGAW CHAPTER I SOME EXPLANATIONr:? AND A BEGINNING Which introduces Mr. McGaw, tells of the doubtful joys of " hohoirC it,^^ treats of a new way to get to Dubuque, and chron- icles a stupendous resolution. HE stood oulriid« the door of that East Buffalo saloon because Messrs. " Fat " and " Cut Nose " had just gone in. And his name :, as Robert Emmet Igna- tius (otherwise "Redney ") McGaw. By this time his old office-boy uniform, which made him look like an " A. D. T." messenger, was exceedingly disreputable. His hair had lost none of that warmth of coloring which had given him hi?=! nick- name. But it now dripped down dis- piritedly on all sides, like a thatched roof 1 REDNEY McGAW on a wet day. A month ago, by reason of an almost unbroken growth of toad freckles, you could never be entirely cer- tain that the said face needed washing. But no such saving doubt could be vouch- safed it now. And while, ordinarily, Mr. " Red " McGaw possessed a smile and an inexhaustible confidence in life, which plainly and palpably ought co be worth from seven to eight million dollars to any man, at this present moment he was not smiling at all. As a true philosopher, he would never have admitted that he was unhappy. But he had at least come as near to being so as ever he had in his life. Nor was the cause any of the cus- tomary ones. If he was without either parents or relatives, he had always con- gratulated himself on this. For, when you come down to cases, of what value are parents and relatives anyway? If, for three years his only home had been 2 mM SOME EXPLANATIONS the " Newsies' ' ' Lodging House, back in New York, he wanted to say that the '* Newsies " was all right, all right. Two weeks ago he had lost his job. But could anyone affirm that that was the first time he had lost a job? It was only ten days now since he had taken his high resolve to " hit it fer out West," and join his old office croney, " Spider " Madigan, in the Elysium of that Iowa farm. And already he was well on his way. But — but — He shifted a little fu-'her down the block, got out Spider's frayed-edged letter, and read part of it again. It began : "Say, Irne a rube now. Thats right, and everybodys peechy. say, the old lady, thats Mrs Sonnenschein, shes so mity good to me that offen I feel like been good meself. say, they let me go fishin every Saturday, thats right, and they say they got room for one or two more like me. so youse want to come out the swiftest you can, say, youd ought to see me runnin the horse rake, it has a mustash like dutch Johns ..." 3 REDNEY McGAW Well, he, Red, was getting out there " the swiftest he could." He had now got as far as Buffalo. But — but— . A week ago he had fallen in with that pair of free companions back there in the saloon, Fat and Cut Nose. They were both tramps of old experience, professionals in the thrilling life of the highway. And during the first three days he had told himself unnumbered times that he was "certainly havin' his Irish luck." For they had made him one of themselves almost immediately. They had called him "Bo," which is affec- tionate for "hobo." They had taught him how to jump freights and dodge train crews, and " bed himself easy " for the night, — just about all there was to know, as you might say. Yet, for the last few days he had not felt quite so sure about those gentlemen. They were good to him, no doubt, in some ways. But lately they had set him 4 SOME EXPLANATIONS to "pan-handling" for them. Only the night before they had kept him out in the rain till after two, telling hard-luck stories. . . . And thero were other things, as well. ..." Maybe," he said, with an attempt at ease, "maybe, I'd be a wise guy to do the rest of my travellin' by my lone." But in his heart he was afraid, — afraid of what they might do, of 'vhat Cut Nose, anyway, might do, if he tried to leave them now. As far as to-day was concerned. Fat had told him it would be all O. K. if he showed up again by six. And they had left him a quarter of his takings " to run along on." It was enough to keep him eating for three or four hours. But how was he going to get , . iirom them for keeps I How could hu go about to get far enough ahead to make sure there wouldn't be any danger of their " catch- ing up on him " again! "^hat was the very uncomfortable question. 5 REDNEY McGAW But he had always noticed that ques- tions like that answered themselves a lot easier when he 'd just had a meal. And he decided to go over to that "Boston Lunch " place, n^ross the road, for some beans and buckwheat cakes. And there an answer awaited him to stop his breath! A . jw stools down the shiny counter on the other side sat two young men in frogged jackets and bandsmen hats. Red had paid no great attention to them in the beginning. But as they made an end of their eating they began to talk. Their nrst words identified those bands- men hats; he thought he'd seen them somewhere before. And now he did pay attention. His ears were as open for everything those young men uttered as his mouth was for those buckwheat cakes. And just as he was mopping his plate with the last syrup-soaked frag- ment, he heard something which kept 6 SOME EXPLANATIONS that last remaining piece of buckwheat from ever getting to his mouth at all. " Well, accordin' to what he says, once we've made the Penn Str'„e loop and Chicag*, the old show's goin' to head straight on for Dubuque." The "old show" was "T e Big Show," — " The World's Greatest United Circuses and Three-ring Hippodrome," which, that morning, had made its all- conquering entry into Buffalo. And Dubuque, or at any rate, Dubuque Junc- tion, was the post-office address of "Spider" Madigan! — Red got out his letter and made sure of it again. " I guess I want to go to Dubuque," he said. He said it several times. But the real idea that had been awakened in him was too tremendous for any expression whatever. Within five minutes it had swelled and expanded till he could only breathe at the mouth in swallows. And then, being a man of action, he 7 r REDNEY McGAW wasted no more precious moments in mere hypnotized bedazzlement. He had nearly half the day yet to work it. He girded himself, — girded himself with the strength of a determination unshakable, — and started for the circus grounds. 8 f . CHAPTER n DIPLOMACY Great advantages of being an expert on the care of horses, the laundering of circus tents, the watering of elephants, and the adjustment of balky typewriters. Four ways by which you may " get your hooks in " with a circus, — maybe. THE question was, what order of tactics would best avail to open the business? — "How to make the start at gettin' his hooks in I" If you are speaking of details. Red did not know. If you are speaking of gen- eral principles, he possessed some guid- ing rules of diplomacy as practised by Cavour himself. When he had all but reached the grounds, instead of keeping straight on to that crowd-thronged, many- pennoned mountain range of canvas, he 9 REDNEY McGAW veered off in a flanking movement for those cindery acres of railway sidings, where stood the hundred vermilion- painted coaches of the circus trains. He followed the long line of horse- and stock-cars. He dodged under the huge elephant "vans" and skirted along the "flats" to the sleepers. But there was nothing there that might offer his "hooks" a grip, — nothing to give him even a finger-hold. That was only a first try, though. Another minute and he was leaving the sidings for the broad, grassy "billy goat pastures " which flanked them. He took the road that had been cut from cars to "lot" by the circus itself. There was ineffable fascination, too, merely in that road. There were ruts that could have been made only by the wheels of the great forty-horse band-wagon. There were chips of red and gold from some splintered menagerie chariot. And in 10 DIPLOMACY the mushy places there were foot-prints as big as nail kegs ! Red's face filled and his eyes glittered. By now that " Big Show" seemed to fill the whole horizon. It seemed to shut out all other things whatsoever. "But I got to keep cool," he told him- self. What he had to do could be done, if it could be done, only bj ' keepin' cool and givin' all your intellects to it." He got to the circus through its back- yard, so to speak. And he found him- self first at the hcrse tent. A groom was plaiting red, white, and blue streamers into the mane of a great gray Percheron. Another circus man, evidently in author- ity, was looking on. The flies kept the big horse in one ceaseless twitch of exasperation. Red watched the work, now from one side, now from the other. And then, " Heh ! but, anyways," he observed, as casually as if he had known those horsemen for 11 REDNEY McGAW at least three days, " youse lads give them some chance. Youse don't dock them. " Neither circus man looked round. " Whenever I see a guy with a docked horse," he continued, now speaking quite chattily, " I always want to see that horse get swagger, too, and start dockin' off that guy's ears." This remark also went unacknowl- edged. Those two circus men seemed to have been bom without the instinct for polite conversation. For an empty minute or two longer he waited. Then he went on to the next tent ahead. There a section of side wall had come down ; a squad of men were busy fixing it. And there, too, overseeing the job, was an individual plainly of foreman rank. Red had heard of such a person as the boss canvas-man. "Heh," he now began ; " looks as if that rain had got things pretty mucked up." 12 DIPLOMACY The boss canvas-man — for he it was — replied no more than had the boss horseman. "There's a laundry here in Buf'lo advertises it can wash circus tents. Anyhow, * anything from a pocket hand- kerchief to a circus tent ' is what it says on their signs. You 'd ought to get them in on the job." Still no response. Some of the on- lookers giggled. "Eeh! Seems like I don't just re- member their address right now. But I could easy get it." The boss canvas-man turned slowly, sized the speaker up depressingly, winked at the audience and gave his attention his work again. 'Ah, I i^ jss," said Mr. McGaw, "I guess youse are some more of wliat the ice man left at the butcher store." But he did not say it with any real ill feel- ing. And then, without letting himself 13 REDNEY McGAW become too depressed, he took up his march in quest of another opening. He skirted the endless succession of red-topped stakes and hawser-like guy- ropes of the main tent, — the big top, as circus people call it, — in which the afternoon performance was now glori- ously proceeding. There came out the smell of peanuts and sawdust and fresh- turned earth,— the long swinging rhythm and throb of the band, and with it all the myriad little noises made by fif- teen thousand people on the creaking blue-slat seats. From far down at the other end sounded the sharp, whip- cracking voice of the ring-master, and then followed the poundingly regular beat of horses' hoofs upon a hollow plat- form. It was probably the gi-eat, much- pictured " Waltzing Ponies " act that had begim " Say," Red thought, " think — think of bein' able to walk in free any time youse wanted ! ' ' 14 ■IP mmmm DIPLOMACY He was still standing there, one of a crowd of hankering listeners, when, from the menagerie entrance, two big elephants and a smaller one came swaying suddenly forth. A uniformed keeper followed, and he steered them towards a hydrant, half- surrounded by big blue water tubs. Red got to those tubs in two jumps. But, alas! they had been filled already. " Heh," he said, " heh, ... but I bet them fellers '11 want a lot more 'n three." "Maybe they'll want it," said the keeper, mopping at his sweltering tem- ples, — he was a brown, sinewy little man, who also had a mustache " like dutch Johns " ; — " but maybe they wont get it." " Ah, youse '11 want to give them a little extry, only to squirt on their backs. An' I tell youse, now, they need it, in weather like this!" The keeper had to turn to make the two bigger beasts shove over for the little brother, and he offered no reply. 15 REDNEY McGAW "Out at Bronx Park," went on Red, reminiscently, " the elephant I generally always used to water was fierce after ginger ale. And, heh, it seemed like it did him good." The animal man looked at him again. He was thoroughly fagged. Throughout the length of the " Unparalleled Exhibi- tion of Performing Pachyderms," just concluded, he had been tossed back and forth and rolled about in the prickly, sweaty folds of those now eagerly suck- ing trunks till he had wanted to die. But he had the kind of disposition which it takes much more than work and heat to spoil. "Well," he said, sighing, "I be- lieve I could drink a few of ginger ale myself, just now." " Me, too," responded Red at once. "And say, I was just thinkin' of goin' after some. You wait here till I slide out to the stands and I'll get it now." The keeper looked after him, digest- 16 li^ IMMI DIPLOMACY ing his astonishment. But he had his own idea of what that generosity meant. " He '11 be wantin' me to see him in," he thought. And he likewise came near to making up his mind that he would. Red returned with a veritable armful. He had one two-for-five bottle of sarsa- parilla, two of ginger ale, and one of cream soda. " Well! " exclaimed the " elephant man." " Who are you, anyway, — J. Pierp Morgan, or old John D. himself! " "Ah, this ain't nothin'." And Red waited till a second bottle had gurg- lingly followed the first. Then, too, he unlimbered the battery of his smile. "Say, I'm thinkin' of travellin' with youse people." " Nof — Are you now? — And when did you join out? " "Well, I ain't just seen the big boss yet. But you''d give me a boost with him, wouldn't you? 17 >» REDNEY McGAW *' Why, sure ! I 'd offer you my job." With the same admirable loftiness of spirit Red put the offer away from him. "Ah, thanks, but 1 couldn't think of takin' it. And I don't know as they'd want to lose youse." The elephant man grinned. " Well, there is that side of it. But you don't mean the * big boss,' you mean the * G. M.' " "' G. M.' —what 's that fori" "Why, off the lot — (he meant out- side the circus grounds) — it stands for General Manager. But with us it stands for Great Man. And he 's the man you '11 have to talk to. Only I 'm afraid he 's turned down about seventeen of your size and age to-day already." " Has he? Aw, well, maybe then he '11 be tired of doin' it by now. Maybe he '11 feel like try in' a change." " All right, bub, all right. He 's gen- erally in the head office about six, — and 18 \i DIPLOMACY I 'm sure I give you my blessing. And now I've got to run along." To the left of the main entrance stood two " family-sized " tents. And from his observation of former circuses, Red had a pretty good idea that he would find the manager's office in one or the other of them. He tried the first. But the only person at heme there was a young man with eye glasses, who was plainly having trouble with his type- writer. He twitched his chin in Red's direction with a jabbing brevity. " Right out now! " he said; "Right out! Back to the asphalt again ! " " Sure ! " said Red. " Is there a fellah around here named Daugherty? " There'll be a fellah around here named Dinnis in about one minute ! — Did you hear me say something? " "Well, I was just goin'." And to prove l\is good faith he started. Having 19 REDNEY McGAW » started, ho rounded jrradually to a halt again. " But, say, — say, I think I could likely help youse with that machine." The young inan lifted his thin lips dangerously, and let the carriage go back with a clash. " Heh, we had one o' them in the last office I was in," continued Red, easily. " And they ain't so bad, o' course, for a knockahvit typewrite. . . . But, skids, they 're sure the limit, ain't they, when they get to balkin'l" ... He had, by strategic degrees, worked his way back and up to the operator's arm. But, now, the intensifying silence making him ner- vous again, he retreated once more to the rear of the machine. ..." Heh, it looks like you'd got your tension too stiff." "No, I haven't got my tension too stiff, neither! And say — " The oper- ator put out an arm at him. " Is your rod down all right? " 20 DIPLOMACY The rod was not down. And that was precisely where the trouble was ! " I would n't 'a' knowed," confessed Mr. McGaw with modesty, "if I hadn't had so much experience with our own. . . . Maybe I did n't tell you," he added, " that I can typewrite, too. That 's right. Only two-finger, though, o' course." " I guess you 're sure a smart lad," said the young man, undisguisedly mollified. " Oh, I ain't such a much. But I was just thinkin' that when you 're busy I'd be able to spell youse, now an' again." " What? You going to go along with usi" "Well, I was kind o' thinkin' of it." Again his smile began engagingly to show the place where his tooth was out. " Say, I guess, now, you 'cl be good for your in- fluence with them, wouldn't youl " " My influence ! ' ' The young man waved him foi"ty miles away. "With this hay-tedder machine it keeps me sit- 21 1 11 l^i REDNEY McGAW ting up till the milkman comes around to hold my own job ! " And, to the short-sighted, this might appear to promise no more advancement than anything that had preceded it. But, wherever it came from, Red had a feeling, — and a very well justified feeling, — that when you 've managed to do anybody else a service, by just so much, in some mys- terious way, have you managed to help yourself. In any case he now uncon- sciously let it go at that. Nor, in the hour that followed, did any other openings present themselves. The afternoon show was over. The sun dropped lower. It was going on to six. He went out to the street again, and using his last nickel for it, he fortified his spirit with three doughnuts and a frankfurter. Then at the hydrant where the elephants had been watered, he washed himself. He made a good job of it, too, getting far beyond the regular 22 Hi«i ■I DIPLOMACY water-line; and he finished up by wet- ting and parting his hair with his fingers. Then he filled his chest with the biggest breath he could, and while he had the courage in him, he made for the canvas business office of the G. M. 23 CHAPTER III THE PERFOBMERS' TENT In which Red, having joined out as " The Human Egg^'' and made an undoubted hit, — to the amazement of Splinters, king of clowns, resigns after his second act; and when about to say good-bye to circus life forever, he has a second and an un- expected interview with the G. M. THE business office w^as almost filled with circus people. The boss horse- man was there, and the boss canvas-man, and the head of the menagerie, and a dozen more besides. And at a little table sat the G-. M. himself. Red knew him at once, not only because he wore no uniform, but because he was quiet of eye, smiled more than he laughed, and listened while the others talked. 24 (M a 13 "3 sc a "3 a e 2 a o ,'..^5^^:mJ! REDNEY McGAW and silver, the solemn-faced boy he had noticed almost touched him as he passed. "I guess he made good, all right," thought Red; "but, criminy, — I bet there 's a terrible lot that don't ! " He began to have a feeling for those who don't that he 'd never had before. He had now changed back into his old office-boy uniform. But he con- tinued to stand yearningly beside his box. "Goin'or stayin'l" the dressing-room watchman called in to him; "nobody allowed in here in street clothes." It was like pushing him out. "Oh, I'm goin' all right. But say, youse hand it to the new guys pretty fierce and hard, don't youse? " He still smiled, but his smile was now half of it quiver. The Man Monkey stumbled in again. He worked back his hood. It was drip- ping. And his eyes were staring with the heat. Red came to a halt; for he could 36 THE PERFORMERS' TENT sympathize with that Man Monkey as one who knew. " Heh, talk about it 's bein' hot! I guess up there above the lights is where it really hits you. But youse have got the stuff in you for it. . . . Well, I need to be moseyin'." He swal- lowed the lump again, and got himself five steps nearer to the door. From a group just then entering there came a kind of sipping sound, — that of somebody sucking in his breath with his teeth closed. The " leaper " of the " Fly- ing Florio troupe" had put his thumb out of joint, and his friends were pull- ing it in for him. And at that Red stopped once more. " Say, — youse '11 think I '11 only be goin' when youse throw me out," — he felt it incumbent, now, to apologize to the tent in general, — " but it just happens I 'm car- ryin' the thing the rmll-play experts use for sprains." He produced a small and smudgy roll of bicycle tape, 37 I REDNEY McGAW " Youse need to start it so fashion — turn the end in " — he showed the suffering acrobat ; " and, — nah, — that 's all right, you just keep it all. . . . You see, — heh, —I won't be needin' it now meself.'' Then, with a sudden feeling as of salt in his eyes, he made blindly for that tent-flap door. At the very entrance of the canvas alley-way, he walked into the G. M.'s arms. And the G. M. must have heard almost everything. ♦' Hello ! " he said ; " hello ! Not leav- ing us?" ** Yeh," Red s -swered thickly. ' They gimme my try out, all right; but I didn't make good." "Well," said that G. M., queerly, "to tell the truth, I never could myself. Kind of a tough world, is n't it! " " Ah, I dunno. I guess not, if youse know how." And he started on again. The G. M. let him go a dozen or twenty 38 THE PERFORMERS' TENT feet. Then, "How about having a try at washing dishes? " he asked. "Wha'l" said Red; "wha'f Is that job open y'>tl " " That depends. Just come over here into the comer, — so." He put him down on the door-man's stool. "Now— got any people here in Buffalo!" " I ain't got any anywheres. The only people I know here is two guys I was on the road with and am wantin' to get away from." The G. M. took hold of his left hand and parted his first and second fingers. "H'm . . . Smoke cigarettes, I see." " Not any more," he scarcely breathed, " if youse '11 let me join out yet ! " "Use a good deal of bad language, likely!" "There ain't any I can't ferget! " " No crap-shooting any more, either ! Because none of those things go in The Big Show." 39 REDNEY McGAW "Just youse give me the clianst and see!" " Very well ! We '11 se<^' what we can do to-morrow. Only remember, it was n' t laying all those pipes that did it. In the meantime 1 suppose we '11 have to find a place to put you for to-night. Buffalo 's a two-day stop, you know. H'm . . . h'm — would you be afraid to sleep on the hay in the menagerie tent, — with the animal meni " Would he be afraid to sleep in the menagerie tent with the animal men! — And the rest of it happened even more rapidly and amazingly than that. In another five minutes he was under the charge of "Elephants" McNally. And Elephants McNally was that genial keeper for whom he had bought the ginger ale ! What was tramping it, — what was the life of the road, — where were Messrs. Fat and Cut Nose nowl 40 CHAPTER IV THE ANIMAL MEN A night in a menagerie tent; strange con- duct on the part of elephants, lions, giraffes, pythons, and laughing jack- asses: some thrilling adventures which, however, do not appear to have happened. IT was a first night with a circus that was worth any five years of common, ordinary life ! Perhaps, some time after an evening performance you have tried to go out by the route by which you came in, to see the animals again. And you have found that you could not. This is because ani- mals are sensible beings and hold strong views as to the wisdom of going to bed early. Their acts are considerately put on in the first part of the program; and 41 r REDNEY McGAW I when they have finished they retire in both senses of the word. When Red followed Elephants Mc- Nally into that great, smelly menagerie tent a little aftt. nine, they were already beginning to close it up. The "gaso- line men " were making their rounds ^nd putting out all but a single jet in ^ch huge, flaring chandelier. And over c a the right, as the darkness thickened, the *• big cats " —the lions and tigers, leopards and panthers, — had begun with large, whiny yawns to take to camp. Down the center of the tent between the poles was a broad, soft bank of hay. The gathering keepers commenced to spread their blankets upon it, and to stuff more hay into bags for pillows. Elephants got an extra bag and blan- ket for Red. " But you won't need it much," ho said. "When we're sleepin' on the lot like this, we only take off our coats and vests and loosen up a little. 42 THE ANIMAL MEN And, Jemima, it 'd be hot enough with- out anything at all ! " The gasoline men finished their work and departed. "That'll leave it scytne cooler," breathed a keeper by the next pole. The elephants, in a wide half circle, were stirring about and furling and un- furling their ears uneasily. " It hits them hard here, anight like this," saidMcNally, "don't it, Coakeneyl" "Coakeney" was East London for " Cockney." And the little East Londoner was bunking just on the other side of Red. "It certainly does, me boy," he said. " They come from parts that 's warmer. But in Indiar they can shove beneath the trees. An' often enough they spend the night chin-deep in water." All the keepers had now " taken to the hay." But it was plain, — and Red real- ized it with new thrills of rapture, — that, for his delectation, they were not unwill- 43 /-: /r/ EEDinEY McGAW ing to swap experiences for awhile before they went to sleep. "An', my word,' ' said the little English- man agaiL--"it's the Port Elizabeth Ryleway people, — South Africar, you know, — that learned that h'elephants are fond of water. Down there tho h'ele- phants st'ydown around the bitsot rivers all d'y, and then trav 1 up them after nightfall. Consequence was, at first, that whenever some little brook was let under the ryleway line by a bit of a cuttin', an' that cuttin' was too narrow for the big old bull of the herd to push hisself through, h'up they'd all cliiib over the embankment, an' bring dov i so much gravel and ballastin' that, mv woid, that ryleway woul ' n't be syfefor w-eks after wards! In ibe end, right h'ougb the h'elepbant oinitry the} 1^ "l to v den every h'areh ;ilong the li'!" "Yes, I've heard afcoui thai, c- ti- mented McNally; "and I m U-i THE ANi: AL MEN too, they '"e gom' to aave run for tbi ir inouey whi.e th* / 're finish i ' their Cape to Cairo load. When I was last through Buiuwa o, I was after them lads yon- der, ' — he crooked his thumb towards the tuwer-like, open-top '^age& c*' the girafies, — "and T'U just Al ou v aat theff 't« learned to do. You k \ow, o. there they i ven't got any hign ' Tib* and they've aa'l to content b- oise've with fit'teen-1 )ot steel sticks foi ihei. tel- tgrap'') poles. Well, wLr n-.^h of lem uecKvlads have bei othered by iii** \s .res, they simp^ ret ether and pir their lu^ads througl , and rip away a half a mue or so of h* at once! " ''Say!'' said Red, Gee, I'd like to be workin' out ' "Well, you wouiti n't want to be car- ryin' telegrams, me boy," said Coakeney. "My word, along the Mombassa ryle- way, what with havin' Icemen for break- fast, an' then navvies foj. dinner, the lions 45 m ; ! KEDNEY McGAW i got so fat that they s'y they actiaily couldn't waddle off quick enough when the engines 'd find them on the track. My word, it got to be fair shockin' ! " Even as if he had heard and understood, one of the great-maned beasts on the other side of the tent opened his mouth in a long sleepily-hungry stretch. They could hear the jaws come together with a soft clicking. Red's spinal column had delicious shivers. " Say," he asked " do youse go out cap- turin' things for the Show I " " That 's what! " said McNally; " and mighty hard they are to capture some- times, Coakeney, did you ever hear about how I lost that laughin' jackass down in Queensland! " "Not recently," said Coakeney, "not recently! " " Why, it was like this : a laughin' jackass, you know, is a sort of a rooster- sized kingfisher, with a head like a blue 46 THE ANIMAL MEN hatchet and a voice to beat a million elec- tion rattles. And they're gettin' to be pretty rare. Well, one day I was out in the blue-gum bush, and I caught sight of a big one on the end of a dead branch. Now it 's a habit of the laughin' jackass to take a terrible fixed look at you when he thinks you're hostile to him; and once he drills his eye onto you it seems like he ain't got the natural power to take it off again. Well, not thinkin', what did I do but start goin' around that tree by way of closin' in on him! Tchck! I'd just made my circle when, pop — down that laughin' jackass falls, gives one kick, and is as dead as a knocker. You see, he 'd twisted his head around just one point too much and broke' his neck." "Skids!" said Red, " I bet you lost money on them goods all right ! ' ' "Trust me! I never went after a laughin' jackass that way again." "Frightful unintelligent!" said 47 REDNEY McGAW Coakeney, " frightful ! And when you 're dealin' with any beast you need to have your wits about you. I mind well a ticklish minute or two I had once with a big python in Natal. He'd wrapped hisself 'round me full length, — nothin' but my h'arms free, and knife and gun fifty yards aw'y! What did I do, my boy! I '11 tell you what I did, and I want to [s'y, now, 1 only thort of it in time. I took that snyke's tyle, rammed it into his mouth, and ekotvked him to death!" There was a minute of deep silence. Then there went up a prodigious and manifold snort, as if all those surroundi.-g animal men were likewise choking to death. " Ah-h! " said Red, " you been jollyin' me ! — you both been ! " " I guess they been doin' a lot more than that," said somebody down the line, with conviction. 48 THE ANIMAL MEN " And I '11 bet you was stringin' me about them giraffes an' lions, too." "Well, I don't know," said McNally; " you never can tell." " Say ! " came a wearied growl from somewhere out of the dark. "When are you guffers goin' to get to sleep, anyhow f " "Eight away we are. But this new elephant expert here has been tellin' us a line of yams that would keep any man awake. Hang if we can believe some of them ! " He gave Red's leg an understanding smack, and turned over. "But, say," said Red, "before youse go, there 's just one thing I 'm wantin' to ask." " Ask it now, then." "About that little geezer with the Saxon Samsons. Why is it he looks so terrible solemn I " " What, you don't know about our 4 49 REDNEY McGAW Hans Sohmer yet? Why, 'Midget Hans' is the only support of his great-grand- mother in Germany; he's been keepin' her since he was eleven. And if you had a great-grandmother on your hands, you'd look solemn, too." " That — that ain't just more joUyin' I Ah, go on, now? " "Never a jolly! " "Skids! But ain't the others his big brothers ? " " Big brothers nothin' . They 're what we call a family in the circus. But that only means they 've got together because they look alike and all fit into the same line of turns." " And the biggest one of all, — what 's his name? " " Oh, that 's Big Heinie Muller. Him and Mrs. Miiller have got a ' leedle Heinie,' too, back with his aunt Elsa in New York. He's only a year old, but he gives the Show a lot more worry even 50 THE ANIMAL MEN than Hans' s great-grandmother. — And I guess that '11 be about all for to-night." Elephants turned over again, made himself easy, and in another five minutes he was gently snoring. But Red could not sleep. For one thing the evening performance had not ended yet. From the "big top" the throb of the band came to them wave on wave, the chariots raced, and the ap- plause of the crowd sounded like falling surf. Once he caught two of the elephants turning over; they rose as heavily as mountains, and as heavily lay down again on the other side. "Say!" he gloated, "I bet Noah's Ark wasn't no better 'n this. Say! Spider wouldn't like to be here, or nothin'. And I guess I ain't hoboin' it no more! " Once, too, the Numidian lion began to blow in his sawdust, louder and louder, even as if it had been the sand of the 51 REDNEY McGAW Sahara ; and then he sent forth his voice in a long shuddering roar. The animal men never wakened, though Red's legs grev^ stiff at it. But by plugging up his ears and pull- ing the blanket over his head, he began to make himself feel sleepy at last. It had been the kind of day which at the end seems like weeks and weeks. 52 CHAPTER V A FIGHT Of an abandoned cellar, and a ^^ fistic com- bat,'^ — or rather two ^^ fistic combatSj^ i:i neither of which have the principals any desire to engage; with chance ob- servations upon the duties of great world-powers from Big Heinie of the world-famous Saxon Samsons. IT would have been better for Red if he had stayed with McNally and Coakeney and the other animal men in the daylight. But he was to start dish- washing at noon. And he felt that it was only his duty to get to know every- thing there was to know about The Big Show in the meantime. The result was an hour of painful regrets in the present, and a variety of consequences in the future. 53 REDNEY McGAW He had started across the commons in the hope of being able to see the inside of the circus trains, when in a hollow he noticed a crowd of battered looking can- vas-men. When he got nearer he saw that they were sitting and standing about on the edge of a half -dug and abandoned cellar. He worked his way thi-ough them; and, in a minute, he was trying to work his way back again. Squatting on the ground throwing dici, and inviting the canvas-men "to get into the game," sat none other than those two former man comiides of his in the trampmg business ! Both are described sufficiently ell, perhaps, by their appellations. They were tramps; and though without any picturesque tatters, they looked their parts. Cut Nose was lean and blue- jawed ; and his scar somehow gave him an expression that was sinister even when 54 A FIGHT he laughed. There was nothr ^j sinis- ter about Fat. But if properly worked up to it, he could be quite as dangerous a man as his fellow. For the most part, however, the flesh he carried kept him easy-going and good-natured. And all he did now was to look at Red with some reproachful indignation. " Hello, old chum, we was pretty near gettiu' to think that you'd been givin' us the shake." Cut Nose had kept his eyes fixed upon Red steadily and evilly for almost a minute. "Oh," he said, at length, and licked his tongue about his lips, " I guess he wouldn't try doin' thaV Red stood where he was, gulping with uncertainty. " Oh, well, anyways, he 's back with us now." Fat evidently wanted to smooth out the situation. " And ain't he just turned up, too, when the Doctor or^ deredf " He winked at the crowd in 55 REDNEY McGAW i! general. "Wasn't wo just lookin' for that Irish-mahogany top of hisi — Fer when this Deutsche!- lad over here goes out of his way to tell us he can lick any- thing of his weight in America—!" And then Red saw that looking on at his left was the solemn-faced " Midget Hans," tlio little Saxon Samson who supported his great-grandmother. " That ' s right ! " Cut Nose caught up Fat's suggestion in a minute; "that's what he said." He shoved the dice-box back into his pocket, with a new relish in things. "An', friend McGaw, when we told him that you could put him out in about three minutes, he said he'd like fine to give you the chance! " There was no need for Red to be told that Hans had said nothing of the kind. Indeed, the little German was now try- ing hard to get back through the circle himself. But Fat reached out and held him. And Red know very well what 5G A FKJUr was coming, too. He Lad seen enough of tha sort of thing in the past. He and Hans were going to be made to fight. It was not that Fat, at any rate, was essentially cruel. He merely wished to be entertained himself, and to entertain the crowd. As both he and Cut Nose looked at it, too, " it did kids a lot o' good to scrap." And Fat giinned encouragement at Hans. " Say, you can do him, can't you! " Hans nervously shook his head. Cut Nose reached out and took hold of Red. "Well, you can bet he thinks he can, anyways. An' say, I would n't let any white-eyed Katzenjammer think that about me! An' you a good year older than him, at that ! ' ' " The more reason I wouldn't want to scrap him," said Red. "And I ain't got nothin' on him, neither." " Sure you have ! Ain' t he a Deutscher 57 KEDNEY McGAW and ain't you a Yanki What more do youse want?" Hans was again stnggling to be free. But Fat gripped him anew by his elbows. "Ah, come on now, leery. We'd rather fight than eat ! " And shoving Hans' fist forward, he managed to strike Red lightly with it. " Say; ' said Cut Nose, " I would n't take that from him ! " " Ah, I guess it didn't come from him! . . . Aw, youse lads let up, now. This ain't our scrappin' day." "Every day's your scrappin' day if you 've got the right sort of stuff in you." The boys were driven at each other from both sides. But they contrived to come together so that it hurt only a little. "Fling them in again, Fat." And this time their heads struck so that it hurt more than any blow from a fist could have. "You see," said Fat, with a kind of 58 i I A FIGHT sympathy, " that 's what you get for not bein' sports." The third time Red flung out an arm to cover his face, and his elbow caught a is helpless opponent in the mouth. At that Hans gasped miserably and made a notion to put up his own defence. "Ah, there you're talkin'," said Cut Nose. •* Get into it, now, get into it ! " Again they tried to hold back They were half crying, and they looked at each other piteously, but the big fingers sunk mercilessly into their arms, and once more they were thrown together. They hit out in desperation, almost without knowing that they did so. " Now , that 's somethin' like ! That 's the pure McCoy ! That 's what you come here for! " And then, very suddenly, a number of other people seemed to arrive. Four huge men dropped down into that grass-grown cellar, shouting things in German. It 59 ii: REDNEY McGAW was the elder brothers of the Saxon Sam- son family ! "Skids!" thought Red, weakly; "now I'll be gettin' it from them as well!" And already a hand as big as a leg of mutton had its grip on him. But already, too, Hans, in a quiver of gesticulation, was explaining what the actual situation was. Whereat Big Heinie Miiller and Lud- wig his worthy compeer laid hold upon Fat and Cut Nose. It was also plain that they had had to do with ugly custom- ers before. For with a swift dexterity which no one could have looked for from such sons of Anak, they ran their hands up and down the pair in search of weapons. From Cut Nose they removed a long, ugly-looking knife. " Circuses iss derrible dangerous blaces," said Big Heinie, who was look- ing after Fat. And then he a}>peared to have a happj' and original idea. From 60 i: flmp A FIGHT the bushiest depths of his tremendous throat he made a suggestion. "Ach, so-o-o-o!" agreed Ludwig de- lightedly, beaming upon Cut Nose like a yellow-whiskered sun. And before those two fight organizers had any realization of their fate them- selves, they were squared up and driven at each other, even as Bed and Hans had been! It was easy to see that at first Fat and Cut Nose regarded it as some kind of leather-headed German joke. When thrust forward till they all but rubbed jowls, while they resisted as best they could, they met each other's eyes with a sheepish grin. "Iss it to 1 ugh, yessf " asked Fat, facetiously. But at that moment their faces came together with a bump! " Ah, twenty-three! — What you lettin' them do?" barked Cut Nose. 61 i^K; -ryi K frt STNiW MtBMT REDNEY MoGAW 1 M " Ah, could I help . A second time they collided, head on. And now the effect was immediate. Plunging and pitching, and calling upon the onlookers to help them, they tried furiously to free themselves. Their exertions taught them just two things — in the hands of that mighty couple from Saxony they were about as powerful as a pair of blind puppies. Secondly, from that canvas-man audience they could expect not even sympathy ! All the while Haub had been imparting to his seniors those manly exhortations to combat, which a few minutes before had been coming so freely from the present oaptives themselves. "Ya, ya! " repeated Ludwig. "They had radder fight as eat ! ' ' "Jawohl!" boomed Big Heinle; "if you are not Dentsch and he iss not a Yankee, yoost imagine you are two of der gteat world powers and therefore <)2 MMMH A FIGHT should you fight ! " He caught one of Pat's back-flung heels and gave it a velvet twist which almost too. it off. And ther the two were sent at each other a third time. Cut Nose's wildly jerking right hand pawed his fellow across the mouth. " Ach,du lieber,' ' said Ludwig, with feel- ing — " I voot not take that from him." Saying which he and his fellow Sam- son seized them by the wrists, and they were made to punch each other with method and deliberation. "It iss a pleasure, yessf " asked Big Heinie. . . . "Ach, ach, ach! " he re- proved ; " if you swear, so shall you fight yet more." They yelled and heaved backward. " Cripesf — Judas priest/ — Why don't some of the rest of youse pile on!" *' Why, ain't we enjoyin' it fine the way it «s/" asked a lanky stake-driver with a straw in his mouth. 63 REDNEY McGAW I Hans still coached his brother from a soul inflamed with vengeance. " Effery day is your fightin' day if you are sports!" repeated Ludwig, unctu- ously, and he shoved his man into the enemy's batteries again. " That is what you came here f or ! " Cut Nose managed to twist about and to fling himself at his captor, open- mouthed. The latter did not even close his hands to deal with him. He caught his fore- arm and whirled him entirely off his feet. Then once more their faces were bumped together. And in a baffled par- oxysm they struck out nmch as cactus- cornered rattle-snakes are said to set their fangs venomously into themselves. As often, too, as they tried to stop, once again they were ruthlessly launched forward. And, with howls of rage, they had been 04 A FIGHT hammering? each other for a good five minutes, when from the top of the celki- there was a cry of, ''Jigger!— Jigger! — The show cops!" The policemen were still far enough away. But in a minute the crowd had begun to scatter. The Saxon Samsons released their grip upon their victims. They even suffered Cut Nose to pick up his weapon again. And for a moment it seemed to be a toss-up if he would not use it. But he thought better of it in the end. "Come on, youse," called Fat to Red; " what yuh waitin' for! " "Ah," said Red, "I guess I'll be stay- in' with the Show." Cut Nose ran back towards him. " Youse come on along ! " "Nah," and Red backed in behind Ludwig and Gustav; "I guess I won't be travellin' with youse lads no more. I don't know as I like tellin' hard-luck stories." 6 65 REDNEY McGAW "All right!" yelled Cut Nose. "All right, young bo! We'll see how youso feel about that later on." And catching another glimpse of the approaching uni- forms, he rapidly followed Fat in the direction of the railway sidings. When Big Heinie was asked what the trouble was, he answered, " Ach, noddings, noddings. We yoost been havin' a leedle fun." But Midget Hans '^ished back to his trunk in the dressing-room and wrote another letter to his gi-eat-grandmother. She had several times spoken of coming to America. And he wanted her to know exactly the sort of place America really was! GG CHAPTER VI ON THE JUMP Of the dish-ivash squads; a Homeric contest with battle lines extending between suds and cook tent; of Togo and Nogo; a loading at night and how it feels to " belong. >» A T eleven Red was given notice to re- port at the " cook tent " — or circus dining hall. He had already, at the breakfast hour, come to know it in one way. At eight it had hoisted a red flag. And next moment about half the people in the Show had started on the run for it as if it were on fire. He had run, too. He had dis- covered that the red flag meant that = breakfast was ready. And he had had I such a breakfast as he had not had in 67 REDNEY McGAW years, — the best of everything, cvery- thiag hot, and all you could possibly eat. Noiv he was to make the acquaintance of the cook tent as a "dish wash." And after his first golden visions of enter- ing Dubuque as a clown, or an elephant keeper, it must be confessed that to go as a " dish wash " did not seem just all it might have been. But he was soon to find that there was a lot more to say nbout that. Behind the cook tent, and flanked )*y great piles and pyramids of supplies, stood the "range wagon,"— a mighty cooking-stove on wheels, capable of pro- viding a meat breakfast for eleven hun- dred people in from seventy to eighty minutes. Beside the range wagon stood something much like the boiler of a steam engine. Only the steam from it, con- veyed in an elaborate system of p^pes, served to boil the huge cauldrons of soup 68 ON THE JUMP : nd vegetables, steep the tea, " French " the coffee, and keep the cooked meats hot in the big, savory "steam boxes." From that boiler, too, another system of piping carried hot water to two waist- high lines of long, sloping zinc pans. In these pans the dishes were washed. There were two squads of washers, one for each side of the tent; they called themselves the " Blues " and the " Reds." As was only proper Mr. McGaw was made a member of the latter brigade. And what he had imagined would be mere, everyday dishwashing, he now found to be a regular, thirty-men-on-a-side match game, to bent anything ever seen on a diamond or a gridiron. In both cases the captain was " tea-and- coff'ie-mau" at the table nearest his pans. And for the first half Ixour of the meal most of his men had to act as waiters. All, too, had to take at leasi fifteen min- utes off for thoir own dinners. But, after 09 REDNEY McOAW ■ that, those captains flung their aprons away and sent up a shout for turbine speed. In an instant, as if from nowhere at all, there sprang up between tables and pans two pairs of fiercely rival lines. As if on an endless " conveying belt " a manifold, tumultuous succession of cups and saucers, plates, bowls, and cutlery, whirled out to the washers, spun through their sudsy hands back to the lightning fingers of the dryers, — a gross of towels were used at every meal, — and thence down the return line to their places on the table again. " Reds" and " Blues" worked in plain sight of each other. And every ^-^lallest tie-up in the enemy's lines was saiutbd with whoops of joy and spurts of CL'^rgy more desperate than any before them. " Come on, now ! come on, now! come on! " the captains kept crying. But all «uch urging was entirely needless. Both those double lines were doing flying team- 70 wmmmm ■■I ON THE JUMP work together like two ^'eat sixty-armed, panting monsters. Human pressure could go no further. Red was a beginner, — but he did not feel like a beginner long. "Say," he gloated to the young fellow next him, " I kind o' like this all right ! I kind o' think I '11 stay with this awhile ! " His side was a good forty seconds ahead when a plate slipped from a dryer's hand, struck an iron cleat and smashed. "One man off the Reds on penalty !" shouted the cook-tent boss. With a roar of triumph the " Blues " took hold again. They maintained their burst for a minute, — a minute and a half, — two minutes ! Their last cup shot back to the table. They had won out ! " Ah, skidoo ! " cried the newest " dish wash " of them all ; " and we had a skinch on it ! I told the chief I did n't need any- thing to eat to-day. Except for him makin' me stop for that, we might of 71 1.0 150 Li tii Hi m lb |2^ ■ 06 |4 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.8 MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIAL 1010a (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) REDNEY McGAW w on ! But wait till we get loose ou them at supper!'^ And for such hours of ecstasy he was to be paid four dollars and a half a week ! " Heh," he said, " clowns an' elephant men are maybe all right fer what they got to do. But they ain't got anything on this! " After that noon wash-up, too, he had a period of freedom. He proceeded to make himself acquainted with the in- habitants of the Side Show. And there he found two more of " the kind o' peo- ple it was worth getti.a' next to." They were " Togo " and " No^^o," " The Japan- ese Twins," the worthy successors of their never-to-be-forgotten brothers from Siam. And though from their youth up " To- go ' ' and " Nogo ' ' had been attached to each other by some six inches of their very heart-chords as it were, they proved at once that this in no way prevented them 72 ON THE JUMP from becoming attached to other people. They were undoubtedly two of the most smiling young Japs who ever came to America. And Red's own fine Irish smile might well have made him at one with them immediately. Further, Togo and Nogo had shown how rapidly you can become naturalized by taking to the English, — or the Ameri- catif — language, and to amateur photog- raphy both at the same time ! At first Red watched those four hands move, as if all from the same shoulders, among films and shutters and mounting cards with a creepy fascination. But when he had once commenced to get over that he began to feel that he was exactly the person that those amateur photog- raphers needed to meet. For his last employer had been a camera fiend, — had " developed " in one of his inside office- rooms. And Red was able to tell the Japanese Twins some things about pho- 73 REDNEY McGAW tography which they certainly could neve.' have learned from anybody else. For his own part, too, within an hour he had come to the conclusion that as friends Togo and Nogo might be all right; that, in fact they might be just about the swellest ever — "if only youse could tell whether to say him or them.'' There was another dish-washing match at supper-time. And once more, alas, the hated Blues were victors. But after that meal there were other things to think about. The dishes did not go back upon the tables. They were packed into big crates. The tables them- selves were folded together an \ the seats taken up. And almost before the last of them were cleared a\Yay, poles and canvas were brought down with a running rush at the hands of Reds and Blues together. For the cook tent and all connected with it tad to be put aboard the 74 ON THE JUMP " Flying Squadron," the first of the four long, resplendent circus trains. And breakfast must be ready on a new lot, at seven next morning, in Cleveland. As the last of the cook-tent trucks, the ponderous eight-ton range-wagon, trundled across the windy common. Red joined the line that followed it to the sidings. At the forward end of the "Flying Squadron" stood the sleeping car in which he now had his own place and berth number. But dusk had barely fallen and he did not go aboard. There was too much that was worth seeing outside. The loaders, — " razor backs" in circus language, — were put- ting the great clanking parade wagons on the flat cars. To the end of the last "flat" they had hooked a species of sheet-iron inclined plane or skidway. Between the cars, from one end of the train to the other, they hau laid thin iron bridges. And so, as fast as those tarpaulin co\ei'ed chariots could be 75 m ill '■i REDNEY McGAV' hauled up the skidway, a single team of torses, — with a man using the pole of • the cha-iot as a steering tiller, — could run it the full way forward. When the big wagons had been "rolled home," their wheels were anchored in deeply grooved iron cradles. And they followed each other at the rate of two a minute. It grew darker, and every few yards along the tracks gasoline flares were lit up. The forty or fifty teams at work weaved in and out among them in a kind of great, deliberate, equine minuet, and now from the emptying menagerie, rut- tling, banging, and jolting came the cage wagons. As each cage was tilted for the skidway, its inmates in turn sent forth their individual yells of fury. Tb^n came the circus " stock," — not cows and horses, but zebus and gnus, water buffa- loes, guanacos, and emus. And after them again, in mighty procession, — it was like all Stonehenge on the move,— 76 ON THE JUMP down the eerie line of flares marched the elephants ! The scene became one to dream about. And Red did dream about it. At first, when he had learned tb at tl ^ we x-e to leave for Cleveland that night, ^ knowledge had mainly served cO make him a lot more easy in his thoughts about a certain pair of gentlemen whom they would be leaving well behind in Buffalo. But now Fat and Cut Nose filled his thoughts no more. He was " bedded down " in a berth in one of the sleepers of The Big Show ! — That was the thought he felt it was worth millions ; jst to lie there and let soak into him ! He " helongtd " \ He had "joined out" I But by degrees dream and reality •seemed to get all mixed up ard rui* to- gether. And he slept until, with a long groan of air brakes, his train pulled into Cleveland and took its siding. 77 ; CHAPTER VII THE POLE WAGON The menagerie tent again; first acquaint- ance tvith Mrs. Muller, better known as Madam Rosalinda; reappearance of Messrs. Fat and Cut Nose; and how Elephants McNally came pretty near having to do " some fightin' .' ' AT that breakfast "dish wash" in Cleveland it was the Reds who won- And this time Mr. McGaw could set forth to view the new lot with a soul chesty with triumph. He intended to call on Elephants McNally in the menagerie tent. And he almost made the mistake of going to the regular entrance and waiting tamely till the door man had examined his pass! 78 THE POLE WAGON But he stopped himself in time. He walked on along the tent, and, lifting a side wall, ducked abstractedly under. In a moment a watchman was charging down upon him. Red looked at him in a languid sur- prise. "Ah, what's the matter with you? " he asked, and held out his pass — " Ain't Jaw's oyes became as big as five-cent alleys : " Say, are you Madam Rosalinda, the lion tamer? " "Ya, — lion tamer, — also birdt tamer, also white-mice tamer, also der fiying trapeze ! " she laughed. " And she 's the only person in the biz !" added McNally. " She could teach the lions high-trapeze work in a day or two!" " Say ! " exclaimed Red ; — she had almost more fascination for him than Big Heinie, who, he now remembered, was her husband ! — " Say ! I wish 't you 'd learn me how! " e 81 11 li REDNEY McGAW They all laughed. " And the little Heinle in New York," asked Coakeney of Mrs. Miiller— "is that there three-sized dad of 'is still troublin' about 'm? " "Ach!" — she lifted up her hands quite hopelessly; " only last night alretty deir wass one leedle monkey sick, und der man, he won't his eat supper and keep sayin' : * Mutter, 1 'm tinkin' some- dings '11 happen mit our leedle feller yet!'" The two keepers laughed again. Mrs. Miiller turned maternally to Red. "And you, are you mit the Show? " "Sure, lam!" " Then I learn you somedings better as peast-tamin' ; I tell you how to keep out of danger. Stay ever by your own work. You shall always be safe while you are worMn'y She turned and walked across the tent. 82 f ' SV»9(a»!PT>B^' THE POLE WAGON This was not just what Red had wanted. But he liked Mrs. Miiller, and he told himself that he was going to see more of that small lady. Which, in truth, he was. On an average between meals the cook- tent squads had about two hours of leisure. Some of the young fellows, — college students who were taking this means of earning a little money in the summer, — pulled books out of their pockets and sought the shade of the big empty vans. Others went off for a sleep. But Red divided his time between amateur photog- raphy with Togo and Nogo, and listening to Elephants and Coakeney talk about wild animals. McNally for his part seemed to be a kind of general utility man around the Show. He had been in the business so long and possessed such a more than Yankee ingenuity in handling all uncom- 83 REDNEY McGAW r mon difficulties that he was generally called in when everyone else had failed. It was no time till Red was both marvel- ing at him as a genius and confiding in him as an elder brother. And in Cleveland he showed himself an elder brother indeed. About half past five that afternoon Red was standing alone outside the menagerie tent. The Or. M. came by and spoke to him as he passed. He did not say much. He merely asked him how he liked his dishwash ug work. And when he answered " that he did n't know why they called that dishwashin' job work at all," the G. M. gave him back his grin, and said, " Then you '11 be a good American yet." And what did he mean by that! Red was still exercising his brains over it when he turned to go on again, — and then he jumped a yard. As if the Big Show had never left Buffalo, Fat and 84 THE POLE WAGON Cut Nose were shuffling rapidly up to him! " Ah, youse needn't be so shy of us," said Fat, sorely ; " We' ve crossed it off as far as you We concerned." "An', shy or not," said Cut Nose, getting around to the other side of him, " by Gee, he 's anyways goin' to tell us where we can get at them this and that Deutscher pals of his!" Now, from their viewpoint. Fat and Cut Nose were two individuals who had suffered intolerable wrong. And having by untiring exertions caught up with the show they designed somehow or other to take it out of those Saxon Samsons a hundred times over. In fact, they felt that they were showing magnanimity enough in having given up any intention of taking it out of Red, the deserter. As for Red he could not know all that. He only knew that Fat was grasping at his arm. He pulled back till he was against 85 REDNEY McGAW in the canvas of the menagerie tent, and « Elephants! " he yelled ; " Elephants! At that hurry call Elephants was out there in about seven seconds. ^ " Well, an' what are youse lookin' fori cried Cut Nose. ,, vt n "Nothin' at all," answered McNally with calmness. Fat still kept his hold. " All right, then, friend," he said, "you get wise and chase back to where youse belong! "I gues.^" returned Elephants, even more serenely, "that me and Redney here beUngs together." Saying which he caught the hand «till gripping Red and gave it a swift inward turn that was like jiu-jitsu. Fat let go with a jerk of pain that flamed at once into fury. A few yards away stood a pole wagon. He ran for the back of it ; he pulled out a pipe-wrench as big as a war club, and came back at McNally on the rush. One might have believed that that was 86 . ^«r.?L--5?sf • i?.?:^s£:s:. THE POLE WAGON precisely what iJephauts was looKing for. He dropped to within two feet of the ^-ound. And he had not merely ducked. He shot divingly upon all fours. His fingers closed about Fat's ankles, and with a cry of foundered helplessness that gentleman weni on over him and came down head on. The fall left him half stupefied. All the fight was Jarred out of him before he had begun. Nor did McNally stop there. Small as he was he whipped about, leaped u^ ^n him like a cat, twisted the pipe-wre .i away, and jumped to his feet again. But he had still to deal with Cut Nose. And the latter' s hand had gone behind him. When it came out it was holding his knife, and he sprang at the animal man like a big black Jder. At first Red thought that this time Elephants was running away. But when the little keeper had reached that pole 87 m^:k REDNEY McGAW wagon he flung the wrench behind him and pulled out something else. Tt was a circus tent stake, a five-foot length of hickory thicker than a man's arm. It seemed to Red that he might as well have thought of (defending himself with a cordwood stick. " You can't mix it up with me and get away with it ! " cried Cut Nose. And he flung himself forward. The next quarter of a minute taught Red some principles of defensive tactics that were entirely new. Elephants spread his hands some foot and a half apart, so that he could whirl his stake in either direction. The knife clashed slitheringly down one end of it, and the other end swung low and caught the attacker across the knee. Cut Nose yelped with pain, and then, springing from his left leg, tried to close in a second time. Two other circus men ran up. But 88 THE POLE WAGON McNally declined their help. "It'fe all right, boys, it's all right! No cause for any excitement whatever! " And he seemed simply to have met Cut Nose's rash by turning part way around. But the heavy stake spun like a drum-major's baton, — and now Cut Nose's left hand went down. He shook it as if he had hurt his funnybone, and came on again. This time Elephants stepped sud- denly and swiftly backwards. Cut Nose's full weight came upon his injured leg. That threw him to one side and uncovered his gua . The stake swung through a quarter circle, and the man with the knife received it on the back of his thick-set neck. He pitched over on all fours. The knife flew a dozen feet ahead of him. McNally picked it up and slid it into his boot-leg. " I 'm goin' to have a trunk- ful of these things,' ' he t?aid, " if I keep on. You lads had enough f " 89 REDNEY McGAW They had had enough. Cut Nose had already begun limpingly to follow Fut from the "lot." "Youse think," he said, half choked by his rage, "oh, may- be youse think that this is the endin' of this. But it 's only just the beginnin' ! " McNally watched them go, beating a tattoo on his cloven chin with his first and second finger. The a he returned that tent- stake to the pole wagon as imperturbably as he had entered into the affair. Red worked his way close in beside him. "Skids! " he said, "how long did it take yen to learn to do that f " " About fifteen years. And you 've had a chance just now to see what happens to people who do their fightin' with knives. Yes, and unless you're some yawpin' windy-mouth you don't need to fight more 'n three or four times m your life at that! " "But you — you said you had near a trunkful of knives by this time!" 90 THE POLE WAGON " Oh," returned Elephants, contemp- tuously, "of course there's always some little trouble or other keepin' order on the lot But it 's a good five years since I 've done any fightin\^^ He began to send his audience "back to their regiments:" "Now boys, now boys, you've all got your work to do. You 've had more sensation to-day than is good for your health, — and a mighty sight too much for the good of the Show. We're not supplyin' material for any Sunday Supple ent. So try to get it right out of your systems again ! " Red watched him with an admiration that could not be voiced by words. Yet against all logic, too, he felt sort of sorry for Fat and Cut Nose. He knew, of course, they would never rest till they 'd got even with the Big Show; very likely they 'd go after him besides. But just the same as the under dogs they had his secret sympathy. And you can take your choice 91 REDNEY McGAW as to which feeling did Mr. Red McGaw the greater honor. That night he spoke to Elephants about it again. " But you never tried to have them pinched or nothin'. O' course I wouldn't want yuh to." "Well, in that we go by the G. M. And whatever his reason is, the G. M. ain't got much belief in the good of havin' people pinched. He says it 's a wholo lot easier to pmc^ them than to unpinch them. But about these two good friends of yours, I dunno, — I dunno ! ' ' Red had begun to see some of those ad- ventures with which he had felt the whole life of Big Shows must be filled to intoxi- cation. Yet, in the very last place where we might have looked for it, he had also come face to face with that very sobering question, — the maintenance of the Reign of Law. 92 •WBBWBB CHAPTER VITI THE BIG TOP A further introduction to the reign of order and law; performances between perform- ances: the henry weight of responsibility upon the shoulders of him who supports a great-grandmother; and some *^ ele- phant talk,^^ of which more later on. THEY stayed two days longer in Cleve- land, during which time they saw no more of Fat and Cut Nose whatever. Then they struck South for a week of one-day stands in the coal and oil towns of Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. And in 1^ reek Red not only awakened cOi. .v:3tely to the fullness of the Reign of Law on a circus lot, but he also began to have the feeling that he was a part of something a great deal larger than himself. He had experienced 93 REDNEY McGAW ii 111 it to a certain degree when ho became a section of the human " convoying bolt which washed the circus dishes. Kow he began to realize that that human con- veying belt was about the very smallest connecting piece in the machinery of the Big Show. In actual sight were a score of trades all working together. And there were other battalions of men, far in advance, whom you never saw at all. One squad covered the country driving-sheds and the city bill boards with great posters. A second selected and rented and laid out the successive lots. A third bought the mountains of hay and straw, and the foothills of bags of oats for the horse cent. A fourth provided the tons ot ice for the refrigerators, and of coal for the range-wagon. It was the business of still another division to see that those 500-pound cold-storage boxes of fresh meat " came on " all right, with those crates 94 THE BIG TOP 1 H -3 of fresh vegetables and tubs of butter and tins of coffee and all the hundred other different kin. Is of supplies. More than that, everything must be waiting exactly in the right place on the lot long before the vans bearing the cook-tent "rolled" upon it. Nod o of these things happened by chance. Aud then on the lot itself that huge and complicated mech- anism of human hands worked as smoothly and as rapidly and as surely as the great rotary presses that used to whirl out the "extry's" when Red made his beginning as a " Newsy." And if at first it had been sufficient for him merely to feel himself a part of the conveying belt, now he had grown to feel himself a part of the whole immense machine: "If he wasn't there when called for, like enough there 'd be a hitch!" He had the feeling, too, that at the very center of the driving wheel of the 95 !>■ i^=^ JJPfcllK-- f i-a*"- *i«--«i.. r REDNEY McGAW engine, -as if he were that tiny, ever- quiet eye of the mechanism, - sat the G M. But the G. M. was a great deal more than an eye. He was the brain. When, just before the " night show " on Tuesday, there was a blow-up among the gasoline tanks, on half an hour's notice the e. M. arranged things so that naphtha could be used instead. On Wednesday the Big Show had to travel over a railroad so small and ancient that the circus trains paralyzed its wheezy old engines completely. And the G. M. spent most of the night getting other engines started on the way from Pitts- burg. On Thursday one of those famous "Waltzing Ponies" suddenly fell sick and died. The G. M. began wiring within ten minutes to the only place m America where there was another trick pony that could "pick up its act." And whenever the pressure was ofE he always found time to stop and talk to 96 THE BIG TOP somebody. When he talked to Red he would express his deepest sympathy if the Blues happened to be winning, and ask him if he really wasn't hankering to go back and be The Human Egg again? One day when he had to lecture a stupid keeper his voice seemed to grow even gentler than it ordinarily was. He was certainly the kind of Great Man for Red's money! When no performance was going on there were several different places on the lot where it was good to be. The "big top" was one of them. Sometimes Togo and Nogo would come into it and climb up on a trapeze and begin to do stunts. And in that, " they had the Siamese Twins beaten to a froth." Their Japanese manager had once been a professional wrestler; and when, as frequently occurred, the pair tried to take a fall out of him, it was a 7 97 :i I i ' t- BEDKE Y McGAW ^ight worth going a thousand miles to see Those Twins should rightly have been put upon the bills as The Japanese Octopus! i„„™ In the big top, too, you could always be sure of finding one ot the troupes of acrobats practising new business. They would set up a mechanique, a wide, tall frame of steel tubing, from which hung a pair ot leather slings. In those slmgs, by a sort of life belt, the apprentice acrobat was suspended. He could do the flip-back summersault high in the air, or throw himself backwaids from the brawny shoulders of one " ground man to another, and yet never put himself m danger. , . When, again, some lad was being trained for an act which did not allow of the assistance of the mechanique, several of the older gymnasts from the other troupes always gathered in as "safety men." If the apprentice slipped, the 98 " The older gvmnasts always gatlu-ied in as ' safety men.' " Pwje '•« THE BIG TOP way in which they caught him before he really seemed to have begun to fall amazed Red beyond words. "If you don't gatch him," said Biej Heinie one day when they were teaching Hans, "maybe he break a leg or an arm or a neck or somedings. A^d, ach du lieber, what shall that great-grand- mother do thenf " It was evident that the Saxon Samsons cr^nsidered the support of a great grand- mother a matter that might be joked about ! But Hans' own attitude '^ore than counterbalanced that. And as for Red, the thought of Hans' position was enough at times to stop his smile ! He had a re- spect for him which halted only this side of reverence. He had had Ms experience of Supporting people in the two or three days when he had had to support Fat and Cut Nose, and he had learned from that! 99 REDNEY McGAW And in the course of their second af- ternoon in Cleveland he ventured to speak to Kans about it. "Gee," he said "if it was me I would n't get no sleep at nights. I once heard of a fellah support- in' his grandmother. But ^reaf-grand- mothers!— Skids!" " Many nights I haf not slept, said Hans. u An' Big Heinie says you been sup- portin' her ever since you been eleven." « Ya But when I wass eleffen only it wass not so schlecht, so badt. I wass too voung to feel der respon-der respomss- I had not began to think thereon alretty. ' ' Heh ! Then if I was you I would n t do no thinkin' on it nowr ^ - Aher now must I think of it! ' cried Hans, with tragedy; "neffer can I make her take care mit herself ! It is fllrchtbar, fierce' The last winter I am home she will not wear her headshawl to hang the clothes herout. And when I buy her 100 THE BIG TOP ■-^c another yet, she lays it by the chest away for her juMleejahr, — till she iss a huntert 1 When I get her a paar American rubbers from New York back she puts them on the parlor for a curiosity! " '• Skids ! " What could anybody do in a case like that? And from further acquaintance with Hans Red discovered that there was an- other and a secret matter which afflicted him even more than that uncontrollable great-grandmother. In America he had always traveled with the Mlillers. They had become like parents to him ; and this season with the Big Show was almost cer- tain to be their last. Like most people in circus life they had for years been talking of getting out of it and going into something else; to own an American farm was Big Heinle's idea of earthly happiness. Until this year, though, it had been only talk. But now there was that "leedle Heinle." And 101 REDNEY McGAW I 1 s A some seven times a day did that mighty father of his obsei-ve with a steadily m- creasing anxiety that "circnsses wass derrible dangerous blaces," and that "somedings would happen mit dot leedle feller yet! " The fact that little Hemie was hundreds of miles away with his Aunt Elsa in New York made no differ- ence at all. And Hans knew, too, that little Mrs. Muller, Spartan and sinewy and matter- of-fact as she might seem to be, also had her hours of emotion when she let herself think of "leedle Heinie." Only it was she who looked after the Miiller treasury and she had not been able to persuade herself that they would have enough in the Bank for Savings to buy that farm until the fall Yet the tug of war between "leedle Heinie" and the Big Show v^as at times a desperate one. \nd when "leedle Heinie" did win, if Hans was to continue supporting his great- 102 THE BIG TOP grandmother he would be left altogether alone. They had stayed three days in Cleve- land. Then had come that week of one-day stands in the hills of Ohio and Pennsylvania. And so far they had seen no more of Fat and Cut Nose. The pair had almost left Red's mind when one day they re-entered it with a rush. On Thurs- day of that week Cut Nose, or someone very like him, was seen near the circus trains. The 3ame afternoon the main gasoline plant was blown up. And it wasn't the kind of explosion that could have taken place by accident. It filled Red with a vicarious guilt that sent him in a humiliation of apology to the G. M. But the G. M. was already drawing on the resources of the repair car, in which car were to be found the duplicate parts of every kind of big and little machine made use of by the Big Show. It was only a matter of putting 103 REDNEY McGAW another gasoline pbint togetlior. The G. M. had already got the show housesmiths at work upon it. And, save that he had also been conferring with the circus de- tectives, he appeared to regard the affair as almost in the natural order of things. " Why, son," he said, " because we hap- pen to be out an illuminating plant, surely that 's no reason why you should stop illu- minating us with that grin of yours." And, despite all his proper feelings in the matter, Red began to "illuminate" again. Then the G. M. further suggested that if they caught Cut Nose they might for- give him and offer him that job of Hu- man Egg ! He was entirely the kind of Great Man for Red's money ! But grin once more though he might Cut Nose and Fat were on his conscience smartingly. He had "belonged" nearly two weeks now. He had got to the stage when he never said anything but 104 THE BIG TOP "we" when speaking of the Big Show. And when you do that you belong in very sooth. He had begun by feeling at home only in the cook-tent. By the end of that second week he was " in friends " with about everybody on the lot. But if you were comparing things it was the men- agerie tent and the society of McNally and Coakeney that kept a little the up- permost grip with him. They continued to be joUyers all right, particularly Coak- eney. But often, too, perhaps to give their imaginations a much-needed rest, they would confine themselves entirely to the simple facts. And indeed wuen they were talking about the elephants, which with Red still held a supremacy of fascination, they did not have to use their imaginations at all. Red had noticed in the beginning that the keepers spoke to the great beasts just as if they were human beings. *' Pali," 105 REDNEY McGAW McNally would call out, "will you stop mussing yourself up in the dust like that! anybody 'd think you were about five years '^Id ! " And Pali, far down at the end of that swaying gray half circle, would be justly ashamed, and act as be- came her years for the next two hours. As for the little fellows, they were al- ways trying to bunt each other over even when on exhibition, — just as bad boys have been known to brace their feet and shoot each other off a bench in Sun- day School. Of course, when Coakeney dropped dowm on them, in a jiffy they would be as solemn as deacons and look around wonderingly to see who had been making all that row. But a moment later they would be stepping on each other's toes, and giving each other the hunch, and carrying on as bad as ever. Then when their call came to line up for the performing tent they would all rush, pushing and elbowing, to be first. Meal- 1 lib THE BIG TOP time was another trouble hour. Each of those small-boy elephants made it his business above all other things whatso- ever to see that nobody else got his place. And if by chance anybody else did get it there would be a frightful riot! To Red it was for all the world like supper-time at the " Newsies' " Lodging House. Now and again McNally would teach him a word or two of " elephant talk." Thus " tutt " is " stop." " Mail " is " go quicker." " Tutt cum min " is " come this way," or " come back to me," and so on. Neither spelling nor pronunciation may be the best of Cingalese or Hindustani, but they sufficed very well for the pur- pose. McNally desired in particular to put Red upon proper speaking terms with Deva, the biggest old dame of them all. He used to ask Red how she compared in education with that elephant he used to take care of in Bronx Park. For more reasons than one Red was compelled to 107 EEDNEY McGAW admit that there could be no comparison whatever between them. And in truth Deva sometimes did things which she could hardly have been told how to do in English and elephant talk both together. One day of rain when a six-ton pole wagon stuck in a mudhole, she was called upon to get it out again. At first she merely tried the shoving power of those huge, bulbous brows of hers, but that only drove the big van further in. Then she meditated a moment, turned and brought her elephant brain to the problem. Curling her trunk around a wheel she both pushed and lifted at the same time. And that pole wagon punted ahead as lightly as a baby carriage ! 108 rTBrr r'sr M^ I^^W ■sm Km^^. CHAPTER IX PLUTO Mrs. M'lilhr removes a lone and loses her keys ; and, while it may he had form to twist a lion's tail, it may on the other hand sometimes he the hest of wisdom to twist a hlack panther's. IT was Red's familiarity with the men agerie staff which led the cook-tent boss to take him away from his regular job a little after five that Saturday and send him over to the menagerie boss with a note informing him of a shortage in the supply of fresh meat. Most of the keepers had gone out to supper, for supper is a very early meal when a circus is making one-day stands. But the menagerie chief was sitting in his usual place beside the camels. When he had taken in that message he started for the man" ^er's office. 1D9 REDNEY McGAW Red bad crossed the tent again to re- turn to his brothers of the dishwash squad when Mrs. Midler came in. She, too, was on her way to supper. Red slowed up and sent her back an admiring, almost filial crrin. She returned it with maternal interest. But, following her habit, she had an eye on her "peasts " in the big red cages as well. And she had just passed the cage of Pluto, the black panther, when she stopped, turned, and looked again. Her face darkened. " Somebody haf left a bone mit him once more, a second time yet this week! " Red came closer and saw that one of the animal's cheeks was " podded out " as if from an attack of toothache. " In the Java junkie he know how to get it out alone unhelped," said Mrs. Mai- ler, angrily, " now must 7 do it! " " Can't I get somebody I " said Red. A green young elephart man had 110 11111 v.ims,- "sr&iri m— » i"T » iB»^ PLUTO crossed over. But he did not volunteer to help. Mrs. Miiller pulled her key chain from her girdle and pushed under the guard- rope. She mounted the steps at the end of the cage, snapped open the door, and -entered. Walking quickly down to the southing beast she rolled its head under her arm, thrust two fingers in behind the long, spiky canines to keep the jaws open, and with a sudden jerk had that knuckle of beef in the sawdust. According to the story-books the animal should at once have been filled with grat- itude, but he was anything but that. He growled deeply and backed to the other end of his den. He stopped directly in front of the door, n fact, and his brist- ling lips drew up with a vicious, grating ['uttural. Mrs. Midler had gone in angry. And anger continued to be her principal emo- tion. " I should my whip haf had ! " she 111 j-gT i! i Mj iii y,ii i £ iap^ssi^sKraFiiimfas^ REDNEY McGAW H exclaimed. 'Raus mit you!" and she started down the cage. Obviously she expected the animal to change ends with her again. But he did not. Indeed, he only drew in his head, and his ears flattened back so that you could no longer see them. "P/Mio.^" '' Ba-r-r-r-h ! '' Red felt a want to cry out. But that might only m^ake the beast worse. He looked nervously at the young elephant man and he saw that he had begun to grow pale, too. ** Wait till I go and get the boss," he said, and his voice had a sort of shake in it. Mrs. Midler had also gi'own a trifle pale. But there was no shake about her. " Ah-h, 1 fix him mineself ! " she said; " great scoondrel ! Raus ! Quickly ! " She advanced upon him again. A ser- pent-like agitation began to run up and down that soft coal-like body. The beast's 112 li PLUTO eyes became luminous, emerald flames. M-:s. Miiller took another step forward, and his neck fur ruffed up. He hunched back, more and more, lifting both front paws together almost like a boxer. — " Ha-r-r-r-h ! Ha-r-r-r-h ! " And then suddenly Mrs. MuUer drew in on herself. She had seen that which no one outside could see. Next moment the brute had sprung. He had sprung. But Mrs. Midler met his leap with a lightning-like response of her own. With the quicksilver swiftness of the trained gymnast she ducked al- most to the fioor, whipped aside, and, like a bird shooting from cover to cover, took the door end of the cage. Ked and the keeper yelled again and again. But, now that Mrs. Miiller was at that cage door, why, with all her sleight-of- hand quickness, why did she not open and let herself backward into safety I 8 113 ni*'-**«^*ai; REDNEY McGAW There was reason enough. " Ach, mine keys, mine keys ! " she cried. The bunch lay under the animal's feet. The tight chain must have been snapped by one of those combingly outspread claws. And only then did Mrs. Miiller's face really blanch. At that moment, too, the beast sprang a second time. A second time the little woman dropped, and flyingly changed ends with him. But a strip had been torn from the shoulder of her braided jacket, and the blood be- gan to trickle — " yl&^r, he haf not hurt me," she breathed, pantingly. For an instant her eyes took them- selves from the panther's and feverishly swept the floor around her. — " Ach-chf " They could feel how much of her cour- age went out of her in that instant. The leap of the brute had carried that bunch of keys half-way down the cage ! Even if for a third time she should succeed in 114 -.T?^- -'. rti. 'J V, ■ ■^^^ PLUTO i i making that horrible change of ends with him, the door would still be shut to her. " Ach, du lieber Gott ! " she choked. And then, lifting up her voice in a cry which seemed as if it must carry over all the twenty acres of that many-tented lot: ''Heinie! Heinie! Heinie! '' — There were keepers and circu hands enough rushin?? up by now, but none of them seemed to be the people needed. " Where 's ConlinI Where 's Menzel?" they shouted. "Our keys don't fit! " " Get the old man ! " The other animals, with some strange, frightful instinct for what was taking place, began one after the other to give tongue. The tw^o striped hyenas ran to and fro barking horridly, the wolves and leopards took it up, and the jackals howled and yapped. Somebody pushed through the crowd with a long syringe. "They're just 115 REDNEY McGAW bringin' tlie ammonia, Missis," he panted; *• that '11 quiet him ! " In his last spring the great black cat had struck the bars with such momentum that for the moment it had left him stunned. But again he was beginning to recover. "And der bloot! " cried Mrs. Miiller, convulsively, as her eyes caught the red drip about her feet, "he smells der bloot! Dey all smell \i\ — Heinie ! — Heinie! — Heinle ! " Every lion in the big tent was roaring now. Mogul, the royal Bengal tiger, flung himself from end to end of his cage, battering himself into that awful blood madness. The leopards that had once been so tame were tame no longer. The elephants swayed back and forth, waving their trunks with wild blares and trumpetings. As for the black panther himself, once more the green lights were blazing in his eyes like burning alcohol. Once more his whole body was becoming 116 PLUTO 3 3 ■J i ^» one pulsation of fury, — his rage more benumbing, more terrifying than it had been before! '•The ammonia !— Bring the ammo- nia ! " yelled the man with the syringe again. And a dry-mouthed answer came,— " The bottle's empty! " Red ran about in a frenzy. " Well, — ^liy — why can't youse do somethin' else theni Ain't — ain't nobody got a gunf "The boss has — but where 's he got to'" " I seen him over near the cook-tent ! " At that moment, plunging through the heave of the crowd. Big Heinie arrived. And the huge man was not stolid nor tranquil now. His wide blue eyes pro- truded staringly, and he caught at those cage bars as if he were another man of Gaza in the temple of the Philistines. "Ach, it iss you," cried Mrs. MuUer; 117 REDNEY McGAW " Ach, wass will you und leedle Heinle do mitout me I " It took a dozen keepers to get him bf. '- again. — " You can't do nothin' that wa^! — Here's a pole!— We can poke the keys down to her." They did so, and the little woman gathered herself together and caught them up. But barely had she recovered her balance when a third time the foam- slavered monster launched himself. And a third time, by desperate swift- ness, she avoided him. Had that cage afforded him space enough to leap as he would have leaped in the glooms of the tropic forest, Mrs. Muller w^ould never have escaped his first oncoming. Now, almost as certainly, she would never escape another. As if to double the odds against her, too, the sight of her man, instead of bringing back her nerve, seemed to have lost it for her altogether. She had her keys but 118 ..■^v.«; ' i ' . ■ffWMl ^BIP PLUTO she did not appear to bo able to use them ! As if she could not distinguish one from another, she was thrusting them against the lock behind her in a sickness of haste that cruelly, defeated itself. Second after second went by. The beast was to be given time to spring again. And when he did — ! Then the crowd became conscious of a diversion from the flank. Mr. Redney McGaw, probably having very little idea of what he was doing or why he did it, had rolled under the rope and thrown himself at the further corner of the cage, where for a moment that writhing black tail had thrust itself through the bars. — And he was now giving it good cause to writhe. Using both hands he began to buckle and bend it together. At first, in his fury of excitement, the groat cat did not seem to know what was hurting him. Screaming out, he stif- fened like a mass of steel springs for 119 REDNEY McGAW another leap. But by that time lied had got his foot braced against the axle and could give all his strength to it. Half a dozen others had rushed to help him, too. Yet it was Red alone that finished the job, even as he had begim it. The beast humped up snarling and clawhig, ripping slivers from the bottom of his cage in his efforts to turn around; he might have been a common house cat with his tail caught in a door. And almost throwing Red under the wagon he jerked free at last. But, one instant before, Mrs. Miiller's fingers had found the key they sought. And as the gate clashed into place be- hind her, she dropped into her big man's shaking arms. 120 CHAPTER X THE HERO How it feels to he a hero; lack of true apprpciation on the part of Mrs. Miille.^; Amzi Jimsoy id tivo reserved seats; pmdiar effe^ * j neroism upon the imag- ination. DURING the next two hours Red ex- perienced all the intoxication of being a hero. The G. M. did not say much. But he squeezed Red's shoulder, and told him he guessed the Show would have to stand him a uniform, — something that would go on the band-wagon, — for that day's work! McNally and Coakeney sent out for ginger ale, just as Red himself had done that first afternoon in Buffalo. And they insisted that Deva and the four trick ele- phants should drink his health as well. 121 REDNEY McGAW I By this time Big Heinie was back again. And he would have been back long before but for the best of reasons. He wanted money, barrels of money, whole pay-wagons full of it ! And, unfor- tunately for him, it was Mrs. Miiller's custom to take their combined salaries and bank them through the show treasurer again, on the day when they were drawn. But circus people are the most prodigally generous on earth. Big Heinie could borrow. And he had the money now! At least he felt he had enough to start with. He plowed an enraptured way through to Red. He whispered to him with a basso profundo mysteriousness that was audible for twenty feet around. And then, every other minute giving him a slap meant to be a love tap but which almost took Red off his feet, he drew him into cover behind the hippopotamus cage, and began to bestow wealth upon him by the double handful ! 122 THE HERO Impossible for Red to accept it, — to dream of accepting it! He had been called a hero. He had for some time felt like a king or an emperor. And to have compounded in base silver and bills would have been to descend from that starry- high estate. He kept telling Big Heinie "just not to mention it," and, "heh, it wasn't nothin' at all." And as soon as he could free himself, he confided both pocketfuls to Elephants to return for him "after a while," — "or maybe, now, it would be better to get the G. M. to do it." But Big Heinie, beaming and clucking and slapping mightily out at everyone he knew, had only gone hasting forth to borrow and return with more. And he was repeating that lavish per- formance yet a third time when Mrs. Miiller made her appearance. Mrs. Miiller, for her part, was rapidly becoming her Spartan self again. She 123 li W REDNEY McGAW I i ■ had been excused from "work" for the remainder of the day. But if need had been she could probably have gone through with it. She did shed some very motherly tears when she spoke to Red of what he had done for "leedle Heinie." But after that she pulled her- self together and became entirely direct and businesslike. When McNally asked her, " What about that ton or so of coin he'd been loaded up with I " she gave Red a ten-dollar gold piece from it, and answered Elephants that he might give the rest o^ it back to her : for one thing, she was going to use part of it that afternoon. And then, as if in explanation of that, she got Red a half holiday and carried him off downtown with her. She informed him briefly that there were many things that would be of much more use to him than money. 124 THE HERO She proceeded to illustrate that, first by- buying him a good, strong, man-sized suit-case, — and tbn socks, underwear, handkerchiefs, and linen enough to fill it to bulging. And finally she gave him peremptory orders that, for the remainder of the seas du, he was every week to bring her all his mending and laundry. " For dot suit-case iss for gl(3an dings only," she admonished; " if once you put back into it dings dot are dorn or dirty, you will haf some actions mit me alretty!" Coming from a lady whose life he had just saved, it was not precisely the sort of language that Red had expected to hear. But if ever you have been a hero yourself you will know that it takes a great deal more than that to quench you. Besides, there were enough other people who had the appreciative attitude. And 125 ) .1. REDNEY McGAW they were only waiting for Red to get back to the lot to show it. He received the hoo-roo'ing congratulations of all the Reds and Blues together! The cook-tent chief, and the horse-tent boss, and the boss canvas-man, and the loading boss, and the costume man, — all in turn said their beatifying words to him. Small Hans, still tremulous, came up and wished him to know that he would have joined in and helped him with that panther's taJ, — "only there wass rea- sons why he must effer and always alife remain! " But, by now, wherever it came from, Red could not but have certain doubts about other people's bravery, — about Hans', for example, — that is, at least, as compared with his own. In fact, he questioned if there was really anyone else in the Show who had just the exact kind o^ nerve for black panthers. He was no longer even able to bestow so much ad- 126 THE HERO miration upon Elephants' prowess with a tent stake. Very likely he 'd have done the trick just as well himself. And to exalt him altogether into the clouds, Togo and Nogo were looking for him to take his honorable picture. They desired moreover to take his honorable picture in the front of that honorable black panther's cage. For, with their national fervor for all deeds of derring- do, they insisted upon believing that the rescue had not taken place from outside the cage, but that Red had bearded the foaming Pluto in his very den ! And, however astonishing it may ap- pear, by this time Red had gone a long way towards taking that view of it himself ! He soon discovered that his left hand was slightly sprained, and he borrowed a handkerchief from McNally with which to bind it up. He expressed the very thoughtful hope, too, that he had n't hurt 127 REDNEY McGAW Pluto much. And then he went to the head office and requested the loan of a little paper "to do some correspondin'." It was to Spider Madigan that he wrote. And even now he did not tell him that he was " with the Show." That was a stag- gerer he was going to keep till the very day they entered Dubuque. But he did ask Spider " if he 'd had any trouble with mountain lions out West. He 'd had a good deal just lately with a black panther himself,— that's what had made him think of it." After which another idea struck him, and he sought the circus peatman ;—** It was likely a lot of the newspapers would be comin' after him," he explained ; " and he thought it'd be just as well to give him notice ahead." And when the crowds had begun to arrive for the evening performance he went and stood near the main entrance. It had occurred to him that the show bosses would be 128 THE HERO wanting to point him out to people. And it would be handier for them if he could be somewhere near. But the show bosses had now become ^ o busy again to point out anybody. Nor did any reporters come after him at all, — that town being plainly one of "yaps" and "dead ones." He was compelled, accordingly, to ex- pand in another direction. Standing longingly near the ticket- wagon was a thin, big-headed little boy wearing what must have been the rag- gedest clothes in Pennsylvania. And as to the meaning of his expression there could be no possible doubt whatever. Red walked over to him. " Heh, ain't you got the price? " " Got the price ! — I ain't got nawthin' .'" "Heh, that's too bad. But I c'n re- member now when I used to be like that myself. Say, guess you 're wantin' to go in pretty fierce, ain't youf " 9 129 REDNEY McGAW ! I "Am I wantin' to go in! —But whose a-goin' to take me*? " " Ah, 1 dunno. What ' s the matter with mef I don't guess they'll be needin' me right away.^' The little boy with the big head gaped. " Say, d' yuh — d' yuh mean that you le- long to the circus! " *' Do I belong! Do I belong! Well, I guess you'd find out if you was to ask anybody! But you just folly along with me." He began to lead the way down the long line of guy-ropes to the performers' entrance. " No use our gettin' mixed up with the crotvd,'' he said. The gateman knew him and waved them in with a friendly wink. Red went on past the band, ignored the cheap, blue- slat seats, nodded casually to the ring at- tendants, and showed his guest into the front row of the " reserveds." The ushers looked at him a little wonderingly. But 130 ■m n^AM THE HERO \ he " belonged " — there was no disputing that — and they said nothing. " Gee whillikins! " murmured the little boy; "well, I guess you're on the inside ferfair!" " Oh, I guess I 'm solid enough. Maybe you better tell me your name. I might have to be interducin' youse." " Swazey — Amzi Jimson Swazey. — Say, / wouldn't like to be youse or anything! " "Ah, I dunno. Lots o' things looks swell from the outside. But when you're in it, maybe they ain't as dead easy." The performance was commencing with the "Orand Pageant and Progress of All Nations." But Amzi Jimson found it difficult to keep his attention upon it. There are things even more fascinating than the Queen of Sheba on a Royal Two-humped Bactrian, and Solomon riding beside her in all his glory. — 131 REDNEY McGAW "What — what is it you do!" asked Amzi Jimsou with a kind of awe. "Heh! Ask me what I don't do! I got so many stunts to keep a-goin just now, seems I'^^e 1 never c'n keep track of them!" The seven Saxon Samsons came leap- ing and vaulting into the : arest ring and prepared to form thf iselves into "The Christmas Tree." Ludwig and Gustav and Franz, all in those glittering tights of spangled silver and robin's-egg blue, vaulted to the spreading shoulders '^f Big Heinie. Upon their shoulders again there swung themselves the two younger " brothers." Then Midget Hans was twitched up and up and up to the Tree's very pinnacle. And when as its trunk Big Heinie turned himself mightily and began his rolling "march around," the whole deified seven caught sight of Red and smiled at him together. Amzi Jimson nearly fainted. 132 HI THE HERO " I used to see quite consider' ble of them lads while I was doiii' clowniu' work," imparted Red, "but I dou't get time for that any more." The four trick elephants came in for their act with McNally walking beside them in the gorgeous uniform of an Im- perial Indian Jemadar. In his turn his glance fell upon Mr. McGaw, and he screwed him an eye of brotherly recog- nition as he passed. " Heh, maybe you noticed that lad?" asked Red. Amzi Jimson harJ noticed him. "Well, him and me works together quite a lot. O' course them little Ae- phants out there ain't so hard to handle, once you get the classy hoir of it. But, heh, we got six or seven big wild ones back there in the menagerie that gives us a run for it now an ' again ! ' ' "Yuh mean you — you — help — tame them? " 133 lili "Heip tii.iie them! — if it was only tamin' them ' -But when youse got to keep learnin them stunts as well — ! J aybe you didn't hear about one of us bavk in Cleveland gettiu' pitched clear through the tent? — Heh, it kept them just all their time sewin' the canvas up again so as to be ready for the next per- formance ! " The whole three rings might lOW bt running at once. The air might be b> dartingly full of high-trapeze arusts as an aviary is full of birds. But Amzi Jimson had no thoughts to .vaste on theui t all. "Still, elephant ain't so baday a. had to sold him wiiile our chief i Jy utm — Madam Fosaliuda, y' know s ak for it." This was aliiiost And Mr. IMcfa upon his couii at 1, \ras akin' her au I Amzi J. inarketi that doubt As it chanced, the nearest ishe^ 'ad until lately been one of hi. x'^llo,v of the "dish- wash squad." Red >ef'-oned him over. "Say," he said, easi «! young guy thinks I'm stringi . about that black panther. " Well, he need n't now, old boy. For that was where you got in some of the strongest vork ever done in the Show! " (A moment ler, had Mr. AIcGaw not 135 REDNEY McGAW been drinking final satisfaction from Amzi J.'s expression then, he might have noticed that that usher was touching his hat to someone sitting just behind them.) As it was, "Lessee," he said and puz- zled up his brows anew, — "It must of been this momin' that that black pan- ther business happened. Or, no, now, it was this afternoon. Heh, pretty hard to remember ei'eri/thing." If it was no longer possible for Amzi Jimson to doubt, of marvels he felt he could positively contain no more. But, " What — what else is it yuh dol " he asked despite himself. " Ah, not so much. On'y a little de- tectif work once in a while. See that bandage on my wrist! Well, heh, I bet I '11 remember that for quite some time! We had a couple of toughs try to do up the Show with guns an' knives in Buff'lo, an' I just happened to bo comin' along. 136 THE HERO I was off on relief just then. But I could see that if I didn't get into it, somebody was goin' to be laid out cold. There was a tent-stake wagon near, an' while it was takin' a chance, o' course ~ " Another usher had come down the track. And he, too, saluted the person sitting just behind Red and Amzi Jimson. With a feeling of sudden, vague por- tent Red decided to turn around and see who it was. It was the G. M. ! 137 CHAPTER XI THE TRESTIiE When is a hero not a herof A profound hut uncalled-for observation from "Irish'' Gannon of the guanacos ; after resolving to ridi to the next lot in the forty-horse hand wagon, Bed stops hy the way to pick some .aspherries. THE G. M. did not say anything. He continued to look quietly out over the arena, even as if he wanted Red to think he had not heard. And a few minutes after he rose and walked down to the ring-master's box. But in those moments Red became con- scious of emotions he had never known before. Shame entered into his world, and abasement, and a depth of self- contempt not to be expressed by speech! 138 THE TRESTLE "Gee," he said in his heart, "I ain't a cheap bluff or anything! " And then, not to be explained, and still less to be resisted, came the need, the compulsion of doing penance. "Heh," he again attempted to argue it, "I guess what I said didn't hurt no- body! " (And a great deal might be said in support of that, too. Only that was not the point.) "An', skids, some people are so dead easy that you can't help stringin' them! " (Another great truth. But unhappily another likewise that seemed after all, to help him little.) It was no use dodging. He could see himself he would have to come to it. He sat swallowing a green bitterness through the " Aerial Ladder" act. And then he got it out at last, — " Heh, — say, — Sf»y, cully, o' course you kuow I was only kiddin' you about that detectif biz i " Amzi Jimson turned that big head 139 f?a REDNEY McGAW of his around and stared, — '' Kiddin' mer' "Why, sure!" "Kiddin'f' "That's what I said." " And was that kiddin', too, about your tamin' the wild elephants! " "That's what! " It was a dose that was worse than castor-oil and quinine mixed up together. Yet at the same time he seemed to get a kind of pleasure from it. "I bet this '11 learn me, all right!" he told himself. ''Kiddin'! kiddin'!'' For a while Amzi was bereft of language. He was so gagged by disenchantment that he wanted to throw a brick or something. " And about that keeper gettin' pitched through the tent! Was you fakin' me there, too?" "That's what!" " Well, but what — what did yuh want to go tellin' it all fori" 140 THE TRESTLE " Heh, I dunno. I guess because that 's the kind of fellah I am. Oust I get a goin', — tckck!^^ "And all that about youse savin' the lady tamer from the black panther, that was only kiddin', tool " " No, on the dead, that was n't. Only o' course I didn't save her such a whole lot^ "Ah, I believe yuh! " And, for his part, by now Red did not care whether he had saved her at all or not. There was no pleasure in it for him any more. He got to his feet: "Well, I guess I '11 have to be leavin' you. It 's time I was maKin' for the cars. Youse can see the rest of it alone." The menagerie tent was already down. When a night move is to be made it doesn't wait till the perforr ance in the big top is over. And the animal cages were now on their way to the trains. Red followed them, taking the dark side of the road. 141 REDNEY McGAW But, in spite of this precaution, he stumbled in with old "Irish" Gannon and his guanacos. And something had happened in Irish's demesne that had left him talking to himself with sheer delight. A dirty loafer had spat tobacco juice upon his favorite animal, and it had promptly returned the favor in kind. Indeed, spitting is one of the guanaco's peculiar means of defense. And it spits a sort of inorganic blue vitriol which keeps its sting for days. Irish felt that all was right in his universe! " I tell yez, now, Smiler," he cackled ; " take it short an' take it long, in the ind people git what 's comin' to thira ! " Red felt that he had cause enough to know it. At the trains, in the center of a cluster of eddying gasoline flares, stood a group of excited loaders and bosses. It will be remembered how extensive a role in 142 ■ I THE TRESTLE The Big Show's kitchen is played by the steam-boiler. Well, that steam-boiler, while standing waiting its turn for the cars, had had a "blow out." There was every evidence that some explosive had been used, and a very general belief as to who had used it. It seemed entirely prob- able that Fat and Cut Nose were still fol- lowing up the Show, and getting even, step by step, as they had said they would ! " I should 'a' sent them to the G. M., anyway," Red heard McNally saying regretfully ; " for if it was them, it looks as if they 'd set out to sting an' keep on stingin' till they get stung themselves. That kind never knows when they've got enough." " Yes," said the menagerie boss, " and, what with excursions and specials and every burg overflowed with strangers, we kick up such a side-wash that half a hundred yeggs could trail with us, an' run just about no risks at it." 143 REDNEY McGAW i^ It was a matter upon which, two hou a ago, Red would have felt the necessity of assuming a general advisership at once. But noiv — Now he stayed in outer darkness lest McNally and the rest of them should catch sight of him. "And, sa?/," he thought, "say, next time I feel like tellin' any one a lot o' rag like that — ! " He slipped away to the jeering soli- tude of his berth in the sleeper. " Heh! — Heh! I guess I'm a hero all right fer fair!" One might almost affirm, by th , time, tbnt the education of Mr. Kuoert t :nmet Ignatius, otherwise Redney McGaw could not have advanced more r pidly in the best equipped of summer colleges! To their next campinsr-ground it was what showmen call " a long jump. ' ' And at sunrise they were still several hours from their destination. 144 THE TRESTLE .'gan The CO >k-teiit liands and make tor tlie wasi^ioorus. In a little while many of them would drift out to the breezy platforms between cars to trade stories with the animal men from the car ahead. Now those early morning hours had always been particularly delectable ones to Red. They had been for several days in the Western Appalachians, as, indeed, they were still. ^ nd it had been his wont to sit swinging his legs from the step below McNally's, watching the sun suck up the mist as the fresh woods and rivers unrolled themselves beneath him, and listen to yarn after yarn with a spirit which could ask no more of joy. But now he waited till every one else in the sleeper had risen and washed. And even then it was only Coakeney's ensnaring accents coming in through the open door that finally drew him forth. "Why, hello there, friend McQ-aw," 10 145 I i REDNEY McGAW cried McNally, "and how 's panther tamin' this morning! " "I 'ear," Coakeney took it up, — "I 'ear that there's an elephant gone musth (mad) over in the Sellspaugh Show, an' they 've been wirin' to see if they couldn't get you to take an hour off an' go after 'i/w." That there was nothing but chance in the character of those remarks, — that, in fact, they were meant rather in the way of compliment, did not occur to Red for one reflecting moment. So they had heard about that Amzi Jimson business already, —that was what they meant to him. " Ah, youse are throwin' it onto me early! " he said : " but I guess it was comin' to me, all right' " And with a face of flame he made for the other end of the car. The porter had left the door open. From the platform of the sleeper a long succession of "flats" laden with the menagerie and the parade chariots 14G TilE TRESTLE 1 stretched on and on to the end of the train. The sheet-iron bridges were still in place between cars. Red crossed the first of them. The speed and the number of the curves made the feat a decidedly dangerous one. And it was that very element of danger in it that filled him with a sudden crazy impulse. " Heh, if I was to come ridin' into town in the forty- horse l)and wagon," he said to himself; "mayho that^d show them! Maybe they'd see it ain't all talkin' with me after all!" He began to work his way back past van after van. He had to grip the spokes to get around the biggest of them. And he did n't dare look out. But he kept steadily on. The train was going slower now, but only because they were passing from ridge to ridge by a sort of loop-the-loop movement. And Red had just caught sight of the 147 I l> REDNEY McGAW huge " forty-Uorse," toweriug in its liood« of tarpaulin, w^'-n suddenly the car he was on se< med to swing itself in the wrong direction. He went off sideways falling- on his shoulder. He pitched into a stretch of muddy clay which softened the fall. But even so he jolted himself hadly enough to lie there half stunned, blinking, and seeing imaginary circles of blue light go up from nowhere, till the last car had cracked the whip around the curve which had thrown him. " Gee! " he murmured painfully, as ho got to his feet, " Gee ! And I guess it '11 be the next train fer mine, if I ketch any at all." Another minute of aching self-exami- nation. And then: "It'd ought to be along, too, in an hour or so. I want to be gettin' ahead to some place I can flag it from." Feeling of his shoulder once more, he limbered up and started. 148 THE TRESTLE He had ^one perhaps a quai-ler of a mile wlieu the curve camo unexpectedly out upon a valley. The track was carried across a wide rocky ravine by a hundred yards of spindling trestle-work. " Skids ! " he said, " I guess I was mighty lucky to get my fling as noon! " The situation was certainly rough enough. On the right, leaving scarcely room between the track and rock for a little spring and some raspberry bushes, the mountain side lifted itself straight up for sixty or seventy feet. On the left, with a slope almost as steep, and ragged with tumbled bculders and blastings for as far as Red could see, the bank dropped down to the gras.'^-growii traces of a coun- try road. In the valley he could make out several deserted derricks; and in the blue beyond the woods there was a slender file of smoke -htacks. Through the clear, transparent morning air a distant whistle blew. 149 REDNEY McGAW "Heh, I giiess that's the last call to breakfast," he said. And after getting a drink from the spring he gave his atten- tion to the raspberries. Once, when he looked up, or rather down, he noticed a man come out upon the road below. But it was too far away to tell if he was a railroadman. And Red went back to his breakfasting. When, however, he had worked his way around that clump of bushes so that his eyes fell upon the man a second time, it seemed to him that there was some- thing almost familiar in that sliding, shuffling walk. "Well, I didn't know as I had any friends just in this I'cality," he said. And he ate some more raspberries. But he ate no more after his next look down. The man, — there could be no doubting his eyes now, —the man was Fat! In a moment Red had pulled his head 150 THE TRESTLE back: "Skids! " he said, " skids! —Then I guess it was them, all riglit ! "... It was not a thing you could get down in one minute, or in two! . . . "Well, as long as he keeps to the wagon road<— ! " And next moment, with a slow, squint- ing peer to right and left. Fat began to hoist himself heavily up the slope. 151 CHAPTER XII } THE YELLOW CANDLE Fat again, and something that may he a great deal more dangerous than a hlack panther; Red is given a chance to play Horatius at the Bridge. RED would have been a great deal more afraid if it had been Cut Nose. And what did make him afraid wasn't so much the man himself, or even the memory of that blown-up gasoline tank and steam-boiler, as a lurching irregu- larity in Fat's movements which said plainly that he had been drinking. For Fat in his right mind Red had always kept a kind of unreasoning regard. But not less clearly had Red learned what Fat could be with drink in him. From being not so much a bad man as an imitator of 152 m^-. wmm THE YELLOW CANDLE bad men, he turned first into a very silly person, and then into a man with the mood and dispositk of a wild beast. Suddenly he sent a glance upwards. At all times his eyes were as quick as a cat's. And he saw Red and recognized him in the same instant. His mouth went wide with amazement. " Well — for — the — ! Youse / " he said, " youse — " Red could not get words into his throat to answer anything whatever. " And what happens to 'a' dumped you heref " " It was the train that dumped me. I fell off. Where — heh — where are you goin' tol " '•Where am I goin' tol But first gimme time to make up me mind it's you." He still continued to stare at him half incredulously. "Where did youse say you was goin* to?" ir)3 I I II REDNEY McGAW "Where am I goin' to!" — And now that Fat had finally begun to recover from his amazement, he showed an unlooked- for disposition to be friendly: " Why, an' did n't we start out for Chicag' together, Bol Only youse decided to shake old Cut Nose an' me for somethin' better." " I thought," sr'.id Red, still very ill at ease, — " I thought I 'd be goin' quicker with the Show." " Sure, sure youse will ! But how d' you reckon to ketch up again, nowf " "I was thiukin' I could maybe flag the second train." And as soon as Red had said that, he realized, he knew not how, that he shouldn't have. " Oh, was you now I " In a flash Fat's thick face lit with an indescribable grm of quick, if maudlin, cunning: "Then, maybe, / could, too! When I get my second wind I 11 have to climb right up ! " Red drew back, beset by a rush of 154 THE YELLOW CANDLE doubts and anxiety. What did Fat want to flag that train fori And v^ at did he mean by " flagging " it! Red believed — and he was probably right — that Fat did not exactly know himself. Once more, he did not act like a bad man, but like a bad boy bent on getting even with some neighbor who has taken the whip to him. But, whatever idea might be,hazily filling the turbid mind of Fat, Red could not but turn his eyes towards that long spider-work trestle just ahead. If, he told himself, anything should happen to one of the show trains oti a bridge like that! And then he re- solved in his heart that Fat must not be allowed to do any " flagging" of any sort at all. But Fat had already begun to climb. "Ah, say," said Red, with a kind of coaxing chumminess, "no need of your comin' up. If you got any message for the Show, I can take it for youse." 155 II REDNEY McGAW "Thanks, but it's a fellah I want to see. »> »> "Well, I can see him for youse. "Look here," said Fat, coming to a stop, "what's the matter with youse, anyway! " " There ain't nothin' the matter. But there's some things in the Show been — the gasoline plant an' the steam-boiler they both was put out o' business last week — they got bio wed up some way. All' they ti-xuk — any ways some o' the Show people think — ' ' For a moment Fat gave him the comer of his eye. Then he lifted his hand with the gravity of a legally taken oath. " Bo, looky here, — will youse believe me if 1 tell youse something?" " What is it you want to tell me!" "That if there was any blowin' up done, it wasn't me that done it, see! It was n't done by yours truly." Red did believe him. But a moment mmmmm THE YELLOW CANDLE later iie had a second and a sharply mod- ifying thought. " Well, but are youse thinkin' of doin' any I " And at that Fat's whole mannev and expression changed completely. He brought his hand down on his thick knee and sputtered foolishly, " You 're a sharp one. Bo, you're a sharn one!" Then once more he began to climb. Something in Fat's very laugh put cold fear into Red. And if he was to do any- thing, he knew he must do it now. " Aw, come on," he said, "you an' me was always good friends. An' I 've told youse if you got any message — " Fat stopped, and chuckled more hugely than ever. " Oh, I got a message, all right," he said. " But I don't just know as you could deliver it, — not when it happens to be a message like this.^^ The liquor had apparently driven all idea of caution out ot him. He pulled from his coat-pocket a stick of something 157 I m REDNEY McGAW which Red had soen by tho box-full, when they were doing the blasting for the New York Subway. It looked like a big candle of yellow soap. And there could no longer be any doubt as to what had torn the pipes out of the steam-boiler. Wher- ever Fat and Cut Nose had obtained it, it was dynamite ! >row practically all Red's reading — other than the baseball score - had been of " Dead wood Dick," who single-hamlcd defied :md slew entire gangs of "bad men " ; or of " Frank Fearless, the Young Sleuth," who compelled twelve desperate counterfeiters to tie one another while he stood by and juggled with his revolvers. But Fat was in no way like those " bad men " in the Five Cent Library. He had shown that stick of dpiamite muoh as Red himself might have shown a cauno^i firecracker that he intended to put under a shoe-shino stand. It w.' ^ plain enough that he had no real plan.oi any real sense 158 THE YELLOW CANDLE of what he was doing, and none at all of what he might do by accident. "O' course, Smiles," he chuckled again, " I 'm not aimin' to hurt no one bad! I would n't want to do that." Red did not feel like " Frank Fearless " or " Deadwood Dick." He told himself that somehow or other ho must keep Fat from doing that " flagging." But all his boy's instinctive dread of the grown man, intensified a hundred times by the sight of the dynamite, was upon him. " Aw, come on, now," he said, gulping, " I guess youse wouldn't do anything o' that kind." "Oh, we got the stuff to collect the damages wit', " said Fat, as if he had not heard him. " Cut Nose has collected a chunk of his already, ^o you see it's up to poor old Fat to begin gettin' his actions now." Once more lie sniggered to hi)nself, then put the dyramite ))ack into his pocket and began to climb. 15 > ,£/ n REDNE Y McGAW '•Ah, youse are only jollyin' now," said Red ; " youse are only jollyin' .' ' He made a last unhappy attempt to smile. Fat mounted another ten feet. And then Red fiercely nerved himself to his resolution. He commenced to pick up loose pieces of ballasting stone, - to gather ammunition. But his fingers wabbled as he did it. And, "Aw, look here,'' he said. "I'm kind o' takin' care o' things up here. You better just stay down where youse were " " Oh-h, no ! - Oh-h no ! Can't let old Cut Nose do everything in gettin' our revenges, -would n't be on the level." " Well, now, Fat, y-ise ain't gom' to come up here! " "Ain't gain' to!-Ai.' that'll youse do to stop mel" ^ "I'll rock youse!" cried Red; i U rock youse!" " You '11 what, Bol " And he got him- self up to the first rough ledge. IGO ^ I "lie toppU' - selves. And he 's dead right, too ! " " But w'y don't they get these blessed caiges h'out 1 " shrilled Coakeney. " If we move these bulls before we know w'ich way the teams are comin' in, we '11 183 •'w*i. im lOT'Wrfi'i 'vt-s' L- ■ •.*■ '?y - i n 1 i REDN EY McGAW get everythiuk tangled 14) so blightin' fierce — " To the animal men the danger was not so murd in the possibility of a ♦•blow-down" 08 in the stcidily in- . creasing chance of a stampede of the elephants. The huge " bulls." as Coakeney called them, are not afraia of any storm what- ever as long as they can be taken out- side hito a clear field and allowed to see that it is a storm. When, however, they have to go through it in the tent, worked upon by the foolish frenzies of all the other animals, just how they wdl act may be a very diff'erent matter. But these particular boatswain's whis- tles which the menagerie was waiting for made themselves heard at last. They wailed nearer and nearer. And following them came the clash of har- ness and the wild '^Yip, yip, yipf" of the teamsters. 184 THE WHISTLES BLOW i^ A section of side wall was brought down with a rush. And like the bring- ing up of battery after battery under an unbroken cannonade, the plunging six- horse teams swept through. "Stables all down an' lyin' every way!" shouted a driver, hoarsely; "that's what 's been the matter with us ! " The menagerie men had begun " hook- ing up " before the horses had come to a halt. " You '11 have to double up on the heavy chariots," cried McNally; "for we can't help you to-night." (By ive he meant the elephants.) " We '11 have to put a whale of a lot of ginger into it if we 're goin' to get out ourselves ! " After the first flashes of lightning it was so black that he had to feel for Red, and to make Red hear he had to lay his mouth against his ear. "Just take hold of Mother Deva's fin for a minute," he said. " The old girl 's as 185 1 REDNEY McGAW good as gold. But the back-flap is slappin' her every time it blows in, and a little more of that — " He followed Coakeney on the jump for the "jacks," — the pump-like levers with which the big tent pegs and ele- phant stakes are pulled. I I 186 CHAPTER XV DEVA ON A MARATHON Increasing need for ginger cakes; Deva follows the crowd, and takes Red with her; some flash-lights; thoughts upon riding a haircloth sofa at midnight in Michigan hush; and a new method of alighting, — that of climbing a tree. RED kept tight hold of that snaky, single-fingered "hand." All the great pachyderm's fear quivered down through it, and his own fear now gave him a sense of fellowship. " Heh ! " he kept saying, " I guess what we need to put ginger into us, Mrs. Deva, is some more of them ginger cakes ! " Even within the tent the gasoline flares could not now be kept alight. And, in one sense, there was little need 187 % h I REDNEY McGAW 11 I i of them. The lightning had gradually become almost uninterrupted, and it seemed as if the flashes were not out- side, but in. It was like the explosion of endless gigantic arc lamps. The cages had all been closed long since. But that did not keep terror out of them. Every animal in the menag- erie was yelping and yaning, shriek- ing and gibbering and howling, and the big cats could be heard hurling themselves to and fro against the sides of their dens. Amid the shouthig of the teamsters, cage-wagon followed cage-wagon into the storm-swept lot. Inside, the atmos- phere was fast becoming one of bedlam. By now, up and down that dolmen-like half-circle of elephants, as if in response to some diabolical " Heave-ho, and all together!" there was running a terrify- ingly regular " rock and swing " ! And the big tethering had begun to draw 188 DEVA ON A MARATHON without any need of help from stake- machines in human hands! Again and again, as the wind flung that back-flap against the shaking Deva, Red could feel fear go through her. "Elephants!" he yelled, *• Elephants ! " But Elephants, feverishly pumping at his "jack," could not hear him. And at that moment a whole section of the tent seemed to go flaccid. It collapsed almost upon Deva's back. ^^ Elephants ! Elephants ! Goakeney ! " Another section caved down and fairly knocked him over. " Stay with her now ! Stay with her ! " some one cried. Red thought he was shouting to him. " All right," he gasped ; " but, skids, burnin' decks is easy to this ! " And then the whole side of the tent seemed to go raking over his head. But that ae was standing almost under Deva it would have carried him with it. 189 i ■; |:'l(^ • I i REDNEY McGAW There was a crash of broken cages as the center poles came to the flat. The keepers were inside, the elephants out. The younger beasts in the middle piv- oted around, stretched forth their trunks, and blearing their complete demorahza- tion, charged straight ahead of them. What stakes had not been pulled al- ready tossed behind them as they ran. Deva caught Red and set him be- tween he- front legs. But if she stayed she would stay alone. She wavered a moment longer; then, swingmg him upon her back, she followed the others. The line she had taken lay withm a hundred feet of the " big top." Red saw it go by as a great luminous blur. And high above the storm, high above the yells of that line of protecting canvas- men, he could hear the band still play- ing ! He even noted somehow that they were playing " Make a Noise like a Hoop and Boll away ! " 190 DEVA ON A MARATHON He did n't cry out. He still kept enough of his senses to realize the use- lessness of it. As he lurched now to this side, now to that, he merely tried to hold his grip on the back edge of the big rubbery ears, and make his legs straddle the neck, if it could be called a neck ! " I guess this is my finish this time ! " he kept telling himself; " I guess this is my finish for fai^ ! " But as yet there was no sign what- ever of anything finishing! Deva's size and speed had gradually given her the lead, and she kept it at a pace to gallop down a horse. When, too, she seemed on the point of going head on against a low, brick freight-shed, she went about, ving her Gargantuan bugle, and sta^ .^d over the common on the right. In the next three flashes of lightning, even as if they had been artificial flash- light exposures. Red saw three things 191 ' ! 11 m\ REDNEY McGAW that he knew he would remember as long as he remembered the stampede itself. The first was the "Fighting Kangaroo," taking such leaps as animals ought to be allowed to take only in dreams. The second was one of the lions, backed up against an overturned chariot and spitting and striking out like a cat. And the third was Cut Nose! There was no mistaking him. He was fleeing from the direction of the circus trains. And in the face of Cut Nose there was fear such as neither blow-down nor elephant stampede could add to! . . . On the edge of the common Deva went through what must have been a board fence as if it had been made of berry-box sphts. Red could scarcely feel the jar. Then they came out upon the open road. There were two roads, in fact. Deva, followed by three of 192 DEVA ON A MARATHON her frantic retinue, took the first; the remainder of the herd were crowded oflf into the other. They were still within the town limits, for at intervals there were houses and electric lights. At a cross- ing a horse emerged Irom a side street. Next moment it had backed its pitch- ing rig into the gutter, sat itself down in the shafts, and was beating the air with its forefeet. Another half-mile and the houses became fewer, while the electric lights ceased altogether. They now began to pass intermhiable, slanting piles of lumber. There came tlie sound of a waterfall, and they found themselves crossing a long frame bridge. It gave and wayed beneath them, and Red felt his own middle give with it. But they passed it safely, and were now out upon the road to the back townships. And if in that more than 13 193 I m REDNEY McGAW darkness Red could see nothing at all, Deva seemed to be able to see quite well enough. At any rate, she ran in a straight line, kept the middle of the road, and struck nothing but a few low branch ends. Her stride, too, had grown a great deal evener. Fifteen minutes more went by. And Red was at least not quite so certain that his "finish" was coming within the next ten seconds. He found him- self almost able to calculate what his chances were, and he became a lot more conscious that the bristles on Deva's back were pricking him like an old haircloth sofa. But when was Deva ever going to stop 1 It was iiot a matter of minutes now, but of half an hour, of an hour. Tney had gone miles and miles. The thunder rumbled far behind. But Deva still held on, as if she had no thought of making halt this side of the Punjab. 194 DEVA ON A MARATHON The sky was clearing, and liere and there in a slashing, or when the bush was not so thick, they had a glimpse of starlight. In one of those stretches Red craned his neck far enough around to see that the other three elephants were not following directly in their leader's footsteps. They were trailing off a little to one side. " If I could sneak along her back to her tail, I could likely drop off without gettin' hurt much" he said. He could likely have done no such thing; but in any case it was some- thing to think about. Another half-hour, and they passed a small log shack. There was a light in the window. The elephants all lifted up and trumpeted at it together with the defiance of guilty consciences. But as the door jerked open, the darkness swallowed them again. The road became softer now, — they 195 I REDNEY McGAW were entering a swamp. And in the next clear space there was another bridge. It would never hold them in the world ! But, by now, Deva and her compan- ions seemed to be regaining a lot of their native wisdom. As they ap- proached that bridge, they slowed up and swerved off the road. Their feet splashed in water. A branch caught Red under the chin. He clutched it, and two huge bulks brushed against his legs as he pulled himself desper- ately up and out of reach. His arms were too trembly to hold him long. He worked his way out to the end of the branch, let himself quak- ingly down, and found that the water came only to his knees. Next moment he was back upon the road. The four elephants were sloshing and crashing their way on. He had escaped! And yetf — now that he was left there 196 lX^I ft-;.- DEVA ON A MARATHON alone in the bush at night, — fear de- scended upon him Hke a flock of bats. He turned, and ran and ran and ran, and stopped only when, breathless and half sick, he had at last reached that log shack that marked the spot where the swamp began. The door was open now. A man and his wife were stand- ing staring from the threshold, talking in halting whispers of they knew not what. And when they had brought Red in, from him they heard a story which seemed to them a little the most astounding ever told in Michigan. 1 197 CHAPTER XVI THE FREAK CAR Proaress of events on the lot; of Little Michj and Big Heinie; of a circus sleeper whkhivhile dark tvas not empty; Cut Nose visits Togo and Nogo, and though coming unexpectedly is clasped to their hosoms; unaccountable behavior on the part of Cut Nose. IN the meautime we should show very little feeling if we any longer de- layed returning to The Big Show to see how it had come through that night's terrific experience. In one way it had come through very easily. The big top — the focus of show-man anxiety — had, with the aid of its guarding stake-men, held firm to the last. Some side-wall had blown in. Little, muddy torrents had poured under 198 .-?■. '-i TrT- 1 T-*«=^«P--«S?.- THE FREAK CAR the seat-racks wherever they were on low ground. There had inevitably been miniature deluges around the cen- ter poles, and down the Hues of lacing between the great, mightily-straining widths of canvas. But that was every- thing. Some ten thousand people went home beheving at the end that they had never from first to last been in any real danger at all. As for the menagerie tent, we have seen already what happened to it. But, as the menagerie boss explained it after- wards, " When an animal tent blows down, things are never anywhere near as bad as they look. Gosh, they could nH be. It ain't in nature possi- ble ! " In the present case two horses, a cage of wolves, and a young tiger had been killed. The corpse of the lat- ter was presented to the local museum for stuffing, as a slight souven* , in the words of the G. M.'s presentation 199 j_ : r~^rC?<,^^K£'/ 7-SI itlk. Wfi^sinx^ . i.".. ■'WiSGfV'- ■».!:• REDNEY McGAW reiimrks, of an ev.iiiu- The lii^ Show felt it would never iorget. Three lions escaped, which was also sonietlnno; a nuniV)cr of people in that town and its immediate vicinity never forgot. But none of tliose lion^ did any acttial damage. And when all was said, and their capture had at length been safely effected, they were no doubt almost as glad to get back to their cages as the surromiding districts were to^'see them go. Speaking broadly, a lion is dangerous only when he is at home. When he is n't, the thhig occu- pying what we may accurately term the lion's share of his attention is to find out how to get there. In the matter of the elephants that had not gone with Deva, they had encompassed their own capture. As if predestinate, they had run, ears up and trunks out, straight into some old gravel pits. A nd there an hour later they had 2U0 ::Skii been rounded up as neatly as if those pits had been a kheddah especially arranged for the grand annual " drive " in Mysore or the Chittagong hills. Of the show people themselves, it would be safe to say that for Hans Soh- mr;r the conscio ss of what might have happened to hii. juld keep his great- grandmother atHictingly upon his mind for the next month. " Sometimes I think I haf imrecht—l am unright— any more to take sotch rissks mit myself," he said. And that night it was Franz and Ludwig who had to sustain him with the comforts of philosophy. For Big Heinie had a heart affliction of his cvm. One of those elephants subsequently to be rounded up in the gravel pits was the mother of "Micky," the Show's baby elepl -nt. With an uV sence of every right maternal instinct which she must have been overwhelm- ingly ashamed of afterwards, she had 201 'A 'H i WW had left him and the roa 1 together. ' .e two Germ an- American keepers ^ ... waiting for them there. One man took the bridles of both teams, and the rest of them pushed a little way into the swamp. And then even Big Heinie could no longer hold first place in Red's thoughts. He saw that on the bank of that little creek the great tracks came completely to an end ! "Skids!" he said, "there ain't any quicksand or anything, is there 1 " " Quicksand your ear ! " answered 215 ill ¥i ^■itKm '¥w McNally. "Those beasts are simply doin' just what they 'd be doiii' at home if they'd ucver seen a white man hi then- lives. They 're goin' to keep fol- lowin' this creek bed, or portage over and follow others, as long as they 're in here. They won't leave nmch more trail than a musk-rat." They returned to the buckboard and cUmbed in again. " If we 'ad a cl'y bottom to work on," Coakeney took it up, " we'd 'ave some chance, but these black swamp creeks won't tell you anythink at all. We know'd they'd strike for the runnin' water. And as soon as we saw what the runnin' water was like 'ereabouts, we saw that all we could do was to drive the roads till we 'it the trail good and fresh. They '11 keep on goin', but they'll have to cross the roads when they come to them. And there 's where they '11 prmt us our fingerposts." 210 AN ELEPHANT HUNT Elephants had managed to get hold of some comity maps, which showed tliat it was a thirty-five-mile circuit around that swamp alone. But the "animal men" did not seem to regard that as anything out of the way. The other buckboard had gone straight ahead. And now McNally turned his team off to the left at the first soggy concession line. " We '11 meet them on the other side an' compare notes," he said. "If we hit the trail again before dark, we '11 be doin' well for to-day. And now it's time we were gettin' a litt'e somethin' to eat." They filled a tin tea-pail at the next spring, and got out their bread and boiled ham. And, as they cut off big slices with their jack-knives, they ex- panded on the nature of the jontract ahead of them. According to McNally, elephants 217 ,!l WK,. n^h n REDNEY McGAW being big animals, once they start out fast, their momentum is bound to carry them a long way. Even after they have forgotten what has stampeded them they will keep on going just on general principles. Out in Nebraska, he said, in the middle of a farming country, too, an elephant hunt after a railroad smash once lasted ten days ! For the beasts seem to have an instinct that keeps them to the water whenever it 's anyway possible, in order not to leave any trail behind. . . . You could be pretty sure, too, continued McNally, that "they'd never do any .raveUng between sun-up and sun-down. In the daylight they 'd make for the thickest bit of woods they could find and lie doggo there. But then, again, in the case of elephants, you never could tell, you never could tell. If it looked like it might be to then- interest, they might do anything at all ! 218 AN ELEPHANT HUNT It mubt have been seven or eight miles to the next road which paralleled that taken by the runaways. It was an abandoned logging trail, almost over- grown. But the teau was a good one, and McNally pushed them into it and let them take their time. And it was the middle of the af- ternoon when all three occupants of the buckboard raised a cry at once. Through the roadside and across the road itself were tracks that could not be mistaken for any but elephants', even by one who had seen elepharis only m picture books. They all jumped out. The horses were willing enough to rest. And with Coakeney leadmg, the three pushed their way into the prickly thickset mass of evergreen. There was still a vague, balsamy aroma of bruised and broken cedar twigs. And if it seemed impos- sible that the great animals could have 219 ijK n* mui^s^i^tLT.'^xj^iSfii'^u REDNEY McGAW gone through there, as McNally put it, an elephant is just a pig in a good many ways; and he will go through where only the pig kind can. Within another hundred yards they struck water again, and the trail dis- appeared at once. Shielding their faces, they got them- selves back to the road. McNally tore a page out of his notebook, wrote a line of instructions to the other two keepers, spitted it on the end of a branch, and followed Red and Coakeney into the rig. "And there's no danger of their gettin' past it," he said; "so now all we can do is turn around and begin another loop." That night they stayed in an old lumber camp. The long-deserted stable furnished them hay for their bedding, and they built a smudge fire to keep off the mosquitoes. For a time they sat around it and talked. Strange night 220 AN ELEPHANT HUNT noises came in to them. And McNally, with his experience of ahnost every species of wild thing, was able to tell what most of those night calls were. . . . Red was, at any rate, mighty glad that they were now about twenty miles away from where the three lions had escaped. Led by that, by degrees his thoughts went wholly back to The Big Show. " How long d' yuh think they '11 wait for us '} " he asked. "Wait for us nothin' ! We got to catch up to them. They're playin' in Bay City to-day ; and to-morrow they '11 be in Grand Rapids. We '11 likely make connections again in Chicago. A circus don't wait for anything, son. It plays right ahead to its circuit, even if it has to leave all its elephants behind, playin' to the bull frogs." They fixed a screen of old boards, edge up, between their hay shake- 221 ^ course next moment he realixed that it was only another cluster of low-hangini leaves. But, cats, why can't next mo 224 S(>ME THKILLS AN! SHP'ERS ineiits coiuo ilrst once .11 », wliil i Might aa wt II l^m a tvUah as scare hiii to death. And Mc>rie8 were all about ghostt^ and dead men and elephairs that had gont- mad and become man- killers. And when, i one of those tiuinel-likc stretches, )m the depths >f the woods t lere went up a fearful, )lood-^urd ing s<'reani, which in r« d- ity came m\ not uug more ten than aCaua ia ^ nx, McNally < »ppt his voice to hoarse whisper, and ije«2:an to tell about those things all ^ 'V the French Canadians loups g creatures said to be part ma 1 part wolf, — and worse than any wild animal on earth ! "A visit from a loup garouj' he said, " was enough to send a whole lumber camp to the as\ ium. In fact, he and Coakeney would hav^ jeen 15 225 ii REDNEY McGAW a heap sight wiser if they W brouglit their revolvers alon-. V>ut, as far as that was concerned, some people said that no powder and lead was any use against a loup garou. Once one fas- tened onto you, and got well started sucking your hlooa — " " WhaVs thatr Coakeney and Ele- phants both clutched at Ked's knees together. He ahnost jumped out ot \\\a akin ! And then both those low-down wretches fell back and haw-haw'd till you'd think they'd die of it! And serve them just about right if they had! Once more Red saw they had been jollying him. nAh-hr' he said, when he could articulate at all. ^^ Ah-h, you silly gawps, you ! Youse think you're gettin me leery, don't youse I" Yet it was not two hours afterwards, — and when they were none of them 22G SOME THRILLS AND SHIVERS listening, — that, bringing their talk to an instant stop, they did hear some- thing! They halted the team in their tracks, and for m'nute after miimte sat rooted and unmoving. It might be only the night wind. But from that yawning blackness away to their right there came a steady rust- ling. And every little while there fol- lowed a crackle, as of breaking under- brush. Another moment and one of the horses flung up its head and began to rear. In an instant Coakeney was on the ground. " That 's li'all we need to know," he said, catching at the head of the plunging animal ; " an' they 're jolly well comin' our way, too." Red and McNally jumped out after him. It teas the nmaways! It was not long till they were giving evidence that was unmistakable. 227 RKDNEY McGAW " But how are you goiu' to get hold ofthemr- asked Ked, very nervous y "What'U they do when they see it s "'! Ho," said Coakeney, still forced to hang to the horses with both hands !^hI these -ere beasts that'll give the niost trouble,-! sh'd s'y. Never - Tever know'd the Michigan W yet that could stand to meet four hele- phants in one of these swamps when *'^.ZTsrighCBldMcKally;"^ I take them on ahead, Coaki 1 reckon that -11 save us time in the long run. , ..You can't take 'em along to«r „% responded Coakeney. The rustling and crackling in that outer blackness became :"^ moment louder. ;W'«\«^°" you Red 1 Thinkin' of st'ym with ""'.Le." said Red. But never did ..sure" more plainly mean the other 228 Tif^-rt SOME THRILLS AND SHIVERS thing. "Which — which one was you wantin' me to ketch 1 " Coakeney bubbled. "Well, maybe we can settle that best when they get a bit nearer." For a little longer he merely waited there. Then he curved his hands about his mouth, and sent forth a long call : ''Oh-hy-y, Deva ! Tutt cum min/" And, to Red's stupefaction, they be- gan to " cum mill" as if that had been the one thing they'd been asking the chance to do for the last three days ! "Ho, it's some good byled h'y they're lookin' for tiozw," said Coakeney, as Deva's great bulk broke the blackness, and she chugged across the ditch and up upon the road. The other three were close behind her. " Ho, yes, — h'eyn't that the truth, you old fool, you 1 An' they 're willin' to risk the biggest lickm' to be 'ad in the Show to get it ! They've 'ad enough of runnin' aw'y 229 I REDNEY McGAW '■ i now to last them a barmy ceutm-y! —Come along, Red. No need for us to do h'any more than show them the road." Another minute and the four ele- phants were hurrying along behind in a guilty double shuffle. Of the unlimited thrills and shivers which Red had been expecting at that capture, he had been most comfortably disappointed. For two or three miles he tramped it with Coakeney. Then, at the brotherly suggestion of the latter, who saw how tired he was, he struck on ahead and climbed back into the buckboard with McNally. There had been no thrills and shiv- ers at the moment of the capture itself. But for one person, at any rate, in that Southern Peninsula there were a few new ones before the night was over. A Uttle before dawn the fagged-out caval- cade came out on the railroad at a small 230 SOME THRILLS AND SHIVERS way station. The young man, who was ticket-agent, baggage-man, and tele- graph operator all in one, slept in a little cubby-hole behind the lamp-room. McNally did not wait for Coakeney and the elephants. He rapped him up and began with apologies to explain that he'd have to get him to wire head- quarters for — He had got so far when he was sworn at; and the young man went back to bed again. As patiently as wearily McNally set hunself the task of getting him up a second time; and having done so, he started to repeat his explanation. He got no further than he had at first; and this time he was sworn at not once, but with effusion. It appeared that the young man had been out late on pleasure the night before, and did n't propose to get up now till the down freight came through at ten. The flow 231 ! '1 i' •' ^:j£»^v m' *'^m-«:fr RED HEY McGAW of profanity with which he accompanied this declaration lasted till he was agam in bed and under the covers. " All right, " said Elephants, aU right! Some people you can talk to one way and some you've got to m another. In your case I guess it U be up to us to give you the hand-shake with one finger. Only I hate to do xt, "°He plodded back through the soft tan bark of the station yard to where Coakeney was waiting in the shadows up the road. And when he returned to that open bedroom window it was with Deva. Pointh.g to the window, " You fetch him out, old girl," he said, " and fetch him out f/ood." As if it were an " act" she had been doing all her life, her trunk licked silently in over the sash. And a mo- ment later it produced something. " produced a screech, — a screech that 2:i2 SOME THRILLS AND SHIVERS must have made the best efforts of any loup garou or even of Cut Nose in the freak car sound like the cooing of a love bird. It was a screech, too, that went on interruptedly amid the over- turning of furniture and the breaking of crockery for the next two minutes. And then, having made her grip sure at last, Deva " fetched him out." The message, inexpUcably shaken in its delivery, which shortly afterwards began to arrive at division end, called in a "three-nine" rush — for the immediate sending of an emergency engine and two " opens." And it con- tinued to call for them, at five-minute intervals, until they were on the way. Indeed, in Michigan railroad circles that messpjxe still stands as the most urgent ever sent down the line. Of the following twelve hours Red could have told only the most frag- mentary story. He was half dead for 233 ai ^^^'•mf il REDN EY McGAW sleep. When for a few minutes he did wake up, he was again lying beside McNally. But this time they were m the end of an open freight car, on a bed of fragrant spruce and tamarack. And they had just pulled out for Chicago. Deva, not tied in any way whatever, was standing with her head toward them. And after a time she reached out shamefacedly and snuggled her trunk up under Elephants' arm. ^ ^ ^ " Oh, that '8 all right now, old gin, he said ; " that 's all right for you. You needn't try any soft-solderin' at all.-- But maybe," and he gave her " finger a Uttle pinch, — " maybe if you see that that lad behind you don't fall out or do us any mischief, maybe all 'U be for- given yet." . Then Red went off to sleep again as it he were in the old " Newsies " Lodging House, and slept for seven hours more. 234 .■^^^^^■: CHAPTER XIX THE LAST OF FAT Is it possible for one to have too many adventures for one's truest happiness f Even while answering this question Red has one more, and Fat takes some lessons in gymnastics. THEY reached West Chicago anc" found the lot just in time to get to the cook tent before supper was over. The Big Show was blithely and serenely- unchanged. It looked as if it had never known a blow-down or an ele- phant stampede in all its existence. The band was agam playing llake a Noise like a Hoop and Roll Away. You might have believed that it had gone straight on playing it since the night Ked had heard it last from Deva's back! 235 REDNEY McGAW And at the bottom of his heart Red felt that it showed a very little feeling, especially as the Miillers were going to leave. He liad been thinking about them more than any one else. And he wanted to see Big Heinie right away. They were n't on the lot, the costume man mformed him. But neither had they left the Show as yet, and they couldn't for some time They were living at a boarding-house with the rest of the Saxon Samsons and some Ger- man trapeze people. The place was two blocks straight over, on K Street. It was just at the corner, and he'd know it by the upper veranda; most likely his friends would be sitting out in it at that minute. " And say," he shouted after Red, " there 's two new members in the Saxon Samsons. They 're the biggest thing in the Show just now. Only they ain't on salary yet." 230 THE LAST OF FAT Two new members 1 — The biggest thing m the Sho,, and not on salary yet 1 — Now what did the costume man mean by that 1 But Red did n't try to figure it out then. It was enough to learn that the MuUers would be staying on for a while longer anyway, — that he would n't be getting back from that ele- phant hunt only in time to say good- bye to them. The truth was, altogether too much had been happening of late. He had always felt, of course, that a circus was a place where more things can happen in a week than you generally get in a lifetime. But in that last week things had piled up on him so fast that he couldn't sort them out. He wanted time to sit down somewhere and think for a day or two and kind of catch us. In the matter of adventures, for the first time in his life, he felt that he had had his fill. No use a man's being scared 237 ) ii I* n^k';" REDNEY McOAW to death every day. It seemed to him that he'd be content to go alon^ fc- several months now and have no .aore at all. Or, better still, what he wanted was some place like Spider's, where you could go out and get an adventure once in a while, but where they were n't ever- lastingly coming at you. But even as he was having these very wise reflections, the law of mysterious chance had moved again, and one final adventure was "coming at him" then and there. The two blocks between the show grounds and K Street were almost taken up with low cheap saloons. And as he got their sour and rancid odors through their wicker swinging doors, there came back to him that afternoon in Buffalo when he stood in front of a saloon wait- ing for Fat and Cut Nose. He guessed, with a return of all his power to grin, that The Big Show wouldn't see Cut 238 .LPKP IIOll THE LAST OF FAT Nose again, — not while a pair otMapan- ese Twins named Togo and Nogo were travelling with it. But Fat had been going to Chicago, and he might still be snooping aromid. If he was — The b. loon door he was just passing swung opcii, and Fat came out of it! There was one staring, dazing mo- ment of recognition. Then, — perhaps it was the sight of Red's grin, — all the pain of his stone bruises came back to Fat in one consuming flame. With a bellow he flung himself to grip him. And Red's grin, for all its vitality, froze to death. As he turned he tried to yell, but he could n't .-^lem to get the sounds out. He almost fell back into the road. He dodged a push-rart and a string of coal wagons. And, teeling Fat gaining on him every moment, he put all the strength that was in him into a one- hope rush for K Street. It was not yet seven, and therefore 239 REDNEY McGAW still quite light. As the costume man had prophesied, the Saxon Sarnsons were sitting out in that upper veranda. Another minute and they were gaping over the side of it. Followed by such a voice of infuriate pursuit as might have come from a whole pack of hunt- ing dogs, Mr. Red McGaw had clashed sliding around the corner below them ! He looked about him for one choking half jifiy, then fled up the steps and into the open front door. And now those Saxon Samsons saw that behind him came one of that pair of misguided or- ganizers of trouble whom they had liad the pleasure of dealing with several weeks before, in Buffalo ! And they felt quite equal to dealing with this present gentleman again. If Cut Nose's parting visit to Bij>' Show circles had been unexampled in its painfulness, Fat'h was, if anything, to be rather more so. 240 m ■ •*>^?*;. THE LAST OF FAT Red plunged into the open door — Fat followed. Half-way up the stairs he followed, too. But he got no further. That is to say, he got no further on his own feet. The company from the upper veranda had rushed into the up- stairs hall. And just as Fat's hands were upon Red's ankles, Ludwig bent himself swiftly backward and down over the banister directly above them. He buckled himself to it with a " knee-and- bock cinch." His large white hands closed upon Fat's shoulders. He jerked him a yard into the air as if he had been a sack of clothes, and then gave him the " lightning tium-over." Fat yelled like a man ^ho has lost his grip upon this whirling earth. But if he believed that he was going to break his neck when he came down again, he was at any rate wrong in that. Big Heiuie had now reached the bottom M 241 REDNEY McGAW of tlie stiiirs, and was waiting only till the flying Fat felt ready to descend. The great Saxon caught him on the drop, and in his turn g?ive him that " lightning turn-over," — this time back- icards. " Circusses — iss — demble — dangerous — blaces," he said most con- cernedly. " If you ain'd gareful, — sometime you sgare our frient Ued ! " Then Big Ileinie " cartwheeled " Fat through the lower hall, down the steps, and out upon wiiat had formerly been a grass ])lot beside the area. " Maguo a rittise ligue a hoop and roll away, roll p way, roll away ! " he chanted, panting. '^Aher, no doubt j'ou haf come back to take some yimnastic lessons, yess ? " And he delivered him over to the eagerly hovering Uustav and Franz. One on each side, they took him "wing and hip," and shot him heels over head. He lit on his feet, it is true, but he was not to waste any time in 212 ^ s ► 3a« I ^^vtr.^ft-tAwvn&iA "fflM-»',Mrtfc''^lr'i iivjiifmMiiW THE LAST OF FAT that position. Again and again they flipped him over, faster and faster, till he fairly spun. " Dass iss * tumin' spotters ' called," explanied Big Heinie, " und you do it sehr gooL In two free weeks you know a lot ! Shall we now mit der * re- volving barrel ' begin 1 " He dropped upon his back, swung his feet into the air, caught Fat almost as deftly upon his canvas soles as if that hapless wight had been the parti- colored barrel of the circus ring itself, and " tossed him for position." By this time there was an audience on all sides that blocked the street. An audience, however, was only inspiration and encouragement to the Saxon Sam- sons. Ludwig had dropped upon his back opposite Big Heinie. And now the two began to " play catch " with Fat. But just at that juncture, a large, 24.J REDNEY McGAW red-haired, and gaping policeman broke through the crowd. His club was in his hand, but he almost let it fall. " Will, in the name o' the Great Bog of Athlone ! " he gasped. The two recumbent Saxon Samsons rose to their feet. But Fat did not. He conthmed to sit there, still feeling himself revolving, " turning spotters," domg the *' lightning turn-over." And he sank his fingers into the poil as if he never intended to let go of it. " Will yez jist till me what it manes, new 1 " repeated the policeman. "Ach," said Big Heinie, spreading his hands, " we wass all yoost havhig some friently pnks togedder, — for diges- tion's help." And he beamed upon him pacifyingly. '"Frindly yinks ! ' — I can see by him howfri'ndly it was! I 'vo a mind to land the whole gang of yez in the cooler! " 244 «mv».K a .1 ■•.-ii'.'rrfT- ; • .'.« *P w THE LAST OF FAT Fat was beginninjjj to get ])ack his senses again ; and, for tlic first time, he found himself regarding a shite-blue coat and brass buttons as emblems of protection. " Youse can take me just the quickest youse can," he said, swallowing wind in gulps. " Anything as long as youse get me away from this bunch!" " Take youse ! An' who 's been makin' a charge ag'in' ye ? T 'm thinkin' it 's for youse to make it ag'in' t/iim ! " " Ya," said Big Hoinie, again ; " we wass all great sinners togedder." And then, as Fat gazed at those lariie, child-like German faces, his own gradually filled with another exi)rcssion. He saw more and more plainly that if he was to be given over to what we call justice, it would never be by them, nor by Red, eitlu'r, now standing beside them. . . . Very well did lie remember that day at the spider- work trestle in 21:) KEDNEY McOAW those Pennsylvania hills. Very well, too, did he remember a great many other things which should have regis- tered black marks against him. But, "Ach," Big Heinie was dep- recr''n<\ "we're not goin' to sboil der tun alretty. You yoost come inside mit us, und talk about dmgs a leedle." Frankly, the result was another case of justice defeated and the law set shamefully at naught. " Und so," Big Heinie called in fare- well after Fat at last, " you yoost go along now, und stop der trinkin' und be goot! Ain't dot what you say. Red 1 " "Sure!" glowed Red, and he felt a wonderful relief "Sure! An' y' see, Fat, I knowed that you ain't never been so bad, right all the time." And if mankind really lost anything 24() ??B8SP5?^^^^^ K-V- \,.;n. . THE liAST OF FAT because 0"e bruised and dusty and world-battered mortal was, desi)ite all his inicjuities, given another chance, we have never heard any complaint of it as yet. v^ 247 CHAPTER XX TWO ARRIVALS The new memherH of the Saxon S(tmson troupe; f/niif fmbarrassments and diffi- culties; and the G. M. shows the r>nl depths of his yenius in the solution thereof. THE costume man had said that there were now two new memV)ers in the 8axon Samson troupe. And that night Red made their ac(iuaintance. In the first i)hice, when he S})oke of wliat the costume man had told him and asked who those two new memhers were, all the Saxon Samsons he already knew boomed out at once int*; roars of deep-chested German laupiiter. They pummeled ta^h other hilariously, and cauj/ht Red in the tloating ribs, and 248 i^r TWO ARRIVALS tried to above each other over the chairs, and acted more and more as if it were simply the biggest joke that had ever got loose. At least all of them acted so save Midget Hans. And upon him there settled a mantle of gloom that nothing whatever seemed to have the power to lift! Red was once more trying hopelessly to figure it out, when those ecstatic Samsons finally decided to enlighten him. lie was taken up to two rooms on the third floor back, and introduced. In the arms of a stout Gennan- American girl sat unquestionably the roundest, ^vbitc8t-headed, and most vig- orous year-old baby in existence. It was ** leedle Ifeinie" ! " Und it wass he dot made her bring him ! " cried his exulting sire from the summit of his pride. " Two days ago abetty he haf resolved he should no 240 ta&i»f*t -'^KKTit .^sar.^,...- 'jt-.. *.-■%" .'^\ 'M IQ..*; -awsMip-*!;? 1.0 i.l Hi m lU 1^ lAO 2.5 III 2.0 1.8 MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIAL 1010a (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) REDNEY McGAW longer parted from his elters be. Und he yoost yell und gick und roll der florr upon till Elsa allerdings gif oop, und bring him by Chicago ! " And, in the room behind, not to be moved out of her straight-backed chah by the riotous and unseemly conduct of a hundred Saxon Samsons, sat the leanest, grayest, most masterful look- ing old lady, wearing the highest horn comb and the biggest horn spec- tacles ever seen out of Altmiinster- stadt. It was Hans' great-gra7idmother / She had arrived not ten hours after " leedle Heinie." And though she had found friends on the way, how she had got through the immigration office was yet to be discovered! But this much was known. It was no mere chance that had brought her. She had begun to pack her belongings the day she had received Hans' letter 250 TWO ARRIVALS telling how he had been made to fight with Red. And in the first minutes after her arrival she explained her coming clearly. She gave the one solemn and digni- fied member of the Saxon Samson troupe to know that she had promised his grandmother ever and always a constant care over him to take; and since she could no longer do it firom Altmiinsterstddt, that care over him to continue she had come even to America out! And, after a speech like that, can you wonder now at the gloom that darkened and embittered the counte- nance of Hans 1 When, for more than two years, you have done your work under the respon — responiss — when every day and hour you have thought thereon of what it means to have a great-grandmrther to take care of, what is there to be said when, at the end of 251 REDNEY McGAW it, you discover that, as she has been viewing it all along, it is she who has been taking care of youf Earth has many sources of embitterment. But let us be thankful that few of us can know any such bitterness as that! More, too : Both " leetle Heinie " and Hans' great-grandmother had joined them- selves to The Big Show without giving any due warning and notice. And in consequence there presented itself the question of what was to be done with them. Doubly to complicate the busi- ness, too, both of them had very plainly given notice that the objects of their anxiety must at once abandon the cir- cus profession! And signed contracts can hardly be broken in half an hour. It was the wisdom of the G. M. that now entered in. As a Solomon, a man of innumerable emergencies, and an 252 TWO ARRIVALS indulgent Providence all in one, he settled those baffling questions to the satisfaction absolutely of every one ! To begin with, he recognized the inevitable. He did not argue the mat- ter, but commenced immediately to cast about for substitutes for Mrs. Miiller and Big Heinie and Hans. In the second place, he took into con- sideration the fact, well known to every one, that for Hans to part from the Miillers would be like saying good-bye to a father and mother. And therefore it began to be entirely evident to him that what the Miillers had been need- ing in their business from the begin- ning was a great-grandmother I For that matter, too, here was a great- grandmother ^ho would undoubtedly ins^ ^t upop paying her own way ! And he called all concerned before him, and laid before them certain suggestions. herein to follow: 253 REDNEY McGAW They, the Miillers, had said that they wanted to take up farming out West. But they had no settled idea just where and how. Well, he, the G. M. for his part believed that he could count upon having their substitutes with The Big Sliow by the time it made Dubuque. According to Mr. Red McGaw, Du- buque was the place where he was aim- ing to get off. And, as it happened near Dubuque there was a big German farming settlement. Was not Sonnen- schein the name of the people Red was going to 1 That waii their very German name. And, again according to Red, they were mighty swell nice people at that ! Well then, pursued the G. M., in all probability from those same Sonnen- scheins the Miillers could get exactly the kind of advice and information that they needed. If, then, they would just go along to Dubuque thi- way they 254 TWO ARRIVALS were, — aod after they left Chicago it would mean only three days for " leedle Hemic " and great-grandmother Sohraer to make shift, on the circus sleepers, — tiie ]Vx. thought that in the end every uv^Jy would be suited beautiftdly ! The Mullers were suited. They wanted the G. M. to know that they had made up their minds to adopt Hans and Hans' great-grandmother days ago. And then they came back and expressed another desire. They wanted to take Red in with them as well! One might almost have thought that the G. M. was expecting that! And, in the afternoon, he called Red in and put the matter to him. Would he go in — would he go in with the Miillers! It was a question which Mr. McGaw never really an- swered, as far as mere words were con- cerned, at all ! It was minutes till he 255 REDNEY McGAW could even smile \ — ^^Say! — Say I If the Miillers could only find a farm Bomewheres near where Spider was, he wouldn't even want to travel with The Big Show no more ! " 256 CHAPTER XXI FAREWELL Dubuque: Red receives a letter which has manifestly come from every quarter of the inhabited globe; enters into financial arrangements with Mrs. Midler; is ad- vanced to the highest position in The Big Show; attends a box party with some friends both new and old, and says good-bye. rilHEY were in Dubuque, and it was -*- Red's last day on the lot. Spider would be in town, there could be no doubt about that, but he would hardly arrive much before the parade. And in the meantime there were about five hundred people to say good-bye to. Now, ever suice he had had that rock fight with Fat away back in Pennsyl- vania, — "and, skids, that wasn't any- 17 257 REDNEY McGAW thin^^!" — two or three times a day somebody bad hinted to hhn about something that was goin- to happen when they reached Dubuque. And now — which was a great deal more puzzUng- — everybody he started to say good-by V to asked him if he had seen the Show postman yet 1 What would he be seeing the post- man fori There wasn't any one to write to him but Spider, and he had never let him know that he was travel- ing with the Show. Indeed there had been times enough when, seeing let.-^rs coming for everybody else but him, he had had moments of that sort of home- sickness which you can only feel if you have never had any home at all. So when the Flying Florios, and Coakeney, and the Man Monkey, and Togo and Nogo, and twenty other people all told him that the postman was looking for him, he said, " Ah, go 258 ■* jt to o ' FAREWELL )n, now, youfio can't jolly me that way ! " And when he did meet the postman, he began suspiciously to back away. But the postman had a letter for him. The address was plain : Robert Emmet loNATir McGaw, VoThe Greatest Show on Earth, America. And what a letter ! The envelope was half as big as a pillow-case. It was fairly covered and plastered over with stamps. And they were not American stamps only, but EngUsh, French, and German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Jr ^ane^^e ; like all the mixed but kindly population of The Big Show itself, they came from every quarter of the globe ! What was even ixiore peculiar, no two canceling dates corresponded. It was, in short, the most remarkable letter that came through the mails, or didn't! 259 REDNEY McGAW And its contents ! There were, first, five crinkly new fifty-dollar bills from the Management. Of fives and tens there were at least a dozen. And as for ones and twos, that pillow-case envelope was stuffed as full of them as any pillow ever was with feathers. And, enwrapping all, was a double sheet of foolscap which bore this legend, in the handwriting of Elephants McNally : From The Big Show to Red McGaw, who held the fort, and who for about six weeks has never stopped wearing One of the best things we know of under the blue sky, The Smile That Won't Come Off! "Ah, say," said Red, some half-hour later, — and he was at that moment beaming like a whole constellation of guns, — "I don't know as I ever smiled so much." 260 FAREWELL He was still attempting to hold the point in argument, when a messenger from the head office called him m to another audience with the G. M. And the G. M. had called him solely with the idea of taking that money away again. Or, to be more accurate, he had de- cided to appoint Mrs. MuUer temporary receiver and trustee. She and her man were already there, waiting beside the G. M.'s desk. And, " Tell me," the G. M. was ask- mg her, as Red came in, " what do you do with this small boy's coin?" He kneaded his fingers mto Big Heinle's titanic shoulders. " I put him all into der Bank for Sav- ings," Mrs. Miiller responded with de- cision. And then, more feeUngly,— " But I let him haf a leedle from der interest for tobacco." "Excellent!" said the G. M.; 261 B EDNEY McGAW "only instead of money for tobacco^ I think it would be advisable to aUow Mr. McGaw. here, a certain amount for fish- ing; tackle and so on, in season While I think of it. too, I don't know but what _ if there are any black panthers loose in the neighborhood, - 1 don't know but what he 11 have to have a gun. And then, since it was to be Keds last day with them, he bestowed upon him a privilege that was the highest evTn inL bestowal of The Big Show. About eleven that morning. Mr. "Spider" Madigan, brown with good Iowa tan, had climbed twenty feet up a telegraph pole near the City Hall, and was taHng in the endless splendid fasci- nations of " The Grand Pageant and Street Parade." There were many cir- cus people in that parade that he would have given a year or two of life to be. There was Madam Rosalinda, the Uon 202 FAREWELL tamer, sitting in the midst of a cage of them. There was the man in the uni- form of a royal Indian Jemadar, walking beside the biggest of the elephants. There was Sphnters, " the King of the Clowns." But all these became as noth- ing when the forty-horse band-wagon swung into view ! Those horses! — Four abreast, ten deep, every one flecklessly cream-white, and all, wave on wave, tossing their red and gold harness as if they were draw- ing the chariot of an emperor! Li the year he had been farming " Spider " had learned about horses, and he knew that all America could not produce another such forty. He had learned the feeling, too, of sitting behind even one blooded animal. What, then, must be the feelings of the man who 'd got the job of driving those ! " Crimminy! " he breathed, '* I bet he don't think he 's the nifty lad, or anything ! " 2G3 There were two people on the gilded box. But, as the "forty-horse made Jhe corner, the smaller one was handed the ribbons And, perched up the e Ive that great swan "float" and ^ts fifty glittering bandsmen, he looked such a little gaffer! ... He was a Me gaffer, too. He wasn't any big- g", and he was just about the omld %der stared again.-.«t««d till his mouth became one prodigious 0, and he all but fell from Ws telegraph pole. That little gaffer was not merely just the size and build of Red McGaw. Oee.-- Qee\-lt was Red McGaw himself! At the afternoon performance in Du- buque sat two box parties, mvited by special request of the management. 1 he le consLd of Messrs. McGaw and M^digan, now after many adventmres Tuast united, and the latter- farmmg 2G4 FAREWELL friends and Foster paren s, the Sonnen- scheins. In the other party were Hans and his great- grandmother, Mrs. Miilier, Miss Elsa Miilier, and " leedle Heinle." But it must be acknowledged that two of those highly honored guests did not appear to be enjoying "The World's Greatest Circus anu Ihree Ring Hippo- drome " at all. After the first half-minute Hans' great-grandmother joined her hands, shut her horr^ed eyes firmly behind her horn spec es, and refused to open them again till the last '-turn" of the last act had been concluded! As for "leedle Heinie," he had al- ready rescued his mother from the show business and had her safely beside him. 3ut that tremendous father of his, be- cause of the slowness of his substitute, could not be spared till the day follow- ing. And now, as time after time Big Heinie came strangely into view, re- 2G5 J?^''*-- REDN EY McGAW mained for a few mysterious minutes, and then as suspiciously disappeared agam, "leedle Heinie's" face filled with a con- cern which every moment became more anxiously intense. In all his thirteen months he had never seen any circus performance that he had enjoyed le3S. And when, in the final " act,' Big Heinie whirled thunderously around the ring in his flying Roman chanot with three other Roman chariots all fearfully pursuing him, " leedle Heinie could abide the sight no longer He burst into roars and howls which said in language that even the meanest in- telligence could not misinterpret : " 1 m t'inkin' somedings'll happen mit dot leedle feller yet ! " About two months after these events, when The Big Show had got back East and was snuggling down for the winter, the G. M. received a letter. It was a 2(30 FAREWELL letter which looked very much like that letter that Red himself had had occasion to re-read the day this story took its beginning in Buffalo. Only now it was Red himself who was the writer. " Were livin right next door to Spider an the Sonnenshines," it ran, " an we been fishin about twice a week. Mister Sonnenshine says its a turible daingerous thing to farm too hard a^ first, we been swimmin a heap too. the first time, I got my back sunburnt so bad, skids I thot Ide haf to keep sleepin on my stummick till I growed up. Hans he goes along too. him and his great-grandmother takes care of each other fine only sometimes shes fierce an hard to take care of but they say great-grandmothers are generally always like that. '* Missus Mullers began tamin things, the chickens, say they all pike after her 267 I h i 11 I' REDNEY McGAW the jiffy they get eyes on her. She cant hardly ^et to church for them, and she 's tamin the chipmunks an red squirls an a ground hog too. If there was any mountain Uons round here, say it 'd be only a day or two till they was eatin out of your hand. " Big Heinie's feeiin fine only he cant get work enough to do on a hunderd and sixty akers. we was at a bam- raism last week an they had to make him stop, they said if he raised Uke that again he'd turn the everlastin blame shebang clean over. " Say, I had a letter from Elefants an Cokeney last week. Elefants he writ that he thinks him an Cokeney will have to -ome out here for a holUday an take us mto the bush an show us how to do things. An say, if they ever do! skids — "An Cokeney he writ that every time deva sees jinjer cakes she 's like 268 FAREWELL to cry her jolly head off an keeps a hollerin in elefant talk, say, if I dont see that red McGaw an his grin again pretty soon Ime jist guin to hawl off an lay out the whole menajcry. but skids I guess thats ony some more of there joUyin." THE END 'wnsm^^rf'^f