JAN IN A TRAP
Ted Martin hit the ground with a hard thump. He grunted, for the breath
was knocked out of him. But he wasn’t hurt. He knew that as soon as any
one. At school Ted played football sometimes, and more than once he had
had a harder fall than this.
“Whoa! Whoa!” cried Janet to the pony. She pulled on the reins and the
little animal came to a stop.
“What’s matter?” Trouble wanted to know. “Why don’t horse go on?”
“Because Ted’s fallen off,” explained his sister.
By this time the Curlytop lad had leaped up and was running to get on
the pony. What bothered him more than anything else was the fact that
the camera men, laughing among themselves, were still grinding away at
the cranks of their machines, taking moving pictures.
“Wait! Wait!” cried Ted. “Don’t take me now! Wait until I get on the
pony!”
“That’s all right, Ted!” laughed Mr. Birch. “This is funnier and better
than I thought it would be. Can you fall off again?” he asked, as the
camera men stopped grinding, for Ted was now beside the pony which had
come to a halt, with Janet and Trouble still on its back. “Can you fall
off again, Ted?”
“Can I fall off again?” cried the boy, in surprise. “Do you mean you
want me to fall off on purpose?”
“That’s just what I want,” replied Mr. Birch. “The cameras happened
to snap you when you fell the first time. It made a good scene, and
I’m going to change the story about to fit it in. But if you can do
the same thing again, maybe in a little different way, it will be very
funny. Want to try?”
“Sure I do!” declared Ted. “I’ll be just like one of the funny men in
the pictures, won’t I?”
“Shouldn’t wonder,” agreed Mr. Birch, with a laugh. “Now get ready,”
he went on. “Janet, you guide the pony along and Ted will run up and
try to get on. When he does you make the pony go a little faster as if
you were trying to get away. Then Ted will slip to the ground as he did
before. You aren’t afraid, are you, little man?” he asked Trouble.
“No, I not ’fraid,” was the answer. “I like horsies an’ I like
nellifunts. Once I roded on a nellifunt, I did.”
“Good! Then a pony oughtn’t to frighten you,” chuckled Mr. Birch. “Get
ready now!”
Again the pony ambled forward, with Janet and Trouble on its back, and
Ted ran forward to get on. Janet did just as the director told her to,
and her brother slipped off in a funny fashion.
“That’s fine!” cried Mr. Birch, with a laugh. “You children will be
in the movies some day. It’s a good thing you fell off, Ted, even if
it was accidental at first, for it gave me an idea. That’s the way it
often happens in this sort of work--accidents, many times, make the
best scenes.”
“I thought sure he’d spoiled the picture when he slipped off,”
confessed Janet, when the cameras had stopped grinding.
“I did, too,” admitted Ted. “I’d like to see how I looked when I fell.”
“We’ll let you do that some day,” promised the director. And I might
say that, later in the season when they were back home, the Curlytops
saw this picture, in which they had had a part in making, shown in the
Cresco Theater. Ted beheld himself running after the pony and slipping
from its back in a queer way that made him laugh. All who saw it also
laughed, including Ted’s friends and playmates. As for Trouble, when he
saw himself and Janet on the pony, the little fellow let out a scream
of delight.
So, all in all, though at first it seemed as though their efforts were
going to fail, the initial appearance of the Curlytops in the movies
was quite a success.
Mr. and Mrs. Martin liked it very much at Dawson’s Farm, and only for
the fact that he had planned to make a tour induced the father of the
Curlytops to carry out the idea.
“It would be nice to stay here all summer,” he said to his wife.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But I would like a little change, and so would the
children. I want to get near a lake or a large river for a week or two.”
“Yes, I’d like that myself,” said Mr. Martin. “And if I can manage it
we may take a motor boat trip. We’ll stay here until Mr. Portnay sends
back that box of albums, and then we’ll travel on.”
“You ought to hear from him in a day or so,” said Mrs. Martin.
“I expect to,” replied her husband.
Meanwhile, the Curlytops and Trouble were having a great deal of fun
on the farm. They were allowed to gather eggs and do some of the small
chores about the place, such as feeding the chickens and taking salt to
some sheep in a distant pasture.
Every day some moving pictures were taken, and when this happened not
too far away the children were allowed to watch. Some of the scenes
were filmed several miles distant from the farm, in rocky glens or
in bits of woodland which were needed for the background. On such
occasions the actors and actresses were piled into automobiles, or
those who had horses rode them, and the whole company, cameras and all,
would go to the spot picked out by Mr. Birch.
Once he filmed a fishing scene, and when Mr. Tizzy happened to mention
the trick he had played on Ted, the director had a great idea.
“We’ll do that for the movies!” he cried. “It will be great. Will you
children go through with it for us?”
“I guess so,” said Ted, “if my father thinks it’s all right.”
Mr. Martin gave his consent, and so, for the second time, the Curlytops
faced the camera. Or, rather, they didn’t exactly face it, for if you
will notice in moving pictures, the players hardly ever gaze directly
at you, which means that they don’t peer straight at the lens of the
camera.
But Ted threw in his baited hook and waited for a bite, while the
flip-flop man, hidden in the grass around the bend in the bank,
fastened on a rubber boot. Another camera took close-up views of this
scene, while the first camera was picturing Ted’s surprise when he
pulled up the rubber boot full of water which spurted from the hole in
the toe.
The rest of the funny scene, with the shoe and the tin can, was also
taken, and Trouble was even filmed catching a real fish, much to his
delight. Then Mr. Tizzy did flip-flops while the children were shown
laughing at him after they had discovered the trick. But the funny man
did not again fall down the hole, as that was considered too dangerous.
The next day Mr. Martin received a letter from the movie actor in New
York, saying how sorry Mr. Portnay was to learn that his helper had, by
mistake, picked up the box of albums.
“I am having your box shipped back to you by express,” wrote the
leading man. “I hope you will receive it safely. I may see you before
the summer is over, as my company is going to travel in the same
direction you are taking on your tour.”
“Oh, I hope we do see him again!” exclaimed Janet, when the letter was
talked about one afternoon. “I like him.”
“So do I,” declared Ted. “I wish I could ride a horse as he does, or
like Mr. Weldon.”
“Well, I shall be glad to get back Mr. Cardwell’s albums,” said Mr.
Martin. “As soon as that box comes we’ll travel on again and bid
good-by to the movie folk, at least for a while.”
It was some time later, that same afternoon, that Janet wandered off
by herself to a little wood lot about a mile from the farmhouse. She
wanted to pick some wild flowers, and Ted, whom she asked to come with
her, said he didn’t want to.
But Janet did not mind going alone, for she had often been in these
same woods before. She had been taking care of Trouble nearly all of
that day, and Trouble certainly lived up to his name--he was full of
mischief. Jan was glad to get away from him for a time, dearly as she
loved him.
So she wandered about, picking flowers that grew in the woods and
enjoying the beautiful scenes all about her. She neared a little
gully, down the sides of which grew some blossoms she had not before
noticed--beautiful red flowers.
“Oh, I’m going to get some of them!” she murmured.
Down the pine-needle-covered sides of the gully she scrambled, toward a
big clump of ferns, near which grew the red flowers she so much admired.
The sides of the gully were steeper than Janet realized, and she was
going faster than she thought--so fast, in fact, that when she reached
the clump of ferns she couldn’t stop. Right through them she had to
run, and, before she knew it, she saw that just behind them, hidden in
a growth of tangled bushes, was what seemed to be a large box.
It was a box one end of which was open. Before Janet had time to wonder
what such a big box was doing out there in the woods, and before she
could stop herself, she had run right into it, through the opening.
“I wonder what this is?” thought the little girl. “It has such a funny
smell--like wild animals in the circus!”
There was a clicking sound and the big box, which Janet was now inside
of, began to tremble. Then came a jar and a thud, and it suddenly grew
dark.
“Oh!” gasped Janet.
She whirled about, but too late!
Behind her, the opening was closed. The sliding end of the box
trap--for such it was--had dropped into place, falling shut, and making
poor Janet a prisoner.
“Oh, I’m in a trap!” she cried. “In a wild animal trap! How am I ever
going to get out?”