IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY
Teddy had squared off, and was landing sledge-hammer blows on the
empty air.
Phil, too, had squared himself prepared to give battle, but his
hands fell sharply to his sides.
"Wha--what--" he gasped.
"Come on!" bellowed Teddy.
They were in a large room, brilliantly lighted, and about them,
in a semi-circle, was a line of laughing faces. From them the
eyes of the astonished Circus Boys wandered to a long table on
which were flowers and plenty of good things to eat.
"Why, it's our old recitation room in the high school, Teddy,"
breathed Phil.
"I don't care what it is. I can lick the whole outfit!" shouted
Teddy Tucker advancing belligerently.
"It's the boys, Teddy, don't you understand?" laughed Phil.
"Well, of all the ways of inviting a fellow to dinner, this beats
anything I ever saw before."
"How does it feel to be kidnaped?" grinned President Billy,
extending his hand.
"So you are the young gentleman who put up this job on us,
are you?" demanded Phil.
"I guess I am one of them. But I wasn't unlucky enough to get a
black eye, like Walter over there. You gave that to him, Teddy.
My, what a punch you have!" laughed Billy.
"That isn't a circumstance to what's coming to you. I'll wait
till I get back to school, next fall, and then I'll take it out
of you. You'll have something coming to you all summer. Did I
paint Walt's eye that way?"
"You did. It's up to you to apologize to him now."
"Apologize?"
"Yes; that's what I said."
"I like that! I have a good notion to apologize by painting the
other eye the same color," growled Teddy.
"But, what does all this mean?" urged Phil, looking about him,
still a bit dazed.
"It means that we fellows wanted to give you and Teddy a
little supper. It isn't much, but there are sandwiches and
cookies and pie and lots of other stuff that you'll like."
"Cookies?" interrupted Teddy, his face relaxing into a
half smile.
"Yes."
"We knew you wouldn't come, so we planned to kidnap you both
and bring you over here by main force. After we eat supper
we'll have a little entertainment among ourselves. Walter is
going to sing--"
"What's that? Walt going to sing?" demanded Teddy, halting on
his way to inspect the table.
"Yes."
"Then I'm going, right now!" answered the lad, turning sharply
and heading for the door.
"Why, why--"
"I've heard him sing before. Good night!"
"Come back here," laughed Phil, grabbing his companion
by the shoulder. "We can stand even Walter's singing if
he can. But really, fellows, we can't stay more than
fifteen or twenty minutes."
"Why not?"
"Because we must get to the train. Were we to be left we might
come in for a fine. Mr. Sparling is very strict. He expects
everybody to live up to the rules. I'm sorry, but--"
"It's all fixed, Phil. No need to worry," President Billy
informed him.
"Fixed? What do you mean?"
"With Mr. Sparling."
"You--you told him?"
"Yes."
"See here, Billy Ford," interrupted Teddy.
"What is it, Teddy?"
"Did you say Boss Sparling was in on this little kidnaping game--
did he know you were going to raise roughhouse with--with us?"
"I--I guess he did," admitted President Billy.
"I'll settle with him tomorrow," nodded Teddy, swelling out
his chest.
"Did you tell him you were going to have a supper up here?"
asked Phil.
"He knows all about it. You need not worry about the train going
away without you. Mr. Sparling said you had a short run tonight,
and that the last section would not pull out until three o'clock
in the morning. That's honest Injun, Phil."
"Well, if that is the case, then we'll stay."
"Hurrah for the Circus Boys!" shouted the class, making a rush
for seats at the table.
"Ready for the coffee," announced the President.
Who should come in at that moment, with a steaming coffeepot, but
the Widow Cahill.
"Are you in this, too?" Teddy demanded.
"I am afraid I am," laughed Mrs. Cahill. "The boys needed some
grown-ups to help them out."
"You're no friend of mine, then. I'll--"
"But you are going to have some of those molasses cookies that I
told you I baked for you--"
"Cookies? Where?" exclaimed Teddy, forgetting his
anger instantly.
"Help yourself. There they are."
"It isn't much of a spread," apologized the president. "We have
a little of everything and not much of anything--"
"And a good deal of nothing," added Teddy humorously.
"Everybody eat!" ordered Mrs. Cahill.
They did. Thirty boys with boys' appetites made the home-cooked
spread disappear with marvelous quickness. Each had brought
something from home, and Mrs. Cahill, whom they had taken into
their confidence two days before the Sparling Shows reached
town, had furnished the rest. Everything was cold except the
coffee, but the feasters gave no thought to that. It was food,
and good wholesome food at that, and the lads were doing full
justice to it.
"Say, Phil, that was a wonderful act of yours," nodded
President Billy, while the admiring gaze of the class was
fixed on Phil Forrest.
"I wish I might learn to do that," said Walter.
"You? You couldn't ride a wooden rocking horse without falling
off and getting a black eye," jeered Teddy, at which there was a
shout of laughter.
"Can you?" cut in Phil.
"I can ride anything from a giraffe to a kangaroo--that is, until
I fall off," Teddy added in a lower voice. "I rode a greased pig
at a country fair once. Anybody who can do that, can sit on a
giraffe's neck without slipping off."
"Where was that?" questioned a voice. "I never heard of your
riding a greased pig around these parts."
"I guess that must have been before you were born," retorted
Teddy witheringly.
"Say, Phil," persisted Walter, this time in a confidential tone.
"Yes?"
"Do you suppose you could get me a job in the circus?"
"I don't know about that, Walt. What do you think you could do?"
"Well, I can do a cartwheel and--"
"Oh, fudge!" interrupted Teddy.
"That's more than Tucker could do when he joined the show.
Do you know what he did, first of all?" said Phil.
"No; what did he do?" chorused the boys.
"He poured coffee in the cook tent for the thirsty roustabouts.
That's the way he began his circus career."
"I didn't do it more than a day or two," Tucker explained,
rather lamely.
"But you did it!" jeered Walter.
"Then his next achievement was riding the educated mule. I guess
you boys never saw him do that."
"Not until tonight."
"This is different. The other was a bucking mule, and Teddy made
a hit from the first time he entered the ring on Jumbo. He hit
pretty much everything in the show, including the owner himself."
Phil leaned back and laughed heartily at the memory of his
companion's exhibition at this, his first appearance in a circus
ring as a performer.
"No, Walt, I wouldn't advise you to join. Some people are
cut out for the circus life. They never would succeed at
anything else. Teddy and myself for instance. Besides, your
people never would consent to it. You will be a lawyer, or
something great, some of these days, while we shall be cutting
up capers in the circus ring at so much per caper. It's a
wonderful life but you keep out of it," was Phil Forrest's
somewhat illogical advice.
"How far are you going this year?" asked one of the boys.
"I can't say. I understand we are going south--to Dixie Land for
the last half of the season. I think we are headed for Canada,
just now, swinging around the circuit as it were. Isn't it about
time we were getting back to the train, Teddy?"
"No, I guess not. I haven't eaten up all the cookies yet.
Please pass the cookies, you fellow up there at the head of
the table."
"We shall have our little entertainment before you fellows go to
your sleeper. We reckon Phil Forrest and Teddy Tucker ought to
do some stunts for us. Isn't that so?" asked President Billy.
"Yes," shouted the boys.
"What, after a meal like that? I couldn't think of it,"
laughed Phil. "Never perform on a full stomach unless you want
to take chances. It might do you up for good."
"Well, it won't hurt Teddy to be funny. Do something
funny, Teddy."
Teddy looked up soulfully as he munched a cookie.
"Costs money to see me act funny," he said.
"Go on; go on!" urged the boys. "You never showed us any of your
tricks except what you did in the ring this evening."
"Do you know, it's a funny thing, but I never can be funny
unless there is a crop of new-mown sawdust under my feet,"
remarked Teddy.
"Nothing very funny about that!" growled a voice at the further
end of the table.
Teddy fixed him with a reproving eye.
"Very well, but you'll be sorry. I will now present to you the
giddiest, gladdest, gayest, grandest, gyrating, glamorous and
glittering galaxy--as the press agent says--that ever happened."
Teddy, who sat at the extreme end of the table, placed both hands
carelessly on the table, then drew his body up by slow degrees,
until a moment later as his body seemed to unfold, he was doing
a hand stand right on the end of the supper table.
The boys shouted with delight and Teddy kicked his feet in
the air.
"Go on! Don't stop," urged the lads.
"You'll be wishing I had stopped before I began," retorted the
lad, starting to walk on his hands right down the center of
the table.
There were dishes in the way, but this did not disturb Tucker in
the least. He merely pushed them aside, some rolling off on the
floor and breaking, others falling into the laps of the boys.
"Here, here, what are you doing?" called Phil.
"This is what I call the topsy-turvy walk."
Teddy paused when halfway down the table, to let his mouth down
to the table, where he had espied another cookie. When he pulled
himself up, the cookie was between his lips, and the boys roared
at the ludicrous sight.
Then, the lad who was walking on his hands, continued right on.
He was nearing the foot of the table when something occurred that
changed the current of their thoughts, sending the heart of every
boy pounding in his throat.
Crash!
It seemed as if the roof had been suddenly hurled down upon
their heads.
Teddy instantly fell off the table, tumbling into the laps of two
of the boys, the three going down to the floor in a heap, finally
rolling under the table. The other boys sprang to their feet in
sudden alarm.
"It's a band," cried Phil. "Don't be afraid."
Then the circus band, that had been waiting in the hall just
outside the dining place, marched in with horns blaring, drums
beating, and took up their position at the far end of the room.
"It's the circus band," cried the lads, now recovering from
their fright. "How did they get here?"
By this time Teddy, his face red and resentful, was poking his
head from beneath the table.
"Hey, Rube!" he shouted, then ducked back again.
Phil understood instantly that this was one of
Mr. Sparling's surprises. But there were still other surprises
to come. No sooner had the band taken up its position than there
was again a commotion out in the hall. The lads opened their
eyes wide when a troop of painted clowns came trotting in,
followed by half a dozen acrobats, all in ring costume. A mat
was quickly spread by some attendants that Mr. Sparling had sent.
Then began the merriest hodge-podge of acrobatic nonsense that
the high school boys ever had seen. The clowns, entering into
the spirit of the moment, grew wonderfully funny. They sang
songs and told stories, while the acrobats hurled themselves into
a mad whirl of somersaults, cartwheels and Wild Dervish throws.
Thus far the boys were too amazed to speak.
All at once some of the performers began to form a pyramid, one
standing on the other's shoulders.
"Here, I'm going to be the top-mounter!" cried Teddy, taking
a running start and beginning to clamber up the human column.
He was assisted up and up until he was standing at the top,
his head almost touching the high ceiling in the room.
"Speech!" howled the delighted high school boys.
"Fellow citizens," began Teddy.
Just then the human pyramid toppled over and Teddy had to leap to
save himself, striking the mat, doing a rolling tumble and coming
up on his feet.
When all the fun making in the hall was over one surprise proved
yet to be in the reserve. The high school boys of Edmeston
turned out with lighted torches. Forming in column of fours they
escorted Phil and Teddy to their car on the circus train. It was
not many minutes later that the boys, tired out but happy,
tumbled into their berths, where they were asleep immediately,
carrying on, even in their dreams, the joyous scenes through
which they had just passed.