IN A LIVELY BLOW-DOWN
>From that moment on, until the close of the season, Phil Forrest
retained his place on the aerial trapeze team, doubling up with
his other work, and putting the finishing touches to what
Mr. Sparling called "a great career on the bars."
But Phil, much as he loved the work, did not propose to spend
all his life performing above the heads of the people. He felt
that a greater future was before him on the ground at the front
of the house.
Only a week remained now before the show would close for
the season. Even in Texas, where they were showing, the
nights had begun to grow chilly, stiffening the muscles of
the performers and making them irritable. All were looking
forward to the day when the tents should be struck for the
last time that season.
"What's the next stand?" asked Phil in the dressing tent a few
nights after his triumphal performance on the trapeze.
"Tucker, Texas," answered a voice.
"What's that?" shouted a clown.
"Tucker, I said."
"Any relation to Teddy Tucker?"
"I hope not," laughed the head clown.
"A place with that name spells trouble. Anything by the name of
Tucker, whether it's Teddy or not, means that we are in for some
kind of a mix-up. I wish I could go fishing tomorrow."
All in the dressing tent chuckled at the clown's sally.
"I know what you'd catch if you did," grumbled Teddy.
"Now, what would I catch, young man?" demanded the clown.
"You'd catch cold. That's all you can catch," retorted Teddy,
whereat the laugh was turned on the clown, much to the
latter's disgust.
Tucker proved to be a pretty little town on the open plain.
There was nothing in the appearance of the place to indicate
that they might look for trouble. However, as the clown had
prophesied, trouble was awaiting them--trouble of a nature
that the showman dreads from the beginning to the end of the
circus season.
The afternoon performance passed off without a hitch, the tent
being crowded almost to its capacity, Phil Forrest throwing
himself into his work in the air with more spirit and enthusiasm
than he had shown at any time since he took up his new work.
At Mr. Sparling's request, however, the lad had omitted his
triple somersault from the trapeze bar. The showman considered
the act too dangerous, assuring Phil that sooner or later he
would be sure to break his neck.
Phil laughed at the owner's fears, but promised that he would try
nothing beyond a double after that. He remembered how quickly he
had lost himself when he attempted the feat before. Few men are
able to do it without their brains becoming so confused that they
lose all sense of direction and location.
The evening house was almost as large as that of the afternoon,
as usual the audience being made up principally of town people,
the country spectators having returned to their homes
before night. The night set in dark and oppressive.
Soon after the gasoline lights were lighted the animals began
growling, pacing their cages restlessly, while the lions roared
intermittently, and the hyenas laughed almost hysterically.
It sent a shiver down the backs of nearly everyone who heard it--
the shrill laugh of the hyenas reaching clear back to the
dressing tent.
Teddy Tucker's eyes always grew large when he heard the laugh
of the hyena.
"B-r-r-r!" exclaimed Teddy.
"You'll 'b-r-r-r' worse than that before you get through,"
growled a performer.
"Why?"
" 'Cause it means what somebody said the other night--trouble."
"What kind of trouble does it mean?" asked Phil.
"I don't know. Some kind of a storm, I guess. You can't
always tell. Those animals know more than we human beings,
when it comes to weather and that sort of thing," broke in
Mr. Miaco the head clown.
"Well, you expected something would happen in a town called
Tucker, didn't you?"
"Are you going to be with this show next season, Teddy?"
questioned the clown who had taunted him before.
"I hope to."
"Then I sign out with some other outfit. I refuse to travel with
a bunch that carries a hoodoo like you with it. I feel it in my
bones that something is going to happen tonight, and just as soon
as I can get through my act I'm going to run--run, mind you,
not walk--back to the train as fast as my legs will carry me.
That won't be any snail's pace, either."
The performers joked and passed the time away until the band
started the overture, off under the big top. This means that
it is about time for the show to begin, and that the music is
started to hurry the people to their seats.
All hands fell silent as they got busy putting the finishing
touches to their makeup.
"All acts cut short five minutes tonight," sang the voice of
the ringmaster at the entrance to the dressing tent.
"You see," said the clown, nodding his head at Teddy.
"No, I hear," grumbled Teddy. "What's it all about?"
"Don't ask me. I don't know. I'm not running this show."
"Lucky for the show that you aren't," muttered the Circus Boy.
"What's that?"
"I was just thinking out loud, I guess."
"It's a bad habit. Don't do it when I'm around. All hoodoos
talk to themselves and in their sleep."
The show was started off with a rush, the Grand Entry having been
cut out again, as is frequently the case with a show where there
is a long run ahead, or a storm is expected. That night those in
the dressing tent could only surmise the reason. The hyena's
warning was the only thing to guide the performers in their
search for a reason for the haste. But they took the situation
philosophically, as they always had, and prepared for the
performance as usual.
The performance had gotten along well toward the end, and without
the slightest interruption. All hands were beginning to feel a
certain sense of relief, when the shrill blasts of the boss
canvasman's emergency whistle were heard outside the big top.
Phil had just completed his trapeze act and was dropping into
the net when the whistle sounded.
He glanced up and made a signal to the others in the air.
They dropped, one by one, to the net and swung themselves to
the ground, where they stood awaiting the completion of the
piece that the band was playing.
"Wind, isn't it?" questioned Mr. Prentice.
Phil nodded.
He was listening intently. His keen ears caught a distant roar
that caused him to gaze apprehensively aloft.
"I am afraid we are going to have trouble," he said.
"It has been in the air all the evening," was the low answer.
"Wonder if they have the menagerie tent out of the way?"
It was being taken down at that moment, the elephants having been
removed to the train, as had part of the cages.
All at once there was a roar that sent the blood from the
faces of the spectators. The boss canvasman's whistle
trilled excitedly.
"There go the dressing tents," said Phil calmly as a ripping and
rending was heard off by the paddock. "I hope it hasn't taken
my trunk with it. Glad I locked the trunk before coming into
the ring."
The band stopped playing suddenly. The tent was in
absolute silence.
"It's a cyclone!" shouted a voice among the spectators.
A murmur ran over the assemblage. In a moment they would be
in a mad rush, trampling each other under foot in their efforts
to escape.
Phil bounded toward the band.
"Play! Play!" he shouted. "They'll stampede if you don't.
Play, I tell you!"
The bandmaster waved his baton and the music of the band drowned
out the mutterings of the storm for the moment.
Suddenly the roaring without grew louder. Ropes were creaking,
center and quarter poles lifting themselves a few inches from the
ground, dangerously.
"It's blowing end on," muttered Phil, running full speed down the
concourse in his ring costume.
"Keep your seats!" he shouted. "There may be no danger. If the
tent should go down you will be safer where you are. Keep your
seats, everybody."
Phil dashed on, shouting his warning until he had gotten halfway
around the tent. Mr. Prentice had taken up the lad's cry on the
other side.
Then the blow fell.
The big top bent under the sweep of the gale until the center
poles were leaning far over to the north. Had the wind not
struck the tent on the end it must have gone down under the
first blast. As it was, canvas, rope and pole were holding,
but every stitch of canvas and every pole was trembling under
its burden.
"Sit steady, everybody! We may be able to weather it."
Phil saw that, if the people were to run into the arena and the
tent should fall, many must be crushed under the center and
quarter poles.
Up and down he ran shouting words of encouragement, and he was
thus engaged when Mr. Sparling worked his way in from the pad
room, as the open enclosure between the two dressing tents
is called. Phil had picked up the ringmaster's whip and was
cracking it to attract the attention of the people to what he
was trying to tell them.
Somehow, many seemed to gain confidence from this plucky, slender
lad clad in silk tights, who was rushing up and down as cool and
collected as if three thousand persons were not in deadly peril.
Nothing but Phil Forrest's coolness saved many from death
that night.
A mighty roar suddenly drew every eye in the tent to the
south end where the wind was pressing against the canvas
with increasing force.
Phil stood near the entrance, the flap of which had been quickly
laced and staked down when the canvasmen saw the gale coming
upon them.
He turned quickly, for the roar had seemed to be almost at
his side. What he saw drew an exclamation from Phil that,
at other times, might have been humorous. There was no
humor in it now.
"Gracious!" exclaimed the lad.
There, within twenty feet of him stood a lion, a huge, powerful
beast, with head up, the hair standing straight along its back,
the mane rippling in the breeze.
"It's Wallace," breathed the lad, almost unable to believe
his eyes. The biggest lion in captivity, somehow in the
excitement had managed to escape from his cage.
"Now there'll be a panic for sure! They've seen him!"
"Sit still and keep still! He won't hurt you!" shouted Phil.
"Now, you get out of here!" commanded Phil, starting toward
Wallace and cracking the ringmaster's whip in the animal's face.
Just for the briefest part of a second did Wallace give way, then
with a terrific roar, he bounded clear over the Circus Boy's
head, bowling Phil over as he leaped, and on down to the center
of the arena.
Phil had not been hurt. He was up and after the dangerous beast
in a twinkling. The audience saw what he was trying to do.
"Keep away from him!" bellowed Mr. Sparling.
"Throw a net over him!" shouted Phil.
However, between the storm and the escaped lion, none seemed to
have his wits about him sufficiently to know what was best to do.
Had the showmen acted promptly when Phil called, they might have
been able to capture the beast then and there.
Seeing that they were not going to do so, and that the lion was
walking slowly toward the reserved seats, Phil sprang in front of
the dangerous brute to head him off.
The occupants of the reserved seats were standing up. The panic
might break at any minute.
"Sit down!" came the command, in a stern, boyish voice.
Phil faced the escaped lion, starting toward it with a
threatening motion of the whip.
"Are you ever going to get a net?"
"Get a net!" thundered Mr. Sparling. "Get away from him, Phil!"
Instead of doing so, the Circus Boy stepped closer to the beast.
No one made the slightest move to capture the beast, as Phil
realized might easily be done now, if only a few had the presence
of mind to attempt it.
Crack!
The ringmaster's whip in Phil's hands snapped and the leather
lash bit deep into the nose of Wallace.
With a roar that sounded louder than that of the storm outside
the lion took a quick step forward, only to get the lash on his
nose again.
Suddenly he turned about and in long, curving bounds headed for
the lower end of the tent. Mr. Sparling sprang to one side,
knowing full well that it would be better to lose the lion than
to stir up the audience more than they already were stirred.
Phil was in full pursuit, cracking his whip at every jump.
Wallace leaped through the open flap at the lower end of the tent
and disappeared in the night.
Just as he did so there came a sound different from anything that
had preceded it. A series of reports followed one another until
it sounded as if a battery of small cannon were being fired,
together with a ripping and tearing and rending that sent every
spectator in the big tent, to his feet yelling and shouting.
"The tent is coming down! The tent is coming down!"
Women fainted and men began fighting to get down into the arena.
"Stay where you are!" shouted Phil. Then the Circus Boy
did a bold act. Running along in front of the seats he let
drive the lash of his long whip full into the faces of the
struggling people. The sting of the lash brought many of
them to their senses. Then they too turned to help hold
the others back.
With a wrench, the center poles were lifted several feet up into
the air.
"Look out for the quarter poles! Keep back or you'll be killed!"
shouted Phil.
"Keep back! Keep back!" bellowed Mr. Sparling.
And now the quarter poles--the poles that stand leaning toward
the center of the arena, just in front of the lower row of
seats--began to fall, crashing inward, forced to the north.
The center poles snapped like pipe stems, pieces of them being
hurled half the length of the tent.
Down came the canvas, extinguishing the lights and leaving
the place in deep darkness. The people were fairly beside
themselves with fright. But still that boyish voice was
heard above the uproar:
"Sit still! Sit still!"
The whole mass of canvas collapsed and went rolling northward
like a sail suddenly ripped from the yards of a ship.
The last mighty blow of the storm had been more than canvas and
painted poles could stand.