THE RINGMASTER
"Just the same, that old fellow didn't even know whether there was
somebody aboard the canalboat with Quigg and his daughter or not," Neale
O'Neil said, as they turned back into the Durginville road.
"Oh!" cried Cecile. "Are you going on?"
"We are--just," said her brother. "Until we solve the mystery of the
_Nancy Hanks_."
"Do you suppose that canal boatman is bad enough to have shut the
children up on his boat and will keep them for ransom?" demanded Agnes,
filled with a new fear.
"He's not a brigand I should hope," Cecile Shepard cried.
"Can't tell what he is till we see him," Neale grumbled. "If this old
canalboat hasn't been wrecked or sunk, we'll find it and interview Cap'n
Quigg before we go back."
"Meanwhile," Ruth said, with more than a little doubt, "the children may
be wandering in quite an opposite direction."
"Why, of course, our guess may be wrong, Ruth," Luke said thoughtfully,
turning around the better to speak with the oldest Corner House girl.
"However, we are traveling so fast that it will not delay us much."
"Pshaw, no!" exclaimed Neale. "We'll be in Durginville in a few
minutes."
But they did not get that far. Crossing the canal by a liftbridge they
swept along the other side and suddenly coming out of the woods saw
before them a tented city.
"Why!" cried Cecile, "it's a circus!"
"I saw the pictures on the billboards," her brother admitted. "If we
only had the children with us, and everything was all right, we might
go."
"Sure we would," responded Neale, smiling.
"Oh, Neale!" cried Agnes, "is it Uncle Bill's?"
"Yes. I have a letter in my pocket now from him that I've had no chance
to read."
"You don't suppose Mr. Sorber knows anything about the children?" said
Ruth, a little weakly for her.
"How could he?" gasped Agnes. "But we ought to stop and ask."
"And see about the calico pony," chuckled Neale. "Tess and Dot have been
hounding me to death about that."
"You don't suppose Dot could have started out to hunt for the circus to
get that pony, do you?" suggested Ruth, almost at her wits' end to
imagine what had happened to her little sister and her friend.
"We'll know about that shortly," Neale declared.
Suddenly Luke Shepard exclaimed:
"Hullo, what's afire, Neale? See yonder?"
"At the canal," cried his sister, seeing the smoke too.
"Is it a house?" asked Agnes.
"A straw stack!" cried Neale. "Must be. Some farmer is losing the
winter's bedding for his cattle."
"It is on the canal," Luke put in. "Don't you see? There's one of those
old barges there--and the smoke is coming from it."
"There are the flames. The fire's burst out," Agnes cried.
Suddenly Ruth startled them all by demanding:
"How do we know it isn't the _Nancy Hanks_?"
"Crickey! We don't," acknowledged Neale, and immediately touched the
accelerator. The car leaped ahead. They went roaring on toward the
circus grounds and the canal, and people on the road stepped hastily
aside at the "Honk! Honk!" of the automobile horn.
Fortunately there were not many vehicles in the road, for most of the
farmers' wagons had already reached the grounds, and their mules and
horses were hitched beside the right of way. But there was quite a crowd
upon the tented field. This crowd had not, however, as Louise Quigg
feared "seen everything all up" before the canalboat girl and her father
reached the tents.
Louise wanted to see everything to be seen outside before paying over
their good money to get into the big show. So they wandered among the
tents for some time, without a thought of the old canalboat. Indeed,
they were out of sight of it when the mule kicked over the stove on the
_Nancy Hanks_ and that pirate craft (according to the first hopes of
Sammy Pinkney) caught fire.
Indeed, nobody on the circus grounds was looking canalward. Torches were
beginning to flare up here and there in the darkening field. There were
all kinds of sideshows and "penny pops"--lifting machines,
hammer-throws, a shooting gallery, a baseball alley with a grinning
black man dodging the ball at the end--"certainly should like to try to
hit that nigger," Pap declared--taffy booths, popcorn machines, soft
drink booths, and a dozen other interesting things.
Of course, Louise and her father could only look. They had no money to
spend on side issues--or sideshows. But they looked their fill. For once
Cap'n Bill appeared to be awake. He was as interested in what there was
to be seen as the child clinging to his hairy hand.
They went back of the big tent and there was one with the canvas raised
so that they could see the horses and ponies stabled within. Some of the
fattest and sleekest horses were being harnessed and trimmed for the
"grand entrance," and such a shaking of heads to hear the tiny bells
ring, and stamping of oiled hoofs as there was--all the airs of a vain
girl before her looking-glass!
Louise was stricken dumb before a pony, all patches of brown and cream
color, and with pink like a seashell inside its ears and on its muzzle.
The pony's mane was all "crinkly" and its bang was parted and braided
with blue ribbons.
"Oh, Pap!" gasped the little girl, breathlessly, "isn't he a _dear_? I
never did see so harnsome a pony."
A short, stout man, with a very red face and a long-lashed whip in his
hand who was standing by, heard the canalboat girl and smiled kindly
upon her. He was dressed for the ring--shiny top hat, varnished boots,
and all, and Louise thought him a most wonderful looking man indeed. If
anybody had told her Mr. Bill Sorber was the president of the United
States she would have believed it.
"So you like that pony, do you?" asked the ringmaster. "He's some pony.
I reckon the little girls he belongs to will like him, too."
"Oh, isn't he a circus pony?" asked Louise, wide-eyed.
"He was. But I'm just going to send him to Milton to live with some
little girls I know, and I bet Scalawag will have a lazy time of it for
the rest of his natural life. And he'll like that," chuckled Mr. Sorber,
deep in his chest, "for Scalawag's the laziest pony I ever tried to
handle."
"Oh," murmured Louise, "he seems too nice a horse to be called by such a
bad name."
"Bless you! he don't mind it at all," declared the ringmaster. "And it
fits him right down to the ground! He's as full of tricks as an egg is
of meat--yes ma'am! Ain't you, Scalawag?"
He touched the pony lightly with his whip upon his round rump and the
pony flung out his pretty heels and whinnied. Then at a touch under his
belly Scalawag stood up on his hind legs and pawed the air to keep his
balance.
"Oh!" gasped Louise Quigg, with clasped hands.
"Just as graceful as a barrel, Scalawag," chuckled Mr. Sorber. "He's too
fat. But I just can't help feedin' critters well. I like to feed well
myself. And I know where he's going to live in Milton he'll be well
tended. Hullo! what's going on?"
For suddenly a shout was heard beyond the main tent. Somebody cried,
"Fire! Fire!" and there was a roaring of an automobile approaching the
circus grounds at a rapid rate.
"What's goin' on?" repeated Mr. Sorber, and started upon an elephantine
trot for the canal side of the field.
"Come on, Pap! We don't want to miss nothin'," gasped Louise, seizing
the gaping Quigg's hand. She left the calico pony, however, with a
backward glance of longing.
The crowd broke for the canal bank. When the captain and his daughter
came in sight of the fire the flames were shooting ten feet high out of
the cabin roof.
The boat was moored across the canal. Neale, driving down to the bank,
saw that the water was between them and the fire, so he halted the car.
A heavy man, bearing two empty pails in each hand, and followed closely
by another man and a little girl likewise bearing buckets, came
gaspingly to the automobile.
"Hi, Mister!" puffed Mr. Bill Sorber, "ast your party to git out and
take us over the bridge in that there machine of yours, will you? That
canalboat belongs to this here man and his little gal--why, Neale!"
"Hullo, Uncle Bill! Hop in--you and your friends," cried Neale.
"Come in--hurry, Mr. Sorber!" Ruth added her plea. "Oh!" she said to
Louise, "is that the _Nancy Hanks_?"
"Sure as ever was," gulped Louise. "Come on, Pap! John and Jerry will be
burnt to a cinder, so they will."
"Tell me, child," Luke said, lifting the girl into his lap as he sat in
front with Neale, and crowding over to give the lanky Cap'n Quigg room
to sit. "Tell me, are there others aboard the boat?"
"John and Jerry," sobbed Louise.
"Well, well!" Luke soothed. "Don't cry. They can open the door of the
cabin and walk out, can't they?"
"Nop. They're chained to stanchions."
"_Chained?_" gasped the excitable Agnes from the rear. "How awful! Have
you got children--"
"Aw, who said anything about children?" demanded Louise snappily. "Only
John and Jerry."
"Well?"
"Them's mules," said the child, as Neale drove the car on at increasing
speed.
"Tell us," Ruth begged, quite as anxious now as her sister, "have you
seen two children--a boy and a girl--this afternoon?"
"Lots of 'em," replied Louise, succinctly.
Here Cap'n Bill put in a word. "If there's anything to see, children, or
what not, Lowise seen 'em. She's got the brightest eyes!"
"We are looking for a little girl with a doll in her arms and a boy
about ten years old. They were carrying a big paper bag and a basket of
fruit, and maybe were near the canal at Milton--right there at the
blacksmith shop where you had your mules shod to-day."
This was Luke's speech, and despite the jarring and bouncing of the car
he made his earnest words audible to the captain of the canalboat and to
his daughter.
"Did they come aboard your boat? Or did you see them?" he added.
"Ain't been nobody aboard our boat but our ownselfs and Beauty,"
declared Louise.
"And you did not see two children--"
"Holt on!" cried the girl. "I guess I seen 'em when we was waitin' to
get the mules shod. They went by."
"Which way were they going?"
"Toward the canal--they was. And our boat was in sight. But I didn't see
'em after."
"Oh, my dear!" cried Ruth, from the tonneau, "they could not possibly be
shut up anywhere on your boat?"
"Why, they wasn't in the cabin, of course--nor the mules' stable,"
drawled the captain. "Warn't nowhere else."
The automobile roared down toward the burning canalboat. The crowd from
the circus field lined up along the other bank; but the towpath was
deserted where the _Nancy Hanks_ lay. The flames were rapidly destroying
the boat amidships.