ARTHUR’S DEAL WITH A CIRCUS HAND
In spite of the enthusiasm all the boys felt for the proposed Boy Scout
organization, the thoughts of the next day were clouded with the fear
of what Marshal Walter might do. He had threatened to arrest each boy
whose name he knew. And he knew all the “Aviators.”
When all arrangements had been made for the Boy Scout meeting Monday
evening and the tea party was at an end, the young guests lingered.
There was a quick conference among the older boys, and then Alex
Conyers approached Mr. Trevor.
“I suppose, Mr. Trevor, you know all about our trouble yesterday――” he
began.
“I’m sorry I had to hear so much,” was their host’s reply.
“Marshal Walter left word at our house that he might arrest all of us.”
“So I hear.”
“Do you think he will?”
“I’ve known persons to be arrested for less.”
“Do you think we ought to be taken up?”
“If it would teach you a lesson――”
“But we’ve all reformed,” protested Alex with an attempt at a smile.
“We’re goin’ to be Boy Scouts. If the mayor knew that don’t you think
he’d let us off?”
“He might. It is in his power.”
“Won’t you tell him?”
“I’ll be glad to. I’ll see what can be done,” answered Mr. Trevor.
The next morning the scared boys drifted aimlessly from house to house.
Not even the shop in the garage interested them. Finally they could
stand the suspense no longer and about noontime Art called his father
by telephone.
“The mayor is going to give all of you another chance,” answered Mr.
Trevor. “But he says if there is any more trouble of that kind you’ll
have to answer for both offenses.”
If the boys had been present when Mr. Trevor and Mr. Conyers called on
the mayor they would have seen a far from formal interview. As a matter
of fact they talked most of the time about a fishing trip. And the end
of the interview would have further astounded them. “Oh, by the way,
Mr. Trevor,” exclaimed the mayor, “here’s a purse Marshal Walter took
from one of the boys. It has some money in it.”
Mr. Trevor did not turn the funds over to the boys at once or even
mention it. At dinner that evening Art asked his father:
“We’re all stuck on this Boy Scout business and we got some books about
it to-day. But do you want us to break up the Young Aviators Club?”
“By no means,” replied Mr. Trevor. “But you won’t care for it after a
bit: you’ll have so many other things to do.”
“I reckon you didn’t care much for our club.”
“Not a great deal,” answered Mr. Trevor with a smile. “It’s like a lot
of other boy organizations. Unless there is a specific plan for doing
good in them, like the Boy Scouts, they frequently work the other way.
There may be a leader but there is rarely any law. And the leader is
as apt to guide the members wrong as right.” Art fixed his eyes on
his plate. “The plans for all boy clubs should be laid down by older
people. That’s where parents often fail in their duty. Statistics show
that uneducated, idle boys nearly always drift into evil ways and even
into crime when they begin to ‘gang’ together.”
“Then,” exclaimed Art, “I’d be a bad selection for patrol leader of our
Boy Scouts!”
Mr. Trevor hesitated. He did not like to hurt Art’s feelings. At last
he said, “Let’s put it another way. What boy would you select for
leader?”
“Oh, Connie, of course,” answered Art. “If he’d been leader last
Saturday there wouldn’t have been any trouble.”
“Then you ought to vote for him.”
Somewhat chagrined to think that he was not the best choice for patrol
leader, Art made a resolution: he’d be leader some day. At the meeting
that night he was pleased that he was the first boy named for the head
of the new patrol but he declined and nominated Connie and told why he
did.
Connie had no opportunity to refuse. His election went through with a
hurrah. Before the meeting adjourned every boy, under Connie’s blushing
direction, had filled out his application blank. The midnight train
carried these and a request for a charter for the Wolf Patrol of
Scottsville, Alexander Conyers, Patrol Leader, with a membership of
thirteen boys.
So much store was set on the uniforms, especially the hats and khaki
shirts――brown was the color selected――that the boys all went to
Mr. Trevor’s office the next morning to be measured and this order
followed the other papers at once. With no manual of drill or rules to
guide them, there was now little to do but discuss the future and the
alluring possibilities of scouting, maneuvers and camping in the open.
After a day or two of this Art came back to his big dream, the
possibility that they might some day own an airship. He even romanced
over what he described as the “Aviation Squad” of the Wolf Patrol.
When he had company he would discuss details of aeroplane building and
while alone he was often making sketches and figures. In this he could
not hold his chums’ complete attention, for the Boy Scout idea was too
strong this week to admit another interest.
An event was impending in Scottsville that made the juvenile
citizens irresponsible. On Saturday the “Great Western Triple
Circus, Menagerie and Congress of World’s Wonders” was to give two
performances. Even the new Boy Scout frenzy lessened as Saturday
approached. And there was little wonder, for among the alluring
“wonders” promised was this feature: “Master Willie Bonner, positively
the youngest aviator in the world, will make two death-defying,
cloud-piercing aeroplane flights each day. At one o’clock and six
o’clock he will give free exhibitions, ascending heavenward until lost
to the eye and then returning earthward in a series of spirals and
glides never before attempted by man.”
When a circus comes to town (that is, to a town that has no pretensions
to being a city) every boy under sixteen becomes indifferent to the
ordinary duties of life.
Prearrangement was hardly necessary, but it was well understood Friday
night among Art’s friends that all would be on hand in the morning
“to see ’em put up the tents.” When Art awoke it was not dawn. As he
lingered, half dozing, a sudden sound fell upon his ear.
Through the silent night came a noise that no town boy ever fails to
recognize――the low, heavy, guttural rumble of a circus van. It is like
the sound of no other vehicle in the world. City boys do not know it.
To the town boy it is like a galvanic shock. His pulses throb with a
wild eager anticipation, while his heart sinks for fear that he will
be too late――that is, that he will miss seeing something that some
earlier-arrived boy has glimpsed in the dark.
Art threw on his clothes and stole out of the house. It was a half mile
to the “commons” where the tents were to be set. He started on a dead
run, buttoning his clothes as he went. There were no tents erected as
yet, but the deep-voiced, gray-shirted boss was busy with his long
steel tape. And where he sank his foot in the dewy grass, dejected,
unshaven men were throwing down the worn pale-blue stakes. Then work
began. Stake drivers, four on a team, with heavy sledges revolving one
after the other like the spokes of a wheel, drove the heavy piles in
jumps into the ground.
Canvas wagons had been backed up in various places and their teams of
four and six horses, heavy harnessed and resplendent in bits of red
leather and polished metal, were off across the town, heavy of hoof
and jangling their traces, to bring other wagons from the train. At
last as day broke, animal cages, the “lions’ den” and the “ticket
wagon” appeared――the latter a blaze of golden figures and bearing the
ornate portraits of the wonderful men who had conceived and owned the
“Congress of Wonders.”
It is the signal for the climax: the arrival of the sacred cow, the
camels, the ponies, the pony chariots safely concealed with cloths, as
if the sight of the fairyland beauties of these were to be withheld
for a time at least from profaning eyes. The temptation to touch the
pony chariots and run alongside the waddling little animals lasts but a
moment. The elephants are coming! There is not a _herd_ as the pictures
promised, but only _two_. Every boy forgets tents and animal dens. It
is no time now for comment. The big, silently-gliding animals, lunging
forward and recovering, their bony heads swaying right and left, keep
time with the swinging steps that seem always about to break into a
run but never do. And then, by the side of the foremost, the “elephant
keeper.”
Can he and the tinseled man who will later sit calmly in the open “den”
of lions with naught between him and death but a little whip, be of
common clay? But, just now, the lion tamer is forgotten. All eyes are
on the “elephant keeper.”
At a respectful distance the boys of the town trot forward with the
fast-paced monsters. A sinuous trunk leaps in the air. The foremost
elephant emits a piercing cry, sharp and shrill like the car wheels of
the heavy evening express when the air brakes lock them fast with a
shower of sparks. The elephant keeper has sunk his prod into the big
animal. Why? No boy ever knew.
“It’s to show ’em he ain’t afraid,” suggested one lad under his breath
as he clasps a companion’s hand.
“Mebbe the elfunt was goin’ to do somepin’,” says another. “You got to
watch ’em awful close.”
Then it is day. The big, muddy, patched tents are up. To the last
minute the boys crowd forward to see the “old elfunt” push the animal
cages into the menagerie tent, its head lowered and its long trunk
trailing on the already wagon-rutted grounds. And then, sorrowing for
each lost moment, they rush home for breakfast and explanations.
But on this particular day, Art Trevor did not rush home. He had caught
sight of what was to him a greater wonder even than the elephants,
and more fascinating than the shrouded pony chariots――a long, light
car freighted with an aeroplane in two sections. It looked very shabby
and very frail. Among those round about he searched for a boy: “Master
Willie Bonner.” But he saw no boy. Then he stole closer to touch the
magical craft――the first he had ever seen.
It was a twenty-six foot machine, with two propellers in the style
of the Wright biplane. These and the tail frame and rudders had been
removed for convenience in transportation. An oil-saturated cloth
covered the engine. While Art gingerly approached the wagon on which
the flying machine was loaded, together with a tool box, some cans of
gasoline and oil and a number of extra bits of wooden truss uprights, a
rough voice exclaimed:
“Want to get a front seat to see the flyin’ machine go up, kid?”
The speaker was a bleary-eyed, unshaven and partly dressed canvasman.
“Can I?” asked Art eagerly.
“You kin fur a dollar.”
“Where do I pay the money?” asked the boy with a new glance of
admiration at the airship of which he had long dreamed.
“The best way to be sure o’ gettin’ a seat next to where she starts,”
explained the man, “is to pay it to me. I’m the gen’ral sup’intendent
o’ aviation.”
“I only got eighty cents,” confessed Art regretfully. Fifty cents of
this was to get into the circus, ten cents was for the sideshow, ten
cents for lemonade and peanuts, and ten cents for the concert, all
carefully saved for some days.
“Well, they’s only a few good front seats, and fur adults the price
is two dollars,” explained the man. “But fur boys ’at understands
aeroplanes, fur educatin’ purposes we make a reduction to one dollar.”
“Will it be too late to get a seat in half an hour?” asked Art
anxiously. “I got to go home and get twenty cents more.”
“You give me the eighty cents an’ I’ll trust you for the rest,”
conceded the canvasman. “You look honest.”
Art handed him his money.
“Where’s my ticket?” asked the boy anxiously.
“This is a special favor, sonny. They ain’t no reg’lar tickets. You
just come right up where this wagon is an’ you’ll see me. It’ll be all
right.”
When Art reached home his mother began a rebuke, but Mr. Trevor only
laughed. Once, his father said with a chuckle, when circuses traveled
in wagons, he had waited all night at the river bridge to see if the
elephants wouldn’t break through.
Full of joy over the deal he had so fortunately made, Art hastened to
relate his early morning adventure. When he had concluded his story his
mother said:
“I’m not sure I like that. I’d rather you wouldn’t be so close.”
“Don’t fear,” shouted Mr. Trevor, shaking with laughter. “Arthur,
you’ve been swindled. There aren’t any seats for the aeroplane show.
And you’ll never see your ‘superintendent of aviation.’ You’ve lost
your money.” As the boy’s face indicated a panic of alarm his father
added, laughing anew: “Here’s a dollar, Arthur. Try to keep it until it
is time for the performance and don’t,” as he roared again, “carry any
water for the elephants.”
Palpitating, excited boys were awaiting Art after breakfast. His
misfortune had at least one good feature; not one of the boys knew
about it. Nor did he see fit to tell them about it. The boys had an
important question to debate and settle. What performance should they
attend, afternoon or evening?
“If we go in the afternoon, we can’t go to-night,” argued Wart Ware.
“And I tell you it’s purty tough to stand ’round and hear the band
playin’ an’ not be able to see nothin’. Besides, ever’thing looks finer
at night. The lights is a-blazin’ an’ the spangles is like diamonds.”
“Shucks,” argued Art. “They don’t do half the things at night they do
in the daytime. They’re always a-hurr’in’ to get through. An’ how about
the animals? Answer that. The menagerie is all gone an’ loaded on the
cars. You can’t get another look at the cages at all.”
So the argument continued. One was afraid that if they attended the
afternoon performance they wouldn’t have time to see the flying machine
show. Another urged that they never attempted the most dangerous
mid-air feats at night because it was too risky. And there wasn’t a boy
who could attend both exhibitions.
Finally a vote was taken and the decision was for the afternoon show,
the real reason being that no boy was willing to wait longer. “We
can stand around and see ’em ‘strike’ the menagerie tent at night,”
suggested Colly Craighead, “an’ mebbe go to the side show again.”
This suggestion meeting approval, the boys started on a run to
reach the grounds, so that they might not miss the preparations for
the “Grand Daily Parade, Rain or Shine.” The Boy Scout fever was
temporarily at a low ebb.