TAMBA MEETS TINKLE
At first when he went into the barn through the door which was open,
Tamba, the tame tiger, could not see very much. It was the same as when
you go into a dark moving-picture theater from the bright sunshine
outside.
But, in a little while, Tamba’s eyes could see better, and he noticed
some piles of hay and straw in the barn. That made him feel more at
home.
“This is just like the circus barn where I used to be before we started
out with the tents,” thought Tamba to himself. “That is hay, which Tum
Tum and the other elephants used to eat. I don’t like it myself. I like
meat and milk. But I don’t see any elephants here.”
And for a very good reason, as you know. Farmers don’t keep elephants
and other circus animals in their barns.
So Tamba looked about in the barn, and he sniffed and smelled with his
black nose, hoping to smell something good to eat. But though there was
an animal smell about the place (because there were cows and horses in
the lower part of the barn) still Tamba did not want to eat any of
them.
If he had been in the jungle he might have felt like eating a cow, or,
what is very much the same thing, a water buffalo. But since he had
been in the circus he had been used to eating the same kind of meat
that you see in butcher shops. So, though the tiger was quite hungry,
and though there were cows and hay in the farmer’s barn, Tamba did not
see much chance of getting a meal.
“I’ll starve before I’ll eat hay,” he said. “It’s all right for
elephants and horses and ponies, like the Shetland ponies we had in the
circus, but hay is not good for tigers.”
So Tamba walked farther into the barn, looking about and sniffing
about, and then, all at once, he heard some one whistle. Tamba knew
what a whistle was, for often his own trainer or the trainer of Nero
would go about the circus tent whistling. So, when Tamba, in the barn,
heard some one coming along whistling a merry tune he at once thought
to himself:
“Oh, perhaps that is one of the circus men coming to take me back to
my cage in the tent! Well, I’m not going! I’m going to go back to my
jungle, and not to the circus! I’ll just hide where they can’t find me!”
Now the big pile of hay in the barn seemed the best place in the
world for Tamba to hide in, and, as the whistling sounds came nearer
and nearer, the tiger crept softly across the barn floor, and soon was
snuggling down in the hay.
“I remember once, when I lived in the jungle, I hid in a pile of dry
grass just like this hay,” thought Tamba. “It was when I wanted to play
a trick on my brother Bitie. I jumped out at him and scared him so he
ran off with his tail between his legs. Maybe I can jump out and scare
this circus man so he won’t want to take me back.”
You see Tamba thought surely it was a circus man coming into the barn
whistling. But it wasn’t at all. It was the boy who worked on the
farm. His father had sent him to the barn to gather the eggs which the
chickens had laid, and this boy, whose name was Tom, nearly always went
about his chores whistling.
“I hope I get a lot of eggs to-day,” said Tom, speaking aloud to
himself, as he stopped whistling. “Maybe I can get a whole basket full.
I’ll look in the hay for them. Hens like to lay their eggs in the hay.
It’s a good place for them to hide.”
Now, if that farmer boy had only known it, there was something else
hidden in the hay besides hens’ eggs. There was Tamba, the tame tiger.
Tamba had worked himself down into a regular nest in the dried grass,
and only his eyes peered out. They were very bright and shining eyes,
and they watched every move of the farmer boy.
Tamba saw the basket which the boy carried in his hand so he might put
the eggs in it, and, seeing this basket, the tame tiger thought to
himself:
“Well, if he expects to take me back to the circus in that little
basket he’s very much mistaken. Why, it wouldn’t hold two of my paws!”
And then Tamba took a second look, and he saw that the boy was not one
of the circus keepers, as the tiger had at first supposed.
“But he whistles just like one,” thought Tamba. “I wonder what he
wants.”
So the boy, not knowing anything about the tiger in the hay, walked
right toward Tamba, hoping to gather eggs.
In another moment, just as the boy began poking his hand down in the
loose hay, hoping to find a hen’s nest full of eggs there, Tamba made
up his mind it was time for him to do something.
“I’ll give this fellow, whoever he is, a good scare!” said Tamba to
himself. “I’ll teach him to come looking for me with a basket! Look out
now, you whistling chap!” said Tamba to himself.
[Illustration: He dropped his basket.]
Then he gave a loud growl――one of his very loudest――and he raised
himself from his nest in the hay, and stuck his head out.
Now if you had gone hunting hens’ eggs in your father’s barn, and had,
all of a sudden, seen a great, big, striped tiger jump out at you from
the hay, giving a loud growl, I believe you would have done just what
this boy did. And what he did was this.
He dropped his basket, gave one look at Tamba in the hay, and then
uttered such a yell that his father and mother in the farmhouse, quite
a distance off, heard him. And then that boy ran out of the barn as
fast as he could run. That’s what this boy did, and I think you would
have done the same.
“Well, I guess he won’t come back right away,” thought Tamba. “But
there may be others like him. If I stay here I may have to scare a
whole lot of them. I guess I’ll find a new hiding place.”
So Tamba came out from his nest in the hay and began moving about in
the barn, looking for a new place in which to snuggle, and perhaps find
something to eat. And the first thing he knew he stepped right into a
hen’s nest of eggs. Right down among the eggs Tamba put his paw.
Of course he broke some of the eggs, but he took up his paw so quickly
again that not many of the shells were cracked. And, as his paw was
covered with the sticky whites and yellows of the eggs, Tamba began
licking it with his tongue to make it clean.
“Hum! These eggs taste as good as the ones I used to get in the
jungle,” said the tiger to himself. “Guess I’ll eat them. I’m hungry,
and they’ll be almost as good as meat.”
So Tamba carefully cracked the egg shells and sucked out the whites and
yellows. He ate a whole dozen of eggs before he finished, and then he
felt better.
“Now I’ll go and find a new place to hide,” he said to himself.
He found a stairway leading from the upper part of the barn, where the
hay was stored, to the lower part, where were the stables of the cows
and horses. Down the stairs softly went Tamba, and no sooner was he
down there than he felt right at home. For it smelled just like that
part of the circus where the horses were kept. And, as a matter of
fact, there were a number of horses in the barn, and quite a few cows.
At first the horses were afraid of the tiger, and pulled at the straps
which held them fast in their stalls. But Tamba, speaking in animal
talk, said:
“I am a tame tiger. I won’t hurt any of you. I only want to hide here
so the circus men won’t find me. I am on my way back to the jungle. I
have run away from the circus.”
When Tamba spoke thus kindly the horses were no longer afraid. One of
them said Tamba might hide in a pile of straw near his stall, and this
the tiger was glad to do. He stretched out, and got ready to go to
sleep.
Now I must tell you a little about the farmer boy. When he saw the
tiger rear up at him out of the hay, and ran away, screaming with fear,
he did not know what to do. All he could yell was:
“The tiger! The tiger! A big striped tiger is in our barn!”
The boy’s father and mother heard him shouting and yelling, and they
ran out of the house to see what the matter was. They saw that Tom was
very much frightened indeed.
“What is it?” they asked.
“Oh,” Tom answered, “I went to get some eggs out of the hay, and I
found a tiger there! He had great big eyes, big teeth and a big mouth!”
“Oh, Tom! Really?” asked his mother.
“Really and truly!” he answered. “You can go and look for yourself!”
“No, I don’t believe I want to,” said Tom’s mother. “But do you really
think he did see a tiger?” she asked her husband.
“Well, I don’t know,” he slowly answered. “I read in the paper
something about a circus train having been wrecked, and maybe a tiger
or an elephant got loose and is roaming about.”
“It’s a tiger――not an elephant――and he’s in our barn,” said Tom. “Come
and see, Dad! But you’d better bring your gun!”
“Yes,” agreed the farmer, “I think I had. And I’ll call some of the men
to help hunt the tiger, too!”
But, as it happened, by the time the farmer had called some neighbors
in to help him and they had gotten their guns, Tamba had left the upper
part of the barn, where the hay was, and had gone downstairs among the
horses and cows. And as the farmer and his friends did not know this,
and as none of the horses or cows called out to tell the men, they
didn’t know where Tamba was.
They looked in the hay, where the boy had seen him, but Tamba was gone.
The men even found the place where Tamba had eaten the eggs, but the
jungle circus beast was not in sight. He was well hidden downstairs in
the straw near the stall of the kind horse.
So the men hunted in vain, and some of them thought the tiger had gone
back to the circus, while others thought he had run off to the woods,
perhaps. At any rate, they did not find him in the barn, though he was
there all the while they were searching. A wild animal sometimes knows
better how to hide than you boys and girls do when you are playing
games.
And now I must tell you something that happened to Tamba, as he still
hid in the lower part of the barn. He was snugly curled up in the straw
when suddenly there was a patter of little hoofs on the floor, and a
small pony trotted into his small stall, which was near that of the big
horse, next to which Tamba was hiding.
“Well, friends, here I am back!” cried the little pony. “I have been
giving the boys and girls a ride, and now I’ve come back to have
something to eat. Has anything happened while I was out, hitched to the
basket cart, giving rides to the boys and girls? Has anything happened?”
“Yes,” answered the old horse, near whose stall Tamba was hiding in the
straw, “something strange has happened. A big striped animal, who calls
himself a tiger, came into our barn.”
“A tiger!” cried the little pony. “Why, I’d like to see him. I know
something about tigers.”
“Oh, do you?” asked Tamba himself, sticking his head out of the
straw, as he had stuck it out of the hay at Tom. But the pony was not
frightened. “So you know something about tigers, do you?” went on
Tamba. “Well, what is your name, if I may ask? Mine is Tamba.”
“Oh, ho! I know that very well!” neighed the pony. “You don’t know me,
Tamba, but I have often seen you in the circus. I am Tinkle, the trick
pony. I was in the circus a short time myself, but there were so many
of us little Shetland ponies that I don’t suppose you remember me. But
there were only a few tigers in the show, and I remember you very well.
Didn’t you used to jump through a paper hoop as one of your tricks?”
“Yes,” answered Tamba, “I did. And, now that you speak of it, I believe
I remember you. You used to pull, around the ring, a little cart with a
funny clown in it, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Tinkle, “I did. Well, Tamba, I’m glad to see you again. But
what brings you so far from the circus, and why are you hiding here?”
“That,” said Tamba, “is a long story. I’ll tell it to you!”
But, all of a sudden, one of the cows at the far end of the stable
mooed out:
“Quick, Tamba! Here comes the man to milk us! Hide in the straw so he
won’t see you!”