ONE behind the other, three short sections of a special came sliding
into the yard sidings below the depot.
The cars clanked their drawheads together like manacles, as they were
chivied and bullied and shoved about by a regular chain-gang boss of a
switch engine. Some of the cars were ordinary box cars, just the plain
galley slaves of commerce, but painted a uniform blue and provided with
barred gratings; some were flat cars laden with huge wheeled burdens
hooded under tarpaulins; and a few were sleeping cars that had been a
bright yellow at the beginning of the season, with flaring red lettering
down the sides, but now were faded to a shabby saffron.
It was just getting good broad day. The sleazy dun clouds that had been
racked up along the east--like mill-ends left over from night's remnant
counter, as a poet might have said had there been a poet there to say
it--were now torn asunder, and through the tear the sun showed out,
blushing red at his own nakedness and pushing ahead of him long
shadows that stretched on the earth the wrong way. There was a taste
of earliness in the air, a sort of compounded taste of dew and dust and
maybe a little malaria.
Early as it was, there was a whopping big delegation of small boys,
white and black, on hand for a volunteer reception committee. The eyes
of these boys were bright and expectant in contrast to the eyes of the
yard hands, who looked half dead for sleep and yawned and shivered. The
boys welcomed the show train at the depot and ran alongside its various
sections. They were mainly barefooted, but they avoided splinters in the
butts of the crossties and sharp clinkers in the cinder ballast of the
roadbed with the instinctive agility of a race of primitives.
Almost before the first string of cars halted and while the clanking
of the iron links still ran down its length like a code signal being
repeated, a lot of mop-headed men in overalls appeared, crawling out
from all sorts of unsuspected sleeping places aboard. Magically a
six-team of big white Norman horses materialized, dragging empty traces
behind them. They must have been harnessed up together beforehand in
a stock car somewhere. A corrugated wooden runway appeared to sprout
downward and outward from an open car door, and down it bumped a high,
open wagon with a big sheet-iron cooking range mounted on it and one
short length of stovepipe rising above like a stumpy fighting-top on an
armored cruiser. As the wheels thumped against the solid earth a man in
a dirty apron, who had been balancing himself in the wagon, touched a
match to some fuel in his firebox. Instantly black smoke came out of
the top of the stack and a stinging smell of burning wood trailed behind
him, as the six-horse team hooked on and he and his moving kitchen went
lurching and rolling across shallow gulleys and over a rutted common,
right into the red eye of the upcoming sun.
Other wagons followed, loaded with blue stakes, with coils of ropes,
with great rolls of earth-stained canvas, and each took the same route,
with four or six horses to drag it and a born charioteer in a flannel
shirt to drive it. The common destination was a stretch of flat land a
quarter of a mile away from the track. Truck patches backed up against
this site on one side and the outlying cottages of the town flanked it
on the other, and it was bordered with frayed fringes of ragweed
and niggerheads, and was dotted over with the dried-mud chimneys of
crawfish. In the thin turf here a geometric pattern of iron laying-out
pins now appeared to spring up simultaneously, with rag pennons of red
and blue fluttering in the tops, and at once a crew of men set to work
with an orderly confusion, only stopping now and then to bellow back
the growing swarms of boys who hung eagerly on the flank of each new
operation. True to the promise of its lithographed glories the circus
was in our midst, rain or shine, for this day and date only.
If there is any of the boy spirit left in us circus day may be esteemed
to bring it out. And considering his age and bulk and his calling, there
was a good deal of the boy left in our circuit judge--so much boy, in
fact, that he, an early riser of note in a town much given to early
rising, was up and dressing this morning a good hour ahead of his usual
time. As he dressed he kept going to the side window of his bedroom
and looking out. Eventually he had his reward. Through a break in the
silver-leaf poplars he saw a great circus wagon crossing his line
of vision an eighth of a mile away. Its top and sides were masked in
canvas, but he caught a flicker of red and gold as the sun glinted on
its wheels, and he saw the four horses tugging it along, and the dipping
figure of the driver up above. The sight gave the old judge a little
thrill down inside of him.
“I reckin that fellow was right when he said a man is only as old as
he feels,” said Judge Priest to himself. “And I'm glad court ain't in
session--I honestly am.” He opened his door and called down into the
body of the silent house below: “Jeff! Oh, Jeff!”
“Yas, suh,” came up the prompt answer.
“Jeff, you go out yonder to the kitchen and tell Aunt Dilsey to hurry
along my breakfast. I'll be down right away.”
“Yas, suh,” said Jeff; “I'll bring it right in, suh.”
Jeff was as anxious as the judge that the ceremony of breakfast might be
speedily over; and, to tell the truth, so was Aunt Dilsey, who fluttered
with impatience as she fried the judge's matinal ham and dished up
the hominy. Aunt Dilsey regularly patronized all circuses, but she
specialized in sideshows. The sideshow got a dime of hers before the big
show started and again after it ended. She could remember from year to
year just how the sideshow banners looked and how many there were of
them, and on the mantelpiece in her cabin was ranged a fly-blown row of
freaks' photographs purchased at the exceedingly reasonable rate of ten
cents for cabinet sizes and twenty-five for the full length.
So there was no delay about serving the judge's breakfast or about
clearing the table afterward. For that one morning, anyhow, the
breakfast dishes went unwashed. Even as the judge put on his straw hat
and came out on the front porch, the back door was already discharging
Jeff and Aunt Dilsey. By the time the judge had traversed the shady yard
and unlatched the front gate, Jeff was halfway to the showground and
mending his gait all the time. Less than five minutes later Jeff was
being ordered, somewhat rudely, off the side of a boarded-up cage, upon
which he had climbed with a view to ascertaining, by a peep through the
barred air-vent under the driver's seat, whether the mysterious creature
inside looked as strange as it smelled; and less than five minutes after
that, Jeff, having reached a working understanding with the custodian of
the cage, who likewise happened to be in charge of certain ring stock,
was convoying a string of trick ponies to the water-trough over by the
planing mill. Aunt Dilsey, moving more slowly--yet guided, nevertheless,
by a sure instinct--presently anchored herself at the precise spot where
the sideshow tent would stand. Here several lodge sisters soon joined
her. They formed a comfortable brown clump, stationary in the midst of
many brisk; activities.
The judge stood at his gate a minute, lighting his corncob pipe. As he
stood there a farm wagon clattered by, coming in from the country.
Its bed was full of kitchen chairs and the kitchen chairs contained
a family, including two pretty country girls in their teens, who were
dressed in fluttering white with a plenitude of red and blue ribbons.
The head of the family, driving, returned the judge's waved greeting
somewhat stiffly. It was plain that his person was chafed and his whole
being put under restraint by the fell influences of a Sunday coat and
the hard collar that was buttoned on to the neckband of his blue shirt.
His pipe being lighted, the judge headed leisurely in the same direction
that the laden farm wagon had taken. Along Clay Street from the judge's
house to the main part of town, where the business houses and the stores
centered, was a mile walk nearly, up a fairly steepish hill and down
again, but shaded well all the way by water maples and silver-leaf
trees. There weren't more than eight houses or ten along Clay Street,
and these, with the exception of the judge's roomy, white-porched house
standing aloof in its two acres of poorly kept lawn, were all little
two-room frame houses, each in a small, bare inclosure of its own, with
wide, weed-grown spaces between it and its next-door neighbors. These
were the homes of those who in a city would haye been tenement dwellers.
In front of them stretched narrow wooden sidewalks, dappled now with
patches of shadow and of soft, warm sunshine.
Perhaps halfway along was a particularly shabby little brown house that
pushed dose up to the street line. A straggly catalpa tree shaded its
narrow porch. This was the home of Lemuel Hammersmith; and Hammersmith
seems such a name as should by right belong to a masterful, upstanding
man with something of Thor or Vulcan or Judas Maccabaeus in him--it
appears to have that sound. But Lemuel Hammersmith was no such man. In
a city he would have been lost altogether--swallowed up among a mass
of more important, pushing folk. But in a town as small as ours he had
distinction. He belonged to more secret orders than any man in town--he
belonged to all there were. Their small mummeries and mysteries,
conducted behind closed doors, had for him a lure that there was no
resisting; he just had to join. As I now recall, he never rose to high
rank in any one of them, never wore the impressive regalia and the
weighty title of a supreme officer; but when a lodge brother died he
nearly always served on the committee that drew up the resolutions of
respect. In moments of half-timid expanding he had been known to boast
mildly that his signature, appended to resolutions of respect, suitably
engrossed and properly framed, hung on the parlor walls of more than a
hundred homes. He was a small and inconsequential man and he led a small
and inconsequential life, giving his days to clerking in Noble & Barry's
coal office for fifty dollars a month, and his nights to his lodge
meetings and to drawing up resolutions of respect. In the latter
direction he certainly had a gift; the underlying sympathy of his nature
found its outlet there. And he had a pale, sickly wife and a paler,
sicklier child.
On this circus day he had been stationed in front of his house for a
good half hour, watching up the street for some one. This some one, as
it turned out, was Judge Priest. At sight of the old judge coming along,
Mr. Hammersmith went forward to meet him and fell in alongside, keeping
pace with him.
“Good momin', son,” said the old judge, who knew everybody that lived in
town. “How's the little feller this mornin'?”
“Judge, I'm sorry to say that Lemuel Junior ain't no better this
momin',” answered the little coal clerk with a hitching of his voice.
“We're afraid--his mother and me--that he ain't never goin' to be no
better. I've had Doctor Lake in again and he says there really ain't
anything we can do--he says it's just a matter of a little time now. Old
Aunt Hannah Holmes says he's got bone erysipelas, and that if we could
'a' got him away from here in time we might have saved him. But I don't
know--we done the best we could. I try to be reconciled. Lemuel Junior
he suffers so at times that it'll be a mercy, I reckin--but it's hard on
you, judge--it's tumble hard on you when it's your only child.”
“My son,” said the old judge, speaking slowly, “it's so hard that I
know nothin' I could say or do would be any comfort to you. But I'm
sorry--I'm mighty sorry for you all. I know what it is. I buried mine,
both of 'em, in one week's time, and that's thirty years and more ago;
but it still hurts mightily sometimes. I wish't there was something I
could do.”
“Well, there is,” said Hammersmith--“there is, judge, maybe. That's
why I've been standin' down here waitin' for you. You see, Lemmy he was
tumble sharp set on goin' to the circus today. He's been readin' the
circus bills that I'd bring home to him until he knew 'em off by heart.
He always did have a mighty bright mind for rememberin' things. We was
aimin' to take him to the show this evenin', bundled up in a bedquilt,
you know, and settin' off with him in a kind of a quiet place somewhere.
But he had a bad night and we just can't make out to do it--he's
too weak to stand it--and it was most breakin' his heart for a while;
but then he said if he could just see the parade he'd be satisfied.
“And, judge, that's the point--he's took it into his head that you can
fix it some way so he can see it. We tried to argue him out of it,
but you know how it is, tryin' to argue with a child as sick as Lemuel
Junior's been. He--he won't listen to nothin' we say.”
A great compassion shadowed the judge's face. His hand went out and
found the sloping shoulder of the father and patted it clumsily. He
didn't say anything. There didn't seem to be anything to say.
“So we just had to humor him along. His maw has had him at the front
window for an hour now, propped up on a pillow, waitin' for you to come
by. He wouldn't listen to nothin' else. And, judge--if you can humor him
at all--any way at all--do it, please--”
He broke off because they were almost in the shadow of the catalpa tree,
and now the judge's name was called out by a voice that was as thin and
elfin as though the throat that spoke it were strung with fine silver
wires.
“Oh, judge--oh, Mister Judge Priest!”
The judge stopped, and, putting his hands on the palings, looked across
them at the little sick boy. He saw a face that seemed to be all eyes
and mouth and bulging, blue-veined forehead--he was shockingly reminded
of a new-hatched sparrow--and the big eyes were feverishly alight with
the look that is seen only in the eyes of those who already have begun
to glimpse the great secret that lies beyond the ken of the rest of us.
“Why, hello, little feller,” said the judge, with a false heartiness.
“I'm sorry to see you laid up again.”
“Judge Priest, sir,” said the sick boy, panting with weak eagerness, “I
want to see the grand free street parade. I've been sick a right smart
while, and I can't go to the circus; but I do want mightily to see the
grand free street parade. And I want you, please, sir, to have 'em come
up by this house.”
There was a world of confidence in the plea. Unnoticed by the boy, his
mother, who had been fanning him, dropped the fan and put her apron
over her face and leaned against the window-jamb, sobbing silently. The
father, silent too, leaned against the fence, looking fixedly at nothing
and wiping his eyes with the butt of his hand. Yes, it is possible for
a man to wipe his eyes on his bare hand without seeming either grotesque
or vulgar--even when the man who does it is a little inconsequential
man--if his child is dying and his sight is blurred and his heart is fit
to burst inside of him. The judge bent across the fence, and his face
muscles were working but his voice held steady.
“Well, now, Lemmy,” he said, “I'd like to do it for you the best in the
world; but, you see, boy, I don't own this here circus--I don't even
know the gentleman that does own it.”
“His name is Silver,” supplied the sick child--“Daniel P. Silver, owner
of Silver's Mammoth United Railroad Shows, Roman Hippodrome and Noah's
Ark Menagerie--that's the man! I kin show you his picture on one of the
showbills my paw brought home to me, and then you kin go right and find
him.”
“I'm afraid it wouldn't do much good if I did know him, Lemmy,” said the
old judge very gently. “You see--”
“But ain't you the judge at the big cote-house?” demanded the child;
“and can't you put people in jail if they don't do what you tell 'em?
That's what my grandpop says. He's always tellin' me stories about how
you and him fought the Yankees, and he always votes for you too--my
grandpop talks like he thought you could do anything. And, judge,
please, sir, if you went to Mister Daniel P. Silver and told him that
you was the big judge--and told him there was a little sick boy livin'
right up the road a piece in a little brown house--don't you reckin he'd
do it? It ain't so very far out of the way if they go down Jefferson
Street--it's only a little ways Judge, you'll make 'em do it, won't
you--for me?”
“I'll try, boy, I'll shorely try to do what I can,” said the old judge;
“but if I can't make 'em do it you won't be disappointed, will you,
Lemmy?” He fumbled in his pocket. “Here's four bits for you--you tell
your daddy to buy you something with it. I know your maw and daddy
wouldn't want you to take money from strangers, but of course it's
different with old friends like you and me. Here, you take it. And
there's something else,” he went on. “I'll bet you there's one of those
dagoes or somebody like that downtown with a lot of these here big toy
rubber balloons--red and green and blue. You tell me which color you
like the best and I'll see that it's sent right up here to you--the
biggest balloon the man's got--”
“I don't want any balloon,” said the little voice fretfully, “and I
don't want any four bits. I want to see the grand free street parade,
and the herd of elephants, and the down, and the man-eatin' tigers, and
everything. I want that parade to come by this house.”
The judge looked hopelessly from the child to the mother and then to the
father--they both had their faces averted still--and back into the sick
child's face again. The four-bit piece lay shining on the porch floor
where it had fallen. The judge backed away, searching his mind for the
right words to say.
“Well, I'll do what I can, Lemmy,” he repeated, as though he could find
no other phrase--“I'll do what I can.”
The child rolled his head back against the pillow, satisfied. “Then
it'll be all right, sir,” he said with a joyful confidence. “My
grand-pop he said you could do 'most anything. You tell 'em, Mister
Judge Priest, that I'll be a-waitin' right here in this very window for
'em when they pass.”
Walking with his head down and his steps lagging, the old judge, turning
into the main thoroughfare, was almost run over by a mare that came
briskly along, drawing a light buggy with a tall man in it. The tall man
pulled up the mare just in time. His name was Settle.
“By gum, judge,” he said apologetically, “I came mighty near gettin' you
that time!”
“Hello, son,” said the judge absently; “which way are you headed?”
“Downtown, same as everybody else,” said Settle. “Jump in and I'll take
you right down, sir.”
“Much obliged,” assented the old judge, as he heaved himself heavily
up between the skewed wheels and settled himself so solidly at Settle's
left that the seat springs whined; “but I wish't, if you're not in too
big a hurry, that you'd drive me up by the showgrounds first.”
“Glad to,” said Settle, as he swung the mare round. “I just come from
there myself--been up lookin' at the stock. 'Tain't much. Goin' up to
look their stock over yourself, judge?” he asked, taking it for granted
that any man would naturally be interested in horseflesh, as indeed
would be a true guess so far as any man in that community was concerned.
“Stock?” said the judge. “No, I want to see the proprietor of this here
show. I won't keep you waitin' but a minute or two.”
“The proprietor!” echoed Settle, surprised. “What's a circuit judge
goin' to see a circus man for--is it something about their license?”
“No,” said the judge--“no, just some business--a little private business
matter I want to see him on.”
He offered no further explanation and Settle asked for none. At
the grounds the smaller tents were all up--there was quite a little
dirty-white encampment of them--and just as they drove up the roof
of the main tent rose to the tops of its center poles, bellying and
billowing like a stage sea in the second act of Monte Cristo. Along the
near edge of the common, negro men were rigging booths with planks for
counters and sheets for awnings, and negro women were unpacking the
wares that would presently be spread forth temptingly against the coming
of the show crowds--fried chicken and slabs of fried fish, and ham and
pies and fried apple turnovers. Leaving Settle checking the restive
mare, the old judge made his way across the sod, already scuffed
and dented by countless feet. A collarless, redfaced man, plainly a
functionary of some sort, hurried toward him, and the judge put himself
in this man's path.
“Are you connected with this institution, suh?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the man shortly, but slowing his gait.
“So I judged from your manner and deportment, suh,” said the judge. “I'm
lookin',” he went on, “for your proprietor.”
“Silver? He's over yonder by the cookhouse.”
“The which?” asked the judge.
“The cookhouse--the dining tent,” explained the other, pointing. “Right
round yonder beyond that second stake wagon--where you see smoke rising.
But he's likely to be pretty busy.”
Behind the second stake wagon the judge found a blocky, authoritative
man, with a brown derby hat tilted back on his head and heavy-lidded
eyes like a frog's, and knew him at once for the owner; but one look
at the face made the judge hesitate. He felt that his was a lost cause
already; and then the other opened his mouth and spoke, and Judge Priest
turned on his heel and came away. The judge was reasonably well seasoned
to sounds of ordinary profanity, but not to blasphemy that seemed to
loose an evil black smudge upon the clean air. He came back to the buggy
and climbed in.
“See your man?” asked Settle.
“Yes,” said the judge slowly, “I saw him.”
Especially downtown things had a holidaying look to them. Wall-eyed
teams of country horses were tethered to hitching-racks in the short
by-streets, flinching their flanks and setting themselves for abortive
stampedes later on. Pedlers of toy balloons circulated; a vender with
a fascinating line of patter sold to the same customers, in rapid
succession, odorous hamburger and flat slabs of a heat-resisting variety
of striped ice cream. At a main crossing, catercornered across from each
other, the highpitch man and his brother of the flat joint were at work,
one selling electric belts from the back of a buggy, the other down in
the dust manipulating a spindle game. The same group of shillabers were
constantly circulating from one faker to the other, and as constantly
investing. Even the clerks couldn't stay inside the stores--they kept
darting out and darting back in again. A group of darkies would find
a desirable point of observation along the sidewalk and hold it for a
minute or two, and then on a sudden unaccountable impulse would desert
it and go streaking off down the middle of the street to find another
that was in no way better. In front of the wagon yard country rigs were
parked three deep. Every small boy who wasn't at the showground was
swarming round underfoot somewhere, filled with a most delicious
nervousness that kept him moving. But Judge Priest, who would have joyed
in these things ordinarily, had an absent eye for it all. There was
another picture persisting in his mind, a picture with a little brown
house and a ragged catalpa tree for a background.
In front of Soule's drug store his weekday cronies sat--the elder
statesmen of the town--tilted back in hard-bottomed chairs, with their
legs drawn up under them out of the tides of foot travel. But he passed
them by, only nodding an answer to their choraled greeting, and went
inside back behind the prescription case and sat down there alone,
smoking his pipe soberly.
“Wonder what ails Judge Priest?” said Sergeant Jimmy Bagby. “He looks
sort of dauncy and low in his mind, don't he?”
“He certainly does,” some one agreed.
Half an hour later, when the sheriff came in looking for him, Judge
Priest was still sitting alone behind the prescription case. With the
sheriff was a middle-aged man, a stranger, in a wrinkled check suit and
a somewhat soiled fancy vest. An upper pocket of this vest was bulged
outward by such frank articles of personal use as a red celluloid
toothbrush, carried bristle-end up, a rubber mustache-comb and a
carpenter's flat pencil. The stranger had a longish mustache, iron-gray
at the roots and of a greenish, blue-black color elsewhere, and he
walked with a perceptible limp. He had a way, it at once developed,
of taking his comb out and running it through his mustache while in
conversation, doing so without seeming to affect the flow or the volume
of his language.
“Mornin', Judge Priest,” said the sheriff. “This here gentleman wants to
see you a minute about gittin' out an attachment. I taken him first to
the county judge's office, but it seems like Judge Landis went up to
Louisville last night, and the magistrates' offices air closed--both of
them, in fact; and so seein' as this gentleman is in a kind of a hurry,
I taken the liberty of bringin' him round to you.”
Before the judge could open his mouth, he of the dyed mustache was
breaking in.
“Yes, sirree,” he began briskly. “If you're the judge here I want an
attachment. I've got a good claim against Dan Silver, and blame me if I
don't push it. I'll fix him--red-lighting me off my own privilege car!”
He puffed up with rage and injury.
“What appears to be the main trouble?” asked the judge, studying this
belligerent one from under his hatbrim.
“Well, it's simple enough,” explained the man. “Stanton is my
name--here's my card--and I'm the fixer for this show--the legal
adjuster, see? Or, anyhow, I was until last night. And I likewise
am--or was--half partner with Dan Silver in the privilege car and in the
speculative interests of this show--the flat joints and the rackets and
all. You make me now, I guess? Well, last night, coming up here from the
last stand, me and Silver fell out over the split-up, over dividing
the day's profits--you understand, the money is cut up two ways every
night--and I ketched him trying to trim me. I called him down good and
hard then, and blame if he didn't have the nerve to call in that big
boss razor-back of his, named Saginaw, and a couple more rousters, and
red-light me right off my own privilege car! Now what do you know about
that?”
“Only what you tell me,” replied Judge Priest calmly. “Might I ask you
what is the process of red-lightin' a person of your callin' in life?”
“Chucking you off of a train without waiting for the train to stop,
that's what,” expounded the aggrieved Mr. Stanton. “It was pretty soft
for me that I lit on the side of a dirt bank and we wasn't moving very
fast, else I'd a been killed. As 'twas I about ruined a suit of clothes
and scraped most of the meat off of one leg.” He indicated the denuded
limb by raising it stiffly a couple of times and then felt for his comb.
Use of it appeared to have a somewhat soothing effect upon his feelings,
and he continued: “So I limped up to the next station, two of the
longest miles in the world, and caught a freight coming through, and
here I am. And now I want to file against him--the dirty, red-lighting
dog!
“Why, he owes me money--plenty of it. Just like I told you, I'm the half
owner of that privilege car, and besides he borrowed money off of me at
the beginning of the season and never offered to pay it back. I've got
his personal notes right here to prove it.” He felt for the documents
and spread them, soiled and thumbed, upon the prescription shelf under
the judge's nose. “He's sure got to settle with me before he gets out of
this town. Don't worry about me--I'll put up cash bond to prove I'm on
the level,” fishing out from his trousers pocket a bundle of bills with
a rubber band on it. “Pretty lucky for me they didn't know I had my
bankroll with me last night!”
“I suppose the attachment may issue,” said the judge preparing to get
up.
“Fine,” said Stanton, with deep gratification in his bearing. “But here,
wait a minute,” he warned. “Don't make no mistake and try to attach
the whole works, because if you do you'll sure fall down on your face,
judge. That's all been provided for. The wagons and horses are all in
Silver's name and the cage animals are all in his wife's name. And so
when a hick constable or somebody comes round with an attachment, Dan
says to him, 'All right,' he says, 'go on and attach, but you can't
touch them animals,' he says; and then friend wife flashes a bill of
sale to show they are hers. The rube says 'What'll I do?' and Silver
says, 'Why, let the animals out and take the wagons; but of course,' he
says, 'you're responsible for the lions and that pair of ferocious
man-eating tigers and the rest of 'em. Go right ahead,' he says, 'and
help yourself,' 'Yes,' his wife says, 'go ahead; but if you let any of
my wild animals get away I'll hold you liable, and also if you let any
of 'em chew up anybody you'll pay the damages and not me,' she says.
'You'll have to be specially careful about Wallace the Ontamable,' she
says; 'he's et up two trainers already this season and crippled
two-three more of the hands.'
“Well, if that don't bluff the rube they take him round and give him
a flash at Wallace. Wallace is old and feeble and he ain't really much
more dangerous than a kitten, but he looks rough; and Dan sidles up
'longside the wagon and touches a button that's there to use during the
ballyhoo, and then Wallace jumps up and down and roars a mile. D'ye make
me there? Well, the floor of the cage is all iron strips, and when
Dan touches that button it shoots about fifty volts of the real
juice--electricity, you know--into Wallace's feet and he acts ontamable.
So of course that stumps the rube, and Dan like as not gets away with
it without ever settling. Oh, it's a foxy trick! And to think it was me
myself that first put Silver on to it!” he added lamentingly, with a
sidelong look at the sheriff to see how that official was taking the
disclosure of these professional secrets. As well as one might judge by
a glance the sheriff was taking it unmoved. He was cutting off a chew of
tobacco from a black plug. Stowing the morsel in his jaw, he advanced an
idea of his own:
“How about attachin' the receipts in the ticket wagon?”
“I don't know about that either,” said the sophisticated Stanton. “Dan
Silver is one of the wisest guys in this business. He had to be a wise
guy to slip one over on an old big-leaguer like yours truly, and
that's no sidewalk banter either. You might attach the wagon and put a
constable or somebody inside of it, and then like as not Dan'd find
some way to flimflam him and make his getaway with the kale intact.
You gotter give it to Dan Silver there. I guess he's a stupid guy--yes,
stupid like a bear cat!” His tone of reluctant admiration indicated that
this last was spoken satirically and that seriously he regarded a bear
cat as probably the astutest hybrid of all species.
“Are all circuses conducted in this general fashion, suh?” inquired the
old judge softly.
“No,” admitted Stanton, “they ain't--the big ones ain't anyway; but a
lot of the small ones is. They gotter do it because a circus is always
fair game for a sore rube. Once the tents come down a circus has got no
friends.
“I tell you what,” he went on, struck amidships with a happy notion--“I
tell you what you do. Lemme swear out an attachment against the band
wagon and the band-wagon team, and you go serve it right away, sheriff.
That'll fix him, I guess.”
“How so?” put in the judge, still seeking information for his own
enlightenment.
“Why, you see, if you tie up that band wagon Dan Silver can't use it for
parading. He ain't got but just the one, and a circus parade without
a band wagon will look pretty sick, I should say. It'll look more like
something else, a funeral, for example.” The pleased grafter grinned
maliciously.
“It's like this--the band wagon is the key to the whole works,” he
went on. “It's the first thing off the lot when the parade starts--the
band-wagon driver is the only one that has the route. You cut the band
wagon out and you've just naturally got that parade snarled up to hell
and gone.”
Judge Priest got upon his feet and advanced upon the exultant stranger.
He seemed more interested than at any time.
“Suh,” he asked, “let me see if I understand you properly. The band
wagon is the guidin' motive, as it were, of the entire parade--is that
right?”
“You've got it,” Stanton assured him. “Even the stock is trained to
follow the band wagon. They steer by the music up ahead. Cop the band
wagon out and the rest of 'em won't know which way to go--that's the
rule where-ever there's a road show traveling.”
“Ah hah,” said the judge reflectively, “I see.”
“But say, look here, judge,” said Stanton. “Begging your pardon and not
trying to rush you nor nothing, but if you're going to attach that band
wagon of Dan Silver's for me you gotter hurry. That parade is due to
leave the lot in less'n half an hour from now.”
He was gratified to note that his warning appeared to grease the
joints in the old judge's legs. They all three went straightway to the
sheriff's office, which chanced to be only two doors away, and there
the preliminaries necessary to legal seizures touching on a certain
described and specified parade chariot, tableau car or band wagon
were speedily completed. Stanton made oath to divers allegations and
departed, assiduously combing himself and gloating openly over the
anticipated discomfiture of his late partner. The sheriff lingered
behind only a minute or two longer while Judge Priest in the privacy of
a back room impressed upon him his instructions. Then he, too, departed,
moving at his top walking gait westward out Jefferson Street. There was
this that could be said for Sheriff Giles Birdsong--he was not gifted in
conversation nor was he of a quick order of intellect, but he knew his
duty and he obeyed orders literally when conveyed to him by a superior
official. On occasion he had obeyed them so literally--where the warrant
had said dead or alive, for example--that he brought in, feet first,
a prisoner or so who manifested a spirited reluctance against being
brought in any other way. And the instructions he had now were highly
explicit on a certain head.
Close on Sheriff Birdsong's hurrying heels the judge himself issued
forth from the sheriff's office. Hailing a slowly ambling public vehicle
driven by a languid darky, he deposited his person therein and was
driven away. Observing this from his place in front of the drug store,
Sergeant Jimmy Bagby was moved to remark generally to the company: “You
can't tell me I wasn't right a while ago about Judge Billy Priest. Look
at him yonder now, puttin' out for home in a hack, without waitin' for
the parade. There certainly is something wrong with the judge and you
can't tell me there ain't.”
If the judge didn't wait nearly everybody else did--waited with what
patience and impatience they might through a period that was punctuated
by a dozen false alarms, each marked with much craning of elderly necks
and abortive rushes by younger enthusiasts to the middle of the street.
After a while, though, from away up at the head of Jefferson
Street there came down, borne along on the summer air, a faint
anticipatory blare of brazen horns, heard at first only in broken
snatches. Then, in a minute or two, the blaring resolved itself into
a connected effort at melody, with drums throbbing away in it. Farmers
grabbed at the bits of restive horses, that had their ears set sharply
in one direction, and began uttering soothing and admonitory “whoas.”
The stores erupted clerks and customers together. The awning poles
on both sides of the street assumed the appearance of burdened grape
trellises, bearing ripe black and white clusters of small boys. At last
she was coming!
She was, for a fact. She came on until the thin runlet of ostensible
music became a fan-faring, crashing cataract of pleasing and
exhilarating sound, until through the dancing dust could be made out the
arching, upcurved front of a splendid red-and-gold chariot. In front
of it, like wallowing waves before the prow of a Viking ship, were the
weaving broad backs of many white horses, and stretching behind it was a
sinuous, colorful mass crowned with dancing, distant banner-things,
and suggesting in glintings of gold and splashings of flame an oncoming
argosy of glitter and gorgeousness.
She was coming all right! But was she? A sort of disappointed, surprised
gasp passed along the crowded sidewalks, and boys began sliding down
the awning poles and running like mad up the street. For instead of
continuing straight on down Jefferson, as all circus parades had always
done, the head of this one was seen now, after a momentary halt as
of indecision, to turn short off and head into Clay. But why Clay
Street--that was the question? Clay Street didn't have ten houses on it,
all told, and it ran up a steep hill and ended in an abandoned orchard
just beyond the old Priest place. Indeed the only way to get out of Clay
Street, once you got into it, was by a distant lane that cut through
to the paralleling street on the right. What would any circus parade in
possession of its sane senses be doing going up Clay Street?
But that indeed was exactly what this parade was doing--with the added
phenomena of Sheriff Giles Birdsong sitting vigilantly erect on the
front seat of the band wagon, and a band-wagon driver taking orders for
once from somebody besides his rightful boss--taking them protestingly
and profanely, but nevertheless taking them.
Yes, sir, that's what she was doing. The band wagon, behind the oblique
arc of its ten-horse team, was swinging into Clay Street, and the rest
of the procession was following its leader and disappearing, wormlike,
into a tunnel of overarching maples and silver-leaf poplars.
And so it moved, slowly and deliberately, after the fashion of circus
parades, past some sparsely scattered cottages that were mainly closed
and empty, seeing that their customary dwellers were even now downtown,
until the head of it came to a particularly shabby little brown house
that was not closed and was not empty. From a window here looked out
a worn little woman and a little sick boy, he as pale as the pillow
against which he was propped, and from here they saw it all--she through
tears and he with eyes that burned with a dumb joy unutterable--from
here these two beheld the unbelievable marvel of it. It was almost as
though the whole unspeakable grandeur of it had been devised for those
eyes alone--first the great grand frigate of a band wagon pitching and
rolling as if in heavy seas, with _artistes_ of a world-wide repute
discoursing sweet strains from its decks, and drawn not by four or six,
but by ten snow-white Arabian stallions with red pompons nodding above
their proud heads--that is to say, they were snow-white except perhaps
for a slight grayish dappling. And on behind this, tailing away and
away, were knights and ladies on mettled, gayly caparisoned steeds, and
golden pageant dens filled with ferocious rare beasts of the jungle,
hungrily surveying the surging crowds--only, of course, there weren't
any crowds--and sun-bright tableau cars, with crystal mirrors cunningly
inset in the scrolled carved work, so that the dancing surfaces caught
the sunlight and threw it back into eyes already joyously dazzled; and
sundry closed cages with beautiful historical paintings on their sides,
suggesting by their very secrecy the presence of marvelous prisoned
creatures; and yet another golden chariot with the Queen of Sheba and
her whole glittering court traveling in imperial pomp atop of it.
That wasn't all--by no means was it all. There succeeded an open den
containing the man-eating Bengal tigers, striped and lank, with the
intrepid spangled shoulders of the trainer showing as he sat with his
back against the bars, holding his terrible charges in dominion by the
power of the human eye, so that for the time being they dared not eat
anybody. And then followed a whole drove of trick ponies drawing the
happy family in its wheeled home, and behind that in turn more cages,
closed, and a fife-and-drum corps of old regimentals in blue and buff,
playing Yankee Doodle with martial spirit, and next the Asiatic camel to
be known by his one hump, and the genuine Bactrian dromedary to be known
by his two, slouching by as though they didn't care whether school kept
or not, flirting their under lips up and down and showing profiles like
Old Testament characters. And then came more knights and ladies and more
horses and more heroes of history and romance, and a veritable herd
of vast and pondrous pachyderm performers, or elephants--for while one
pachyderm, however vast and pachydermic, might not make a herd, perhaps,
or even two yet surely three would, and here were no less than three,
holding one another's tails with their trunks, which was a droll conceit
thought up by these intelligent creatures on the spur of the moment, no
doubt, with the sole idea of giving added pleasure to a little sick boy.
That wasn't all either. There was more of this unapproachable pageant
yet winding by--including such wonders as the glass-walled apartment of
the lady snake-charmer, with the lady snake-charmer sitting right there
in imminent peril of her life amidst her loathsome, coiling and venomous
pets; and also there was Judge Priest's Jeff, hardly to be recognized in
a red-and-yellow livery as he led the far-famed sacred ox of India; and
then the funny old clown in his little blue wagon, shouting out “Whoa,
January” to his mule and dodging back as January kicked up right in his
face, and last of all--a crowning glory to all these other glories--the
steam calliope, whistling and blasting and shrilling and steaming, fit
to split itself wide open!
You and I, reader, looking on at this with gaze unglamoured by the
eternal, fleeting spirit of youth, might have noted in the carping light
of higher criticism that the oriental trappings had been but poor shoddy
stuffs to begin with, and were now all torn and dingy and shedding their
tarnished spangles; might have noted that the man-eating tigers seemed
strangely bored with life, and that the venomous serpents draped upon
the form of the lady snake-charmer were languid, not to say torpid, to
a degree that gave the lady snake-charmer the appearance rather of a
female suspender pedler, carrying her wares hung over her shoulders.
We might have observed further had we been so minded--as probably we
should--that the Queen of Sheba bore somewhat a weatherbeaten look and
held a quite common-appearing cotton umbrella with a bone handle over
her regal head; that the East-Indian mahout of the elephant herd needed
a shave, and that there were mud-stained overalls and brogan shoes
showing plainly beneath the flowing robes of the Arabian camel-driver.
We might even have guessed that the biggest tableau car was no more than
a ticket wagon in thin disguise, and that the yapping which proceeded
from the largest closed cage indicated the presence merely of a troupe
of uneasy performing poodles.
But to the transported vision of the little sick boy in the little brown
house there were no flaws in it anywhere--it was all too splendid for
words, and so he spoke no words at all as it wound on by. The lurching
shoulders of the elephants had gone over the hill beyond and on
down, the sacred ox of India had passed ambling from sight, the glass
establishment of the snake-charmer was passing, and January and the
down wagon and the steam calliope were right in front of the Hammersmith
house, when something happened on ahead, and for a half minute or so
there was a slowing-up and a closing-up and a halting of everything.
Although, of course, the rear guard didn't know it for the time being,
the halt was occasioned by the fact that when the band wagon reached the
far end of Clay Street, with the orchard trees looming dead ahead, the
sheriff, riding on the front seat of the band wagon, gave an order. The
band-wagon driver instantly took up the slack of the reins that flowed
through his fingers in layers, so that they stopped right in front of
Judge Priest's house, where Judge Priest stood leaning on his gate. The
sheriff made a sort of saluting motion of his fingers against the brim
of his black slouch hat.
“Accordin' to orders, Your Honor,” he stated from his lofty perch.
At this there spoke up another man, the third and furthermost upon the
wide seat of the band wagon, and this third man was no less a personage
than Daniel P. Silver himself, and he was as near to bursting with
bottled rage as any man could well be and still remain whole, and he was
as hoarse as a frog from futile swearing.
“What in thunder does this mean--” he began, and then stopped short,
being daunted by the face which Sheriff Giles Birdsong turned upon him.
“Look here, mister,” counseled the sheriff, “you art now in the presence
of the presidin' judge of the first judicial district of Kintucky,
settin' in chambers, or what amounts to the same thing, and you air
liable to git yourself into contempt of cote any minute.”
Baffled, Silver started to swear again, but in a lower key.
“You better shut up your mouth,” said the sheriff with a shifting
forward of his body to free his limbs for action, “and listen to whut
His Honor has to say. You act like you was actually anxious to git
yourself lamed up.”
“Sheriff,” said the judge, “obeyin' your orders you have, I observe,
attached certain properties--to wit, a band wagon and team of
horses--and still obeyin' orders, have produced said articles before
me for my inspection. You will continue in personal possession of same
until said attachment is adjudicated, not allowin' any person whatsoever
to remove them from your custody. Do I make myself sufficiently plain?”
“Yes, suh, Your Honor,” said the sheriff. “You do.”
“In the meanwhile, pendin' the termination of the litigation, if the
recent possessor of this property desires to use it for exhibition or
paradin' purposes, you will permit him to do so, always within proper
bounds,” went on the judge. “I would suggest that you could cut through
that lane yonder in order to reach the business section of our city, if
such should be the desire of the recent possessor.”
The heavy wheels of the band wagon began turning; the parade started
moving on again. But in that precious half-minute's halt something else
had happened, only this happened in front of the little brown house
halfway down Clay Street. The clown's gaze was roving this way and that,
as if looking for the crowd that should have been there and that was
only just beginning to appear, breathless and panting, and his eyes fell
upon a wasted, wizened little face looking straight out at him from
a nest of bedclothes in a window not thirty feet away; and--be it
remembered among that clown's good deeds in the hereafter--he stood
up and bowed, and stretched his painted, powdered face in a wide and
gorgeous grin, just as another and a greater Grimaldi once did for just
such another audience of a grieving mother and a dying child. Then he
yelled “Whoa, January,” three separate times, and each time he poked
January in his long-suffering flanks and each time January kicked up his
small quick hoofs right alongside the clown's floury ears.
The steam calliope man had an inspiration too. He was a person of no
great refinement, the calliope man, and he worked a shell game for his
main source of income and lived rough and lived hard, so it may not have
been an inspiration after all, but merely the happy accident of chance.
But whether it was or it wasn't, he suddenly and without seeming reason
switched from the tune he was playing and made his calliope sound out
the first bars of the music which somebody once set to the sweetest
childhood verses that Eugene Field ever wrote--the verses that begin:
The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket molds in his hands.
The parade resumed its march then and went on, tailing away through
the dappled sunshine under the trees, and up over the hill and down the
other side of it, but the clown looked back as he scalped the crest and
waved one arm, in a baggy calico sleeve, with a sort of friendly goodby
motion to somebody behind him; and as for the steam calliope man, he
kept on playing the little Boy Blue verses until he disappeared.
As a matter of fact, he was still playing them when he passed a
wide-porched old white house almost at the end of the empty street,
where a stout old man in a wrinkly white linen suit leaned across a
gate and regarded the steam calliope man with a satisfied almost a
proprietorial air.