The Circus People Visit a Southern Plantation--Pa, the Giant and the
Fat Woman Are Chased by Bloodhounds--The Bad Boy "Runs the
Gauntlet."
Gee, but pa is sore at me. He has been disgusted with me before, but he
never had it in for me so serious as he has now. I guess the whole show
would breathe easier if I should fall off the train some dark night,
when it was stormy, and we were crossing a high bridge over a stream
that was out of its banks on account of a freshet.
It was all on account of our taking an afternoon off on a Sunday at
Richmond. An old planter that used to be in the circus business before
the war thought it would bring back old recollections to him and give us
a taste of country life in the south if he invited all of us,
performers, managers, freaks, and everything, to spend the day on his
plantation, and go nutting for chestnuts and hickory nuts, pick apples
and run them through a cider mill and drink self-made cider, and have a
good time.
We all appreciated the invitation, and after breakfast we rode out in
the country to his plantation in carriages and express wagons and began
to do the plantation. The fat lady and the midgets rode out together in
a load of cotton, and when they got to the house they had to be picked
like ducks, and they looked as though they had been tarred and
feathered.
The planter gave us a fine luncheon of fried chicken and corn pone, and
cider, and pa acted as the boss of the circus folks, while the planter
and his family, with about 100 negroes, passed things around. They all
seemed to be interested in seeing how much stuff the giant and the fat
lady could hold without putting up sideboards to keep the food from
falling off. If pa hadn't told the negroes not to feed the fat lady and
the giant any more, there would have been two circus funerals next day.
I got acquainted with a boy that was the planter's son, and while the
rest were eating and drinking the boy showed me a pack of hounds that
are kept for trailing criminals and negroes who have looked sassy at
white women. The trouble with negroes is that they all look alike, and
if one commits a crime they can prove an alibi, 'cause every last negro
will swear that at the time the crime was committed the suspected man
was attending a prayer meeting, so they have to have hounds that can be
taken to the place where the crime was committed, and they find the
negro's track, and they follow it till they tree him. The hounds do not
bite the negro, like we used to hear about, but they just follow him
till he is treed, and then they bark, as much as to say: "Ah, there, Mr.
Nigger, you just stay where you are till the sheriff comes to fetch
you," and Mr. Negro just turns pale and stays on a limb till the sheriff
comes with his lynching tools. When the sheriff pulls a gun the negro
confesses right there, and the deputy sheriff brings the rope.
I asked the boy if the hounds would trail a white man without hurting
him, and he said if you put anise seed on their shoes the hounds will
trail 'em all right, so we put up a job to have some fun. The boy gave
me some anise seed, and told me to put it on the shoes of anybody I
wanted trailed, and after they got out in the woods he would put the
hounds on the trail, and the people would have to get up trees, or have
their pants chewed, but the dogs would not hurt anybody.
Well, it made me laugh to think about it. I went to pa and told him his
shoes were all covered with red Virginia dust, and I took my
handkerchief and dusted them off, and made him hold up his foot like a
horse that is being shod. Then I put a handful of anise seed around the
sole, and in his shoes. He said it was mighty kind in me to do it. Then
I went to the giant, and brushed the dust off his shoes, and put two
handfuls of anise seed in them, and he said I was a nice boy. I told the
fat woman about the dust on her telescope valises, and I rubbed it off,
and gave her feet a dose of anise seed that ought to have paralyzed a
pack of hounds. She wanted to hug me and let me kiss her, but I said I
passed, and she said she would do as much for me some time.
About this time the planter took the lead, and they all went across a
pasture into the woods, and began knocking nuts off the trees. All
through the woods there were signs: "No Tresspassing," and "Beware of
the Dogs," but the planter said to never mind the signs. I told the boy
to let the dogs loose on the trail in about half an hour, and I went
along with the folks, and I told pa I had seen a pack of bloodhounds
that would eat people alive, and if he heard hounds barking to run like
a whitehead and climb a tree. I got with the giant, who is a coward in
his own right, and told him the only trouble about these great
plantations in the south was the wild dogs that inhabited the mountains,
that would not hesitate to attack a man if they got good and hungry, but
there was no danger to him, because he was a good sprinter, and could
outrun a jack rabbit. The giant wanted to go back to the house, 'cause
he said he didn't want to run no foot race with hounds, and he had seen
the sign to beware of the dogs. I never ought to have done it, 'cause
the fat woman looks as though she was built a purpose for apoplexy, but
I told her as a friend, not to load herself down with nuts, but to
travel light, so if the wild dogs came down to raid the plantation she
could crawl in a hole out of sight till the dogs had eaten some of the
men. She came near fainting right there, before the dogs got busy.
There were about 20 negroes throwing clubs at the nuts, and everybody
was having a big time. The trapeze performers were squirreling up among
the limbs, when suddenly, in the distance came the bay of the pack of
bloodhounds, and every negro turned pale, and got ready to climb a tree.
The planter stopped to listen, and when one of the managers of the show
asked him what was the matter, he said: "You can search me, sah. If that
is my pack of hounds a crime has been committed, and the sheriff has
started the pack on the trail of the criminal, sah, because the dogs are
never turned loose, except for business."
Then the planter yelled to the niggers, and said: "If any of youall are
guilty of crime, you best get scarce, or pick out your tree, and get up
it mighty sudden, 'cause the hounds haven't been fed lately." Every
colored man picked a tree, and the hounds kept coming, finally showing
up jumping the fence, and entering the woods, and the planter cut a club
to beat off the dogs. Pa looked as innocent as John Wanamaker's picture
addressing a Sunday school, the giant saw the dogs and started for a
tall tree, and the fat lady said she couldn't find any hole big enough
to hide in, and "the idea," if there were not men enough to protect a
lady.
Well, I never expected to see anything so fine as the way those hounds
run with their noses to the ground, scattered in three packs one pack on
the trail of each of the three whose shoes I had doctored. When they got
near us they broke up and went around everywhere that pa and the giant
and the fat lady had walked, and fell over each other, but finally one
pack went to the tall tree where the giant had climbed to the first
limb, and stood on their hind legs and barked a salute to him. He
trembled so I was afraid he would fall off, but he wound his arms and
legs around the tree, and began to cry. The planter told him whatever
crime he had committed it was all up with him.
The part of the pack that was on pa's trail began to close in on pa, and
I said: "Pa, if you don't want to be dog meat, it is up to you to climb,
and you better get a move on, or I shall be an orphan mighty quick,
'cause the dogs are starving." Pa made a couple of quick jumps, and
grabbed a limb of a hickory tree, and was pulling himself up and
repeating prayers, when the leading dog reached up his nose and smelled
pa's shoes, when the intelligent animal gave a bark and a yell to the
other dogs, as much as to say: "That's the identical cuss. Eat him
alive."
He grabbed about a double handful of the cloth of pa's clothes right
below where his suspenders button on and held on, and shook pa real
hard, but the cloth was tough and didn't tear. Pa suddenly seemed to be
endowed with superhuman strength, for he drew himself up on the limb and
raised the dog from the ground, and all the pack came around the tree
and set up a howl that scared pa so the perspiration rolled off him, and
he had a chill so he shook like the ague.
Pa yelled to the planter, who was holding up the fat lady and said:
"Here, Mr. Confederate, I am not a union prisoner, and I want you to
unlock your dog's jaws, and free me, 'cause I can't hold up a 90-pound
dog by my suspenders much longer. If this is southern hospitality, I
don't want to be entertained no more." The planter leaned the fat lady
against a tree, and took the dog by the hind legs and pulled him off.
[Illustration: "Here, Mr. Confederate, I Am Not a Union Prisoner."]
The planter yelled to the negroes to come down and help handle the dogs,
but just then the boy who started the dogs on the trail, at my request,
came up whistling, with a dog whip in his hand, and all the dogs
surrounded him, and he made them lay down and roll over. All of the
scared people came down from their perches in the trees, and surrounded
the boy and the dogs, and the dogs panted and lolled, as though they had
been having a nice run for their money. The old planter asked his boy
how the dogs had happened to get loose, and that fool boy told the whole
thing, how I had asked him to let the pack run, and how I had put anise
seed in the shoes of pa, the giant and the fat lady. Then you ought to
have seen what they did to me. The planter said they usually had a
lynching when the dogs made a run, but that was impossible in this case,
so he suggested that they make me run the gauntlet. I didn't know what
running the gauntlet was, but after pa had told me he should disown me
from that moment, I said I was willing to run any gauntlet, so they all
cut switches and formed in two lines, and let me run down between them.
I thought it would be fun, but when I started and every last man gave me
a cut across the end of my back with a hickory switch, I yelled murder,
and run between the giant's legs and tackled him like football I toppled
him over against the next man, and that man hit the giant in the
stomach, and everybody began to fight, and the festivities broke up.
[Illustration: I Yelled Murder and Ran Between the Giant's Legs.]
I went to the house with the boy and the dogs, and we set the dogs on a
mess of cats, and treed everything alive on the plantation. Finally the
whole crowd came back to the house and had another lunch, with mint
julep and champagne, and then everybody was hugging some one, and crying
on each other's neck, and swearing that the war was over, and that the
north and the south were one and inseparable, and the two together could
whip the whole world.
Pa somehow saw double. I was standing alone, smarting from the switching
I got, when pa came up to me and said: "I want you two boys to
understand that I don't want any more experiments played on me. I can
take a joke us well as anybody, but when you set a hundred dogs on my
trail, I am no gentlemen, see? Now we will go back to the show."