Pa Breaks in the Zebras and Drives a Six-in-Hand Team in the
Parade--The Freaks Have a Narrow Escape from Drowning.
Pa is stuck on the zebras. I do not know what there is about a zebra
unless it is the wail paper effects of his exterior decoration that
should make a man leave all the other animals and cleave unto the zebra,
but pa has been putting in his leisure time all summer breaking the
zebras to harness, and driving them single and double in the ring
Sundays.
Everybody about the show knew pa was going to spring some surprise on
us. I have tried to reason pa out of his unnatural infatuation for
zebras, but you might as well talk to a rich old man who gets stuck on a
chorus girl, and gives her all his money, and has to go and live at the
poor house.
A zebra always looks to me like a joke that nature has played. Who, but
nature, would ever think of laying out a plan for a zebra, and painting
it in stripes, like a barber's pole, and yet we must admit that few
human artists could paint a million zebras and get the stripes on as
perfect as nature does with her eyes shut. The mule and the zebra are
distant relatives, 'cause lots of mules have a few stripes on their
legs, but the zebra is the eldest son who is aristocratic and inherits
the stuff, while the mule is the younger son who never gets a look in
for the money, but has to work for a living. So it is no wonder to me
that the mule kicks. The zebra is the dude of the family, and the mule
looks up to him, when he ought to kick his slats in, and rub out his
stripes with a mule shoe eraser.
While pa was in the hospital at Kansas City he formed a plan to paralyze
the town by driving six zebras to a tally-ho coach, in the parade, and
the reporters interviewed pa, and the papers were full of it, and the
people were wild with excitement, and everybody wanted to see a
six-in-hand zebra team, driven by Alkali Ike, one of the greatest
western stage drivers that was ever held up by road agents. Pa was to be
Alkali Ike. The show struck Kansas City Sunday morning, and the
management was scared at what pa had advertised to do, and they all
wanted to call off the zebra stunt, but pa said if they cut it out the
people would mob the show, so all day Sunday we hooked up the six
zebras, and the hands led them around the tent with a mule with a bell
on ridden in the lead. They seemed to go pretty well, but I could see
pa's finish when he got out on the streets with that crazy team. Pa
wanted all the freaks to ride on the tally-ho, and he had invited nine
newspaper fellows to ride with him. Pa thought the zebra team would
follow the bell mule ahead, like a 20-mule borax team would.
Well, Monday morning the parade started, and along about the middle of
the parade, just ahead of the calliope, was pa and his six zebra team,
his freaks and reporters, and pa handled the ribbons like a pirate. The
fat woman sat on the driver's seat with pa, for ballast, and the rest of
the freaks were sandwiched in between the reporters. We went along all
right for half a mile, the circus hands walking beside the zebras, to
kill them if they tried to jump over a house, while I rode the bell
mule. If I had been planning the zebra business, I would have picked out
a level town to try it on, but Kansas City is all hills and ravines, and
going up hill the zebras' tally-ho had to be pushed by a couple of
elephants, 'cause the zebras wouldn't pull the load, and going down hill
we had to lock the wheels, and slide down.
When we got on the main street, where the crowd filled both sides,
almost up to the team, and the people began to cheer, the zebras began
to waltz and kick, and try to jump over each other, but the hands got
them untangled, and we worried along, though pa was pale, and looked
like a man smoking a cigar while sitting on an open powder keg. The fat
woman grabbed pa every little while, and screamed that she wanted to get
off and walk, but pa told her to hush up and try to be a man.
Well, as we were going down hill, by a park, near the Midland hotel,
that confounded calliope had got right up behind the tally-ho, and the
organist cut her loose, with the tune: "A Life on the Ocean Wave." Every
zebra jumped into the air, the brake footpiece escaped pa's foot, and
the tally-ho run on to the heels of the wheel zebras, and it was all
off. There never was such a runaway since the days of Ben Hur. Pa had
presence of mind enough to make the fat lady get down off the seat, and
he put his feet on her to hold her down, the crowd yelled, and our
zebras run into the cage ahead, containing the behemoth of Holy Writ,
and knocked off a hind wheel, and every wagon ahead was either tipped
over or disabled. The people fairly went wild, thinking the runaway was
a part of the show. The giant fainted from fright, 'cause he always was
a coward; the bearded woman threw her arms around a reporter, and
scratched his face with her whiskers, while the Circassian girl got her
white wig caught In the branch of a tree and lost it, and she was as
bald as an ostrich egg. Pa took out the whip and larruped the zebras, to
put some new stripes on them.
[Illustration: There Never Was Such a Runaway Since the Days of
Ben-Hur.]
When we passed the camels they thought they were in the race, and they
buckled in to keep up, and the chariot horses got the best of the
drivers and they joined in. My mule kept up all right, and we went down
the hill on to the level ground that runs to the Missouri river. When we
got to the river the zebras turned short and tipped the tally-ho over
into the water and the whole bunch on the coach was floundering in the
muddy water; but there happened to be a sandbar under the water, so
nobody was drowned, though we had to bail out the fat woman, she
swallowed so much of the muddy river. The giant was senseless and two
reporters got astride of him, thinking it was a rail, and drifted
ashore, while pa laid on his back and floated like a duck, and when we
got him out we found he had a life-preserver under his coat, and he said
he put it on because he had a hunch that those zebras would make for
running water if they ever got beyond control. Well, the crowd followed
down to the river, and everybody was rescued, and the rest of the parade
went over the route, and in the afternoon the tent was so full there
were thousands standing up.
[Illustration: The Zebras Turned Short and Tipped the Tally-ho Over Into
the Water.]
When pa came into the main tent with the zebras, in the grand parade
around the ring, the crowd gave him three cheers, which probably caused
the management to refrain from discharging him on the spot. Pa is like a
cat, 'cause he always falls on his feet all right and he thinks the
zebra tally-ho in the parade was the feature that caused the crowd to
visit the show; but he says he will never drive zebras again, on account
of the excitement.
The fat woman talks of having pa arrested for breaking one of her ribs
when he held her down with his feet; but pa says his feet did not sink
into her more than a foot or so, and he couldn't have hit a rib, nohow.
Well, I'm glad to be back in the show, 'cause there is more going on
than there was in the hospital, where I put in a week while the doctors
were pulling the cactus pin feathers out of pa that grew out on him in
Indian Territory. Gee, but if I had to leave the circus business and go
back to school, I know I should die of lonesomeness.
I got a chance to talk with pa at supper, and asked him if he was really
crazy, as the hands say he is, and how he liked zebras, anyway, and he
said: "Hennery, zebras are just people, they stampede just like
politicians and bankers, and business men generally, and never know
enough to let well enough alone. The mule is the only draft animal that
always pulls straight and gets there right side up."
If I was going to run a circus for easy money, and a picnic, I wouldn't
have any menagerie connected with it, 'cause the animals make more
trouble than all the rest of the show. They are just like a lot of
children in a reform school, they don't want to work, and they are just
looking for a chance to fight when your back is turned, or to escape.
They don't know where they would go if they did escape, but they don't
want anybody over them, to teach them morals, though when meal time
comes the reform school boys and the menagerie animals eat like tramps,
because the food is so good, and then kick because it isn't better. If
your performers in the circus proper do not suit you can discharge them,
and if they are sick you can leave them in a hospital, and go on with
the show, and forget about them until they show up in a week or two,
pale as ghosts, and weak as cats, and demand back salary; but your
animal has to be taken along and petted, and when you give him medicine
to save his life, he will try to bite your hand off.
And yet you can't help getting stuck on the animals, and a man gets
stuck on the kind of animal that is most like him. The grizzly old
granger, who never buttons the collar of his shirt, and whose Adam's
apple looks like a hen's head, will stay by the camels, hours at a time,
the pious church man feels at home among the sacred cattle, the
strong-arm holdup man will linger by the grizzly bear, the prize-fighter
will haunt the lions' den, the garroter will gaze lovingly at the
tigers, the sneak thief seems to love the hyenas, and the big game
hunters watch the deer and elk. Some of us who have brains love the
monkeys, they are so human.