CHAPTER XV
THE CIRCUS BREAKS CAMP
THAT night after the performance the circus broke camp and the friends were separated, the elephant, camel, monkey and parrot going to Bismarck while the moose, zebra, giraffe and sacred bull went to Duluth. But this was not the worst division that was made. Billy was to be sent to Duluth and Stubby and Button to Bismarck. Now here was an unforeseen catastrophe and the circus people, having observed the close companionship of the four, took precaution to lock Billy and Nannie in a cage by themselves and Stubby and Button in another.
“Never mind,” counseled Billy. “You and Button go on with the circus for it is headed in the right direction for us and Nannie and I will run away from the circus and join you, never fear, just as soon as they let us out of this pesky cage.”
“I knew something like this would happen if we stayed with their poky old circus!” grumbled Stubby.
“I know you did, old fellow, but cheer up, we won’t be separated long.”
It was astonishing how quickly the circus people folded their tents, gathered up the long lines of seats, and started their wagon cages toward the circus train that lay in the yards with steam up, all ready to start at a moment’s notice. Everything about a circus is systematized so that the minute the evening performance is over, everybody jumps to his or her appointed task and works with a will, so that where there were tents with flags and banners flying at night, the next morning there is only a deserted sawdust ring. Circuses spring up over night like mushrooms and disappear as quickly as the dew on the grass when the sun comes up.
By midnight the circus train was well under way and Billy and Nannie found themselves in a cage between the zebra and giraffe. About two o’clock the train stopped at a siding to let a passenger train pass. It being very late they had to wait as all regular trains had the right of way over a special like a circus train.
As this siding was beside a stream on the outskirts of a sleeping little town, it was as still as death with the exception of the frogs in the pond and the katydids quarreling with each other in a tree beside the cage Billy and Nannie were in. Now if there was anything that made Billy nervous and depressed, it was hearing frogs and the hum of insects and katydids. It gave him the blues. At last he could stand it no longer and he baaed to the zebra and giraffe to see if they were awake. Both were and each declared himself wildly nervous and unable to sleep with the incessant repetition of “Katy did! She did! She didn’t! She did! She didn’t!” until Billy bawled out:
“Who cares a tinker’s dam whether she did or did not? Can’t you shut up and let some poor tired animals sleep?”
“Yes,” whinnied the zebra, “for mercy sakes give us a rest! I should think you would need one yourselves the way you have been calling out ‘She did! She didn’t!’ faster and faster until I thought your heads would fly off, and to tell you the truth I wish they had!”
“I feel as if my ears were growing as big as my neck,” said the giraffe. “Just listening to any noise I don’t like makes me feel that way. But I don’t mind the katydids as I do those confounded frogs with their ‘Mudger-ka-rum, mudger-ka-rum. Knee-deep, knee-deep!’”
“Is that what you think they say?” asked Billy.
“Yes; what do you think they are calling?”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound to me as if they were saying what it does to you.”
“Well, perhaps it would not sound that way to me but I once heard one of the keepers say the reason people think frogs say mudger-ka-rum was because there was once an Irishman going home late at night, half drunk, a jug of rum under his arm, and he thought the frogs were calling to him to give them his jug of rum as mudger-ka-rum sounded like my jug of rum.”
“Ha! Ha!” laughed the giraffe. “That is a good one! And hereafter whenever I hear frogs I shall think of that saying. Listen now; it really does sound as if that was what they were calling.”
“I can’t go to sleep until the train starts, so let us tell stories until it does,” proposed Billy.
“Very well, I’m willing,” agreed the zebra and giraffe.
“You tell the first one. Tell us something about your experiences in the war,” added the giraffe.
“Oh, for mercy sakes don’t say war to me! I am sick of the very name of it and I can’t bear to even think of its horror, much less tell about the black deeds I saw. You two tell me about your homes in Africa.”
“Very well,” replied the zebra. “I’ll tell you what a merry chase I gave my pursuers when they were trying to catch me. You see white with many, many black stripes in it is hard to see at a distance. It seems to fade into the background. That is why during the war they painted the sides of the ships black and white so as to camouflage them.”
“What does camouflage mean?” asked the giraffe.
“You ought to know,” replied the zebra, “as your coat is camouflaged, though not just like mine as it has round black and white dots. They make it just as hard to see as stripes like mine.”
“Is that so? I never knew that before. But I do know that it is almost impossible to shoot us when on the run, as our coats make it very difficult to judge the distance we are from the hunter. But I never knew it was due to our spots and color.”
“Well, as I was saying,” continued the zebra, “where I lived there is a kind of tall growth of vegetation with long leaves just the width of our stripes and the branches grow straight and tall above our heads. When there is any of that kind of vegetation around and hunters get after us, we make for it and we are seldom seen after we enter, for the waving leaves throw black shadows across us and unless a hunter runs directly into us he will pass within a few feet of us and never discover us.”
Just then the train gave a jerk that threw the zebra off its feet, bumped the giraffe’s head against the top of its cage and sent Billy’s head bang up against the end of his cage and Nannie’s short horns into his side.
“Plague take this old train anyway! Why can’t the engineer toot the whistle and give a fellow warning that he is going to start? Now we can’t hear the rest of your story until we stop again as the train makes too much noise.
“Good-by, you old frogs and katydids, I hope I never, never, never hear you peep again as long as I live!” said Billy.