“VICTOR, wouldn’t it be better for you to skip back to the hotel?” asked Dave, looking anxiously at the sky.
The lawyer’s son thought of the dark, gloomy streets through which he would be obliged to pass; then the idea of actually traveling with a circus appealed strongly to his imagination.
“No, Brownie,” he answered, decidedly.
“Joe,” said Dave, turning toward the circus boy, “I see the light of a drug store over yonder; guess they have a ’phone. I’m going to call up the hotel. Can you wait, Joe?”
“Sure, Dave. But if Whiffin ketches me busy at doin’ nothin’ it means a callin’ down—see?”
“All right, Joe; we’ll hurry,” said Dave, encouragingly.
“An’ while you’re gone I’ll help git the elephants ready,” announced Joe, with sudden decision. “Them three old codgers goes ahead o’ us.”
Dave, followed by Victor, loped across the wet, soggy lot, or, rather, tried to. But, although the journey was attended by much discomfort and some risk of taking a header, they finally arrived at the drug store in safety.
Dave promptly called up the hotel and was soon speaking to the night clerk. The latter declined to open the telegram, but gave the stout boy full information about the ’phone message which Captain Bunderley had sent from Milwaukee.
“Well?” queried Victor, eagerly, as the historian hung up the receiver.
Dave briefly explained.
“There, you big Indian, I knew it!” exclaimed the lawyer’s son, triumphantly. “A nice trick they played on us, eh? Well, I’m liable to handle that Tom Clifton with awful carelessness when we meet again. Now, Brownie”—his tone became imperious—“you just call up Uncle Ralph on the long distance and tell him what’s what.”
With a broad smile, the stout boy obeyed.
To his disappointment, however, he was told that Captain Bunderley had retired for the night.
“If it’s important we’ll get him right up for you,” came a faint voice over the wire.
Dave did some rapid thinking. “Poor Joe is most likely fretting and fuming about the delay,” he mused. “Besides, if I wait any longer there may be another mix-up.”
He spoke in the transmitter again:
“Thank you; I’m in too much of a hurry. Will you kindly take down a message and give it to the captain at once.”
The distant clerk assured him that he would. Dave quickly went over the few facts which he thought it was necessary for the captain to know, ending with: “He’ll hear from me in the morning.” “Good-bye” was trembling on his tongue when an afterthought prompted him to ask: “How many boys are in the party?”
“Three,” came the answer.
“One very tall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any of them about?”
“No; all went out together some time ago.”
“What did he say?” demanded Victor.
“Yes; Tom is there, all right.” Dave smiled. “Come on,” he added, seeing the familiar expression of anger instantly flash into the other’s face. He grasped the lad’s arm and hurried him outside. “No time to lose, Vic,” he urged. “Look, the main tent is already down.”
“Just wait till I catch that tall chap!” exclaimed Victor, savagely.
Over on the lot, Joe Rodgers, standing at the head of a four-horse team, was impatiently awaiting their reappearance.
“Here, you fellers, climb aboard fast,” he roared, the moment his eyes lighted upon their figures. “We ought to been off long ago.”
It wasn’t an easy task for Victor to reach the high seat, but, with considerable assistance, he finally managed it. Then Joe, seeming to possess the nimbleness of a monkey, swung up beside him, while Dave, to Victor’s great surprise, also showing much agility, immediately followed.
At any other time Victor Collins’ sense of the proprieties might have prevented him from accepting a seat beside a boy whose estate was as lowly as that of “Mister” Joe Rodgers, but just now so many things engaged his attention that he forgot to draw fine distinctions. From his elevated perch he could look over a scene in which the weird and picturesque were combined with pleasing effect.
By the aid of a brilliant calcium light and lanterns men were busily engaged in loading the remaining wagons. The workers hurried about, now out of the glare, then back again; the air was full of noise—of shouts, of heavy planks being piled in place, of commands to horses, of sledge-hammer blows. Lanterns bobbed from place to place, suggestive of huge fire-flies. It was all very interesting to Victor; but Joe gave him no further time to enjoy it.
Picking up the lines and raising his whip, he yelled lustily:
“Git ap!”
Victor glanced curiously at the driver. He wondered how it happened that a boy apparently no older than himself was entrusted with the care of a great four-horse team, and being under such responsibility should show not the slightest trace of nervousness.
Before the wagon was in motion a loud “Hold on, there!” made all turn abruptly around.
A man having three horses in tow was headed straight for the wagon.
“Whiffin says I’m to tie this here bunch o’ nags on the back o’ the next wagon out,” explained the man. “Is that you, Rodgers?”
“It sure ain’t nobody else,” growled Joe. “Fasten ’em up quick, Tracy. The elephants has went a’ready.”
Tracy performed his task with commendable celerity.
“All right, Joe,” he presently called. “Let ’er go!”
“Git ap!” roared the driver.
The dull thud of hoofs striking against the turf sounded; the leaders swung around, plunged and reared. Down came an iron shoe, splintering a stone and sending off a shower of sparks. Joe’s whip swished viciously, cracking like pistol shots.
“Whoa boy—haw! Hi, hi! Steady, Billikin! Git over, there, you pesky brute! Whoa boy!”
It required an immense amount of vocal exercise, as well as tugging at the reins and many passes with the whip to get the huge bulk in motion. The wagon suddenly gave an alarming creak, then lurched forward. Joe yelled like a wild Indian. The horses stamped and strained with all their might, and in a few moments more the vehicle was bumping and jolting over the uneven ground.
“This here wagon’s chuck full o’ eats for the hosses,” remarked Joe, when the road was reached.
“Oh, I say, Brownie, it’s beginning to rain again,” broke in Victor, complainingly. “Isn’t that the meanest luck?”
“Here’s sumphin what’ll help keep it off them pretty duds o’ yourn, Buster,” grinned Joe. From the back of the seat he extracted an oilskin cover and a huge umbrella. “Sneak in clos’t, fellers,” he commanded when the latter had been opened. “Then none o’ youse won’t be drownded.”
Joe was handling the reins with remarkable skill; the big wagon rumbled along the street at good speed; and, on looking back, Dave could see, barely perceptible in the gloom, several others following.
“Say, Joe,” he exclaimed, suddenly, “are you any relation to Mr. Whiffin?”
“I sure ain’t,” answered Joe.
“How does it happen that you’re working in the circus?”
“’Cause when I weren’t no more’n twelve years old I was left an orphan—understan’? So off I goes to me fadder’s sister; an’ I stays with her an’ her husban’ a spell.”
“Didn’t you like it?”
“Like it? I should say not!” snorted Joe. “I eats too much for ’em. One day me an’ him has some words ’bout it; an’ he up an’ says: ‘Git right out o’ here, ye young cub.’ So I up an’ gits—see? I’m a purty good feller, I am; but don’t nobuddy rile me.”
“I understand,” said Dave, gravely. “What did you do next?”
“Oh, I gits a job in a village; but the feller I worked for corks me one over the ear, so I up an’ gits ag’in—understan’?”
“Have a hard time finding another place?”
Joe grinned.
“Oh, no,” he answered. “Drop me down in the middle of anywheres an’ I’ll land on me feet. I’ve newspapered it a bit.”
“How did you happen to meet Mr. Whiffin?”
Joe failed to respond immediately. The rain was beginning to beat hard against the umbrella, while the furious gusts of wind threatened every instant to tear it away.
Victor drew the oilskin as far up as he could; but the beating drops still found him, and began to trickle off his cap in tiny streams.
“Ugh! This is about the limit,” he groaned.
“If ye failed inter the lake it’d be a heap worse,” remarked Joe, cheerfully. “It were this way, Jumbo—I—I mean Dave—— Whoa there! Confound that off hoss! Whoa—gee! Git over there!—Well, I was lookin’ for a meal ticket, when, of a suddent, I runs across—whoa, gee—Spudger’s Peerless. So I goes in an’ up an’ asks Whiffin for a job. ‘Git out o’ here,’ says Whiffin. ‘Sure—when I’m ready,’ says I. Then he kinder looks at me interested like, an’ says, ‘Who chased yer away from your happy home, kid?’ An’ I up an’ tells him. So he gives me a job as water-carrier.”
“That’s interesting,” said Dave. “Go ahead.”
“Whoa—gee! Confound that off hoss,” resumed Joe. “Then, after while, he lets me drive wagons and keer for the hosses. There ain’t nuthin’ I don’t know about them animals, Dave.”
“Satisfied with circus life, Joe?”
The boy pondered a moment.
“No, I ain’t,” he confided. “I’d like to git an eddication, an’ be sumphin. But I ain’t never had no chanc’t. I wonder if I ever will have a chanc’t!” he added, wistfully.
“What is your ambition?” pursued Dave.
“I dunno. Maybe I’d like to keep a peanut, pretzel and lemonade stand,” answered Joe. “I know’d a feller what follered the show with one. He did good, too—saved a hundred and fifty dollars in three years. He’s gittin’ old now—most twenty-five, I reckon.”
“Poor decrepit old gentleman,” sighed Dave. “Say, Joe,” he added, “does your uncle know where you are?”
“Sure! Whiffin up an’ writes ’im; an’ what Uncle Jim writ back must have been hot stuff, ’cordin’ to Whiffin. But I kep’ me job, all right.”
“Say, Brandon, why did you ever drag me into a mess like this?” broke in a peevish voice. “It’s raining worse every minute.”
“Too bad, Vic.”
Dave, with his cap pulled well over his eyes, peered out.
The houses were becoming further and further apart. Here and there lights in windows shone dimly through the darkness. The line of trees on either side of the road rattled and snapped their myriads of branches, occasionally surrendering to the wildly eddying currents the quota of leaves demanded. Everything was dripping wet; water fell from the umbrella in streams; water slid ceaselessly down the sides of the big red wagon; water formed pools on top. From the nostrils and heaving bodies of the blanketed horses came clouds of steam.
Victor, though well protected, felt miserable and disgusted and, as it was his nature to always put the blame on others, he began to harbor an additional grievance against Dave Brandon.
“But for the big Indian I wouldn’t be here,” he grumbled to himself. “And just listen to the way he’s chinning to this Rodgers kid! It certainly is enough to make a fellow tired for a whole week.”
“No, I ain’t never had no chanc’t,” Joe was repeating, dolefully. “I ain’t no good at readin’ or writin’.”
“Would you go to school?” asked Dave.
“Wouldn’t I, though,” said Joe; “eh, Buster?”
He nudged Victor sharply in the ribs.
“Cut it out,” growled Victor.
“I can’t,” grinned Joe. “Ribs is ginerally cut out by surgeons. Whoa! Gee! It’s most time we ketched up to them elephants.”
With his eyes keenly scanning the road, he urged his team ahead by both voice and whip. Now on a slight down grade, the huge wagon rumbled along at considerable speed, occasionally jolting and jarring, as the wheels slipped into ruts or rolled through deep miry stretches.
Dave finally detected two faint spots of light struggling into view some distance ahead.
“It’s Scotty an’ Robins leadin’ the elephants,” explained Joe. “Know’d I ketch up with ’em soon. Hi, hi! Git ap! Say, this here is sure some storm, ain’t it, fellers? Lightning now, by Jingo!”
A glare had suddenly illumined the landscape, and in the instantaneous flash the forms of three elephants at the crest of a rise showed as blurred masses of dark.
“By George! It’s enough to give a chap the creeps for fair,” thought Victor, with a shiver.
Conversing was difficult. The three, though huddling under the umbrella as far as possible, were still the target for beating rain. At each flash of lightning the huge, unwieldy forms of Nero, Titan and Colossus loomed up more clearly, and, at length, when the leading horses began to strike their iron-shod hoofs in the muddy road close behind them, the lanterns in the hands of Scott and Robins described a flashing circle in the air.
Joe answered this salute with a lusty yell.
“We’re gittin’ there, fellers,” he added.
“We’re most swimmin’ there,” answered Robins, gruffly.
“And’ll soon need a raft,” put in Scotty.
“I’ll throw ye a life-line when ye needs one,” roared Joe.
Then several miles fell grudgingly behind, with scarcely a word exchanged between men or boys. Dave, in spite of storm and discomfort, his eyes tightly closed, was almost nodding, while Victor, utterly miserable, sat staring straight ahead.
But all this was changed in the most startling and abrupt fashion.
The loud blasts of a motor horn, echoing weirdly, brought Dave up with a start.
“What!” he gasped. “What!”
His eyes rested on a brilliant glare of light flooding the darkness. Then a big touring machine glided around a bend. Although the chauffeur handled his car skilfully, the unexpected sight threw the elephants into a state of panic.
“Them brutes is goin’ to git!” yelled Joe, as the rumbling of the wagon wheels ceased.
An instant later Dave and Victor saw the boy swinging from his seat to the ground.