CHAPTER VII ARTHUR’S DEAL WITH A CIRCUS HAND

In spite of the enthusiasm all the boys felt for the proposed Boy Scout organization, the thoughts of the next day were clouded with the fear of what Marshal Walter might do. He had threatened to arrest each boy whose name he knew. And he knew all the “Aviators.”

When all arrangements had been made for the Boy Scout meeting Monday evening and the tea party was at an end, the young guests lingered. There was a quick conference among the older boys, and then Alex Conyers approached Mr. Trevor.

“I suppose, Mr. Trevor, you know all about our trouble yesterday—” he began.

“I’m sorry I had to hear so much,” was their host’s reply.

“Marshal Walter left word at our house that he might arrest all of us.”

“So I hear.”

“Do you think he will?”

“I’ve known persons to be arrested for less.”

“Do you think we ought to be taken up?”

“If it would teach you a lesson—”

“But we’ve all reformed,” protested Alex with an attempt at a smile.

“We’re goin’ to be Boy Scouts. If the mayor knew that don’t you think he’d let us off?”

“He might. It is in his power.”

“Won’t you tell him?”

“I’ll be glad to. I’ll see what can be done,” answered Mr. Trevor.

The next morning the scared boys drifted aimlessly from house to house. Not even the shop in the garage interested them. Finally they could stand the suspense no longer and about noontime Art called his father by telephone.

“The mayor is going to give all of you another chance,” answered Mr. Trevor. “But he says if there is any more trouble of that kind you’ll have to answer for both offenses.”

If the boys had been present when Mr. Trevor and Mr. Conyers called on the mayor they would have seen a far from formal interview. As a matter of fact they talked most of the time about a fishing trip. And the end of the interview would have further astounded them. “Oh, by the way, Mr. Trevor,” exclaimed the mayor, “here’s a purse Marshal Walter took from one of the boys. It has some money in it.”

Mr. Trevor did not turn the funds over to the boys at once or even mention it. At dinner that evening Art asked his father:

“We’re all stuck on this Boy Scout business and we got some books about it to-day. But do you want us to break up the Young Aviators Club?”

“By no means,” replied Mr. Trevor. “But you won’t care for it after a bit: you’ll have so many other things to do.”

“I reckon you didn’t care much for our club.”

“Not a great deal,” answered Mr. Trevor with a smile. “It’s like a lot of other boy organizations. Unless there is a specific plan for doing good in them, like the Boy Scouts, they frequently work the other way. There may be a leader but there is rarely any law. And the leader is as apt to guide the members wrong as right.” Art fixed his eyes on his plate. “The plans for all boy clubs should be laid down by older people. That’s where parents often fail in their duty. Statistics show that uneducated, idle boys nearly always drift into evil ways and even into crime when they begin to ‘gang’ together.”

“Then,” exclaimed Art, “I’d be a bad selection for patrol leader of our Boy Scouts!”

Mr. Trevor hesitated. He did not like to hurt Art’s feelings. At last he said, “Let’s put it another way. What boy would you select for leader?”

“Oh, Connie, of course,” answered Art. “If he’d been leader last Saturday there wouldn’t have been any trouble.”

“Then you ought to vote for him.”

Somewhat chagrined to think that he was not the best choice for patrol leader, Art made a resolution: he’d be leader some day. At the meeting that night he was pleased that he was the first boy named for the head of the new patrol but he declined and nominated Connie and told why he did.

Connie had no opportunity to refuse. His election went through with a hurrah. Before the meeting adjourned every boy, under Connie’s blushing direction, had filled out his application blank. The midnight train carried these and a request for a charter for the Wolf Patrol of Scottsville, Alexander Conyers, Patrol Leader, with a membership of thirteen boys.

So much store was set on the uniforms, especially the hats and khaki shirts—brown was the color selected—that the boys all went to Mr. Trevor’s office the next morning to be measured and this order followed the other papers at once. With no manual of drill or rules to guide them, there was now little to do but discuss the future and the alluring possibilities of scouting, maneuvers and camping in the open.

After a day or two of this Art came back to his big dream, the possibility that they might some day own an airship. He even romanced over what he described as the “Aviation Squad” of the Wolf Patrol. When he had company he would discuss details of aeroplane building and while alone he was often making sketches and figures. In this he could not hold his chums’ complete attention, for the Boy Scout idea was too strong this week to admit another interest.

An event was impending in Scottsville that made the juvenile citizens irresponsible. On Saturday the “Great Western Triple Circus, Menagerie and Congress of World’s Wonders” was to give two performances. Even the new Boy Scout frenzy lessened as Saturday approached. And there was little wonder, for among the alluring “wonders” promised was this feature: “Master Willie Bonner, positively the youngest aviator in the world, will make two death-defying, cloud-piercing aeroplane flights each day. At one o’clock and six o’clock he will give free exhibitions, ascending heavenward until lost to the eye and then returning earthward in a series of spirals and glides never before attempted by man.”

When a circus comes to town (that is, to a town that has no pretensions to being a city) every boy under sixteen becomes indifferent to the ordinary duties of life.

Prearrangement was hardly necessary, but it was well understood Friday night among Art’s friends that all would be on hand in the morning “to see ’em put up the tents.” When Art awoke it was not dawn. As he lingered, half dozing, a sudden sound fell upon his ear.

Through the silent night came a noise that no town boy ever fails to recognize—the low, heavy, guttural rumble of a circus van. It is like the sound of no other vehicle in the world. City boys do not know it. To the town boy it is like a galvanic shock. His pulses throb with a wild eager anticipation, while his heart sinks for fear that he will be too late—that is, that he will miss seeing something that some earlier-arrived boy has glimpsed in the dark.

Art threw on his clothes and stole out of the house. It was a half mile to the “commons” where the tents were to be set. He started on a dead run, buttoning his clothes as he went. There were no tents erected as yet, but the deep-voiced, gray-shirted boss was busy with his long steel tape. And where he sank his foot in the dewy grass, dejected, unshaven men were throwing down the worn pale-blue stakes. Then work began. Stake drivers, four on a team, with heavy sledges revolving one after the other like the spokes of a wheel, drove the heavy piles in jumps into the ground.

Canvas wagons had been backed up in various places and their teams of four and six horses, heavy harnessed and resplendent in bits of red leather and polished metal, were off across the town, heavy of hoof and jangling their traces, to bring other wagons from the train. At last as day broke, animal cages, the “lions’ den” and the “ticket wagon” appeared—the latter a blaze of golden figures and bearing the ornate portraits of the wonderful men who had conceived and owned the “Congress of Wonders.”

It is the signal for the climax: the arrival of the sacred cow, the camels, the ponies, the pony chariots safely concealed with cloths, as if the sight of the fairyland beauties of these were to be withheld for a time at least from profaning eyes. The temptation to touch the pony chariots and run alongside the waddling little animals lasts but a moment. The elephants are coming! There is not a herd as the pictures promised, but only two. Every boy forgets tents and animal dens. It is no time now for comment. The big, silently-gliding animals, lunging forward and recovering, their bony heads swaying right and left, keep time with the swinging steps that seem always about to break into a run but never do. And then, by the side of the foremost, the “elephant keeper.”

Can he and the tinseled man who will later sit calmly in the open “den” of lions with naught between him and death but a little whip, be of common clay? But, just now, the lion tamer is forgotten. All eyes are on the “elephant keeper.”

At a respectful distance the boys of the town trot forward with the fast-paced monsters. A sinuous trunk leaps in the air. The foremost elephant emits a piercing cry, sharp and shrill like the car wheels of the heavy evening express when the air brakes lock them fast with a shower of sparks. The elephant keeper has sunk his prod into the big animal. Why? No boy ever knew.

“It’s to show ’em he ain’t afraid,” suggested one lad under his breath as he clasps a companion’s hand.

“Mebbe the elfunt was goin’ to do somepin’,” says another. “You got to watch ’em awful close.”

Then it is day. The big, muddy, patched tents are up. To the last minute the boys crowd forward to see the “old elfunt” push the animal cages into the menagerie tent, its head lowered and its long trunk trailing on the already wagon-rutted grounds. And then, sorrowing for each lost moment, they rush home for breakfast and explanations.

But on this particular day, Art Trevor did not rush home. He had caught sight of what was to him a greater wonder even than the elephants, and more fascinating than the shrouded pony chariots—a long, light car freighted with an aeroplane in two sections. It looked very shabby and very frail. Among those round about he searched for a boy: “Master Willie Bonner.” But he saw no boy. Then he stole closer to touch the magical craft—the first he had ever seen.

It was a twenty-six foot machine, with two propellers in the style of the Wright biplane. These and the tail frame and rudders had been removed for convenience in transportation. An oil-saturated cloth covered the engine. While Art gingerly approached the wagon on which the flying machine was loaded, together with a tool box, some cans of gasoline and oil and a number of extra bits of wooden truss uprights, a rough voice exclaimed:

“Want to get a front seat to see the flyin’ machine go up, kid?”

The speaker was a bleary-eyed, unshaven and partly dressed canvasman.

“Can I?” asked Art eagerly.

“You kin fur a dollar.”

“Where do I pay the money?” asked the boy with a new glance of admiration at the airship of which he had long dreamed.

“The best way to be sure o’ gettin’ a seat next to where she starts,” explained the man, “is to pay it to me. I’m the gen’ral sup’intendent o’ aviation.”

“I only got eighty cents,” confessed Art regretfully. Fifty cents of this was to get into the circus, ten cents was for the sideshow, ten cents for lemonade and peanuts, and ten cents for the concert, all carefully saved for some days.

“Well, they’s only a few good front seats, and fur adults the price is two dollars,” explained the man. “But fur boys ’at understands aeroplanes, fur educatin’ purposes we make a reduction to one dollar.”

“Will it be too late to get a seat in half an hour?” asked Art anxiously. “I got to go home and get twenty cents more.”

“You give me the eighty cents an’ I’ll trust you for the rest,” conceded the canvasman. “You look honest.”

Art handed him his money.

“Where’s my ticket?” asked the boy anxiously.

“This is a special favor, sonny. They ain’t no reg’lar tickets. You just come right up where this wagon is an’ you’ll see me. It’ll be all right.”

When Art reached home his mother began a rebuke, but Mr. Trevor only laughed. Once, his father said with a chuckle, when circuses traveled in wagons, he had waited all night at the river bridge to see if the elephants wouldn’t break through.

Full of joy over the deal he had so fortunately made, Art hastened to relate his early morning adventure. When he had concluded his story his mother said:

“I’m not sure I like that. I’d rather you wouldn’t be so close.”

“Don’t fear,” shouted Mr. Trevor, shaking with laughter. “Arthur, you’ve been swindled. There aren’t any seats for the aeroplane show. And you’ll never see your ‘superintendent of aviation.’ You’ve lost your money.” As the boy’s face indicated a panic of alarm his father added, laughing anew: “Here’s a dollar, Arthur. Try to keep it until it is time for the performance and don’t,” as he roared again, “carry any water for the elephants.”

Palpitating, excited boys were awaiting Art after breakfast. His misfortune had at least one good feature; not one of the boys knew about it. Nor did he see fit to tell them about it. The boys had an important question to debate and settle. What performance should they attend, afternoon or evening?

“If we go in the afternoon, we can’t go to-night,” argued Wart Ware. “And I tell you it’s purty tough to stand ’round and hear the band playin’ an’ not be able to see nothin’. Besides, ever’thing looks finer at night. The lights is a-blazin’ an’ the spangles is like diamonds.”

“Shucks,” argued Art. “They don’t do half the things at night they do in the daytime. They’re always a-hurr’in’ to get through. An’ how about the animals? Answer that. The menagerie is all gone an’ loaded on the cars. You can’t get another look at the cages at all.”

So the argument continued. One was afraid that if they attended the afternoon performance they wouldn’t have time to see the flying machine show. Another urged that they never attempted the most dangerous mid-air feats at night because it was too risky. And there wasn’t a boy who could attend both exhibitions.

Finally a vote was taken and the decision was for the afternoon show, the real reason being that no boy was willing to wait longer. “We can stand around and see ’em ‘strike’ the menagerie tent at night,” suggested Colly Craighead, “an’ mebbe go to the side show again.”

This suggestion meeting approval, the boys started on a run to reach the grounds, so that they might not miss the preparations for the “Grand Daily Parade, Rain or Shine.” The Boy Scout fever was temporarily at a low ebb.