Andy the Acrobat

by John Kendrick Bangs

  CHAPTER XIII

  ON THE ROAD

  "Come oud!" said Hans Snitzellbaum.

  "I'm glad to," answered Andy Wildwood.

  He took a long, refreshing draught of pure air, and stood up andstretched his cramped limbs with satisfaction.

  When the Man with the Iron Jaw had whispered to the fat musician outsidethe dressing tent guarded by Wagner's assistants, he had asked him toget Andy out of the clutches of the constable.

  The fat sides of Hans Snitzellbaum shook with jollity, and his merry eyetwinkled at the hint conveyed by Andy's staunch friend.

  When Hans came inside the tent, a whispered word to Andy was sufficientto make the young fugitive understand what was coming.

  Hans removed the top head of his big bass drum. Andy snuggled along therounded woodwork of the instrument, and the drum head was replaced.

  The double load was a pretty heavy one for the portly musician tohandle, but all went well.

  He got away from the dressing tent without arousing the suspicions ofthe constable's assistants. The drum was hoisted to the top of a movingwagon at some distance. Andy was rather crowded and short of breath, buthe lay quiet and serene as the wagon started up.

  They must have traveled four miles before the musician's welcomeinvitation to "come oud" followed a second removal of the drum head.

  Andy looked about him. They were slowly traversing the main road leadingfrom Centreville to Clifton.

  There was bright moonlight, and the general view was interesting andpicturesque. Ahead and behind a seemingly interminable caravan wasin motion.

  Chariots, cages, vehicles holding tent paraphernalia, a calliope, ticketwagons, horses, mules, ponies, seemed in endless parade. Performers andgeneral circus employees thronged the various vehicles.

  That in which Andy now found himself was a wagon with high, slattedsides, piled full of trunks, mattresses, seat cushions and curtains.

  The fat musician reclined in a dip in the soft bedding; his bulky bodyhad formed. Over beyond him lay a sad-faced man in an exhausted slumber,looking so utterly done out and ill that Andy pitied him.

  A boy about Andy's own age, and two men whose attire and generalappearance suggested side show "spielers," or those flashily dressedfellows who announce the wonders on view inside the minor canvases, layhalf-buried among some gaudy draperies.

  The two men lay with their high silk hats held softly by both handsacross their breasts. The circus tinge was everywhere. One of them inhis sleep was saying: "Ziripa, the Serpent Queen. Step up, gentlemen.Eats snakes like you eat strawberry shortcake. Eats 'em alive! Bitestheir heads off!"

  As the wagon jolted on Hans comfortably smoked a pipe fully four feetlong. His twinkling little eyes fairly laughed at Andy as the latterstepped out of the drum.

  "Hey, you find him varm, hey?" he asked.

  "I'd have smothered if I hadn't kept my mouth close to that vent hole,"explained Andy. "Is it all right for me to show myself now?"

  "Yaw," declared the fat musician. "You see dot sign?"

  He pointed back a few yards. Andy recognized the four-armed semaphoreset where a narrow road intersected the highway they were traversing.

  "Oh, yes," said Andy quickly, "that shows the State line."

  "Yaw, dot vas so. No one can arrest you now, Marco says, and Marco vaslike a lawyer, hey?"

  "Will I see Mr. Marco soon again?" asked Andy.

  "For sure dot vas. He toldt me vot to do. Vhen we reach dot Cliftons,you vill go mit Billy Blow. He vill takes care of you till morning. Denyou goes to dot Empire Hotel und sees Miss Stella Starr."

  "Oh, I understand," exclaimed Andy brightly and hopefully. "And who isBilly Blow, please?"

  "Him," explained Hans, pointing to the sleeping man with the sad, tiredface--"dot is Billy Blow, the clown."

  "Eh, what--clown? Not the one who rides the donkey and tells such funnystories?"

  "Oh, yaw," declared the musician in a matter-of-fact way.

  Andy was naturally surprised. He could hardly realize that the person hewas looking at could ever make up as the mirth-provoking genius who wasthe life and fun of the big circus ring.

  "Poor Billy!" said Hans, shaking his head solemnly. "First his vifefalls from a horse. She vas in dot hospitals. Den his little poy,Midget, is sick. Poor Billy!"

  Andy suddenly remembered something. He craned his neck and lookedsteadfastly along the road.

  "I want to leave the wagon when we get a little further along," he said.

  "I likes not dot," answered Snitzellbaum. "Maybe you gets in droubles,so?"

  "No, it's when we reach an old barn," explained Andy. "I left somethingthere earlier in the evening. I won't be a minute getting it."

  In about half-an-hour, as they approached the hay barn where Andy hadoverheard the conversation between Daley and Murdock, he slipped downfrom the wagon. He ran ahead, went up among the hay bales, found thecoat containing the marble bag holding his little stock of money, andspeedily rejoined the musician.

  Hans finished his pipe and sank into a doze. Andy could not sleep. Hehad gone through too much excitement that day to readilycompose himself.

  He lay listening dreamily to the jolty clatter of the wagons, the shoutsof the drivers, and the commotion of the animals in the menagerie cages.Meanwhile he was thinking ardently of the next day. It would decide hisfate. He felt hopeful that the show would take him on from the fact thatMiss Stella Starr had required his presence the next morning.

  "Hey," spoke a sudden voice, "give us a chaw, will you?"

  Andy with a start turned to face the boy he had noticed asleep. Thelatter had rudely knocked his shoulder. He had looked mean to Andy whileslumbering. He looked tough as he fixed his eyes on Andy, wide open.

  "I don't 'chaw,'" said the latter.

  "Teeth gone?" sneered the other.

  "No, that's why I don't care to lose them," retorted Andy.

  "Huh! Say, Snitzellbaum, loan me a little tobacco, will you?"

  The speaker had nudged the musician. The latter eyed him with littlefavor.

  "You vas a kid," he observed, stirring up. "Vhen you grow up, maybe. Notnow."

  The boy let out a string of rough expletives under his breath. Thenfixing his eye on Andy curiously, he demanded:

  "Who's the kindergarten kid? Trying to break into the show?"

  "I may," answered Andy calmly.

  "Oho!" chuckled the other, with a wicked grin--"we'll have some funwith you, then."

  "Maybe not," broke in the musician. "Dot poy has a pull."

  "Oh, has he?" snorted the other.

  "Yaw. Maybe you don't know, hey, Jim Tapp? You hear about dot cuttrapeze? Aha! It vas dis poy who discovered dot in time."

  "Eh!" ejaculated young Tapp, with a prodigious start. "Yes," hecontinued very slowly, viewing Andy with a searching, hateful look. "Iheard of it. Says Murdock put up the job to break Thacher's neck."

  "Dot vas so."

  "How does he know it?"

  "He overheardt dose schoundrels tell dot."

  "Maybe he's lying."

  "Did dot cut trapeze show if he vas, hey?"

  "Then he's a spy. Sneaking in on gentlemen's private affairs. Bah!"cried Tapp, with a venomous stare at Andy, "I wouldn't train with youtwo at a hundred per week!"

  He crawled over to the edge of the wagon preparatory to leaving thevehicle and seeking more congenial company.

  "Hey, you, Jim Tapp," observed Snitzellbaum, "you vas a pal of Daley,hey? You see him? Vell, you tell him ve hang him up by dose heels, undMurdock mit him, vonce ve catch dem. See you?"

  Tapp disappeared over the edge of the wagon into the road.

  "Mein friend," remarked the musician to Andy, "you vatch oud for dotpoy."

  Andy Wildwood recalled the solemn warning before the next day was over.