The negro wanted to know how I could prevent the hornets from stinging our own men, and I told him that we had been in the hornet business all the season and never had one of our own men stung. I said we took some assafoetida and rubbed it on our clothes and faces, and the hornets wouldn’t touch us, but just went for the other fellows to beat the band. Say, negroes are easy marks. You can make them believe anything. But if I ever get to be president I am going to appoint my negro assistant to a position in my cabinet, ’cause he is the greatest political organizer I ever saw. He rounded up over 200 cotton pickers and negro men who work in the freight depots once in a while and started them out after hornets’ nests. He gave them some change to get a drink, and promised them free passes into the show next night, and the next morning they showed up with hornets’ nests enough to scare you. They put them in a dark place in the barn, so the hornets wouldn’t get curious and want to come out of the nests before they got their cue.
That afternoon we fitted them into the Chinese lanterns, and tied sticks on the lanterns and fixed the candles, and when night came there were more negroes than I could use, But I told them to follow along, and the door tender would let them in, and all they need to do was to yell for Teddy when I did, and so we marched to the main tent about the time the performance got to going. I saw pa with his gang of white men go into the dressing room at about the same time. The manager had timed it for us to come in about 8:30, into the main tent, when the elephants were in their pyramid act, so my crowd of negroes stopped in the menagerie tent half an hour waiting to be called.
I wish I wasn’t so confounded curious, but I suppose I was born that way. I took one of the Chinese lanterns that was not lighted and just thought I would like to see what the hyenas and the big lion, who were in the same cage, with an iron partition between them, would do if a Chinese lantern was put in the cage, so I got the fellow that watches the cage to open up the top trap door, and I dropped a Chinese lantern with a hornets’ nest in it right between the two hyenas. Gee, but you ought to have seen them pounce on it, and bite it and tear it up, and then the hornets woke up, and they didn’t do a thing to that mess of hyenas. The hyenas set up a grand hailing sign of distress, and howled pitiful, and the lion raised up his head and looked at them through the bars as though he was saying, in a snarling way, “What you grave robbers howling about? Can’t you keep still and let the czar of all the animals enjoy his after dinner nap?”
Just then the hyenas kicked what was left of the hornets’ nest under the bars into his side of the cage, and he put his foot on it and growled, and about a hundred hornets gave him his. He gave an Abyssinian cough that woke all the animals, and then the hornets scattered and before I knew it the zebras were dancing a snake dance and all of them were howling as though they were in the ark, hungry, and the ark had landed on Mount Ararat.
Just then one of the assistant managers beckoned to me to lead in my procession and we lighted the candles in our Chinese lanterns. I didn’t stop to see how the animals got along with the hornets, but I couldn’t help thinking that if one hornets’ nest could raise such a row, what would a hundred or so do when we got to going in the other tent?
Oh, if I had only died when I was young, I never would have witnessed that sight. The band played, “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night,” and pa’s crowd of white trash marched around the big outside ring shouting, “Bryan! Bryan! What’s the matter with Bryan!” and the audience got up on its hind legs and yelled—that is the white folks did—and then we marched around the other way, and yelled, “Teddy is the stuff! Teddy is the stuff!” and the negroes in the audience yelled. Then my crowd met pa’s crowd right by the middle ring, where the elephants had formed the pyramid that closes their act, and the Japanese jugglers were in the right-hand ring, and a party of female tumblers, with low-necked stockings, were standing at attention in the left-hand ring.
There was no intention of having a riot, but when pa yelled, “What’s the matter with Bryan?” a negro in my crowd yelled, “That’s what’s the matter with Bryan,” and he hit pa over the head with his Chinese lantern, loaded with a warm hornets’ nest as big as a football, which had taken fire from the candle. Pa dropped his lantern and began to fight hornets, and then all the white trash in pa’s bunch rushed up and began to whack my poor downtrodden negroes with their Chinese lanterns. Of course, my fellows couldn’t stand still and be mauled, and the candles had warmed our hornets’ nests so the hornets were crawling out to see what was the trouble. Then every negro whacked a white man with a hornets’ nest and the audience fairly went wild with excitement.
The hornets got busy and went for the elephants and the Japanese jugglers, and they stampeded like they never met a hornet before.
The female tumblers found hornets on their stockings, and everywhere, and they gave a female war whoop and rushed for the dressing room. The elephants got stung and they came down off their pyramid and went out to the menagerie tent trumpeting, and switching their trunks. The negroes and the white politicians were getting into a race war, so the circus hands rushed in and separated them, and my negroes found that the fetty I had them rub on themselves did not keep the hornets from stinging them, so they stampeded.
Then the hornets began to go for the audience, and the women yelled murder and pulled down their dresses to cover their shoes, and the men got stung and the whole audience stampeded into the open air.
Then I met pa, and he was a sight, and I never got stung once. The managers tried to get the band to play some tune that would soothe and hold the audience till an explanation could be made, but somebody had thrown a hornets’ nest under the band seats and the horn players got stung on the lips so they couldn’t play, and the band all lit out for a beer garden. Before I realized it the show was over, and a detective that detects for the show had me collared and brought me up before a meeting of the managers. Pa was the prosecuting attorney, and told them that I didn’t run my politics fair, ’cause I had brought in a lot of ringers. The managers asked me how the hornets’ nests came to be in the Chinese lanterns. I told them they would have to ask the negroes for how was I to know what weapons they had concealed about their persons, any more than pa was responsible if his politicians carried revolvers.
They said that looked reasonable, but they believed I knew more about it than anybody, but as we had to pack up the show and make the next town they wouldn’t lynch me till the next day. Pa got me to put cold cream on his stings, and then he said, “Hennery, you are the limit.”
CHAPTER XXII
The Show Does Poor Business in the South—Pa Side Tracks a Circus Car Filled with Creditors—A Performance Given “For the Poor,” Fills the Treasury—A Wild West Man Buncoes the Show.
Gee, but this show has been up against it the last week. We haven’t made a paying stand anywhere. The show business is all right when you have to turn people away, or let them in on standing room. Then you can snap your fingers at fate, and drink foolish water out of four-dollar bottles of fizz that has the cork trained so it will pop out clear to the top of the tent, and make a noise that makes you think you own the earth, but when you strike the southern country where the white men have not sold their cotton and the negroes have not been paid for picking it, the audience looks like a political caucus in an off year, when there is nobody with money enough to stimulate the voters. When the audiences are small, and half the people in attendance get in on bill-sticker’s passes, and you can’t pay the help regularly, but have to stand them off with promises, you are liable to have a strike any minute. The people you owe for hotel bills, and horse feed, and supplies, follow you from one town to another, threatening to attach the ticket wagon and levy on the animals. It takes diplomacy and unadulterated gall to run a show.
We are playing now to get back into the northern states, but we have to leave an animal of some kind in the hands of a sheriff every day, which has been all right so far, ’cause we have steered the sheriffs on to elephants that hav
e corns so they are no good except to eat, one zebra that was made up by a painter, who painted stripes on a white mule, and one lion that was so old he will never sell at forced sale for enough to pay for the beef tea the sheriff will have to feed him.
When creditors in a town get too mad and threaten to attach things, we invite them to go along with us for a few days, and get their money when we strike a paying stand, and we agree to furnish them a Pullman car and all they can eat. That is rather tempting to country people, so we had a full car load of creditors with us for a week, and we gave them plenty to drink, so they had the time of their lives, but they didn’t get their money. After going with us all through Georgia, they held an indignation meeting in the car, and between high balls and cheese sandwiches they got sleepy, and we side tracked their car in the woods at a station in Mississippi, where there was a post office, saw mill and a cotton gin. I guess they are there yet unless Mr. Pullman’s lost car experts have found the car and driven them out with fire extinguishers.
Pa came pretty near being left in that car with the creditors in Mississippi. He was helping to entertain the guests, and jollying them up to believe they would get their money when we got to Memphis the next day, when he noticed the car had been sidetracked, and he knew that was the way we were going to dispose of the creditors. He thought some one would tell him when to get off, but he was sitting up with a landlady from some place in Georgia that we owed a lot of money for feeding the freaks, and she was threatening that if she didn’t get her money she would have the heart’s blood of some one. So pa was afraid to leave for fear she would stab him.
But when the car stopped on the siding, pa took off his coat and hat and yawned, and said he guessed he would turn in, and she let him go to his berth, and he got out on the platform, and just then the second section of our train came along, and stopped for water, and pa crawled into an animal car and laid down in the straw with the sacred cow. She bellowed all night ’cause the sacred bull, her husband, had been attached for debt at Vicksburg, but when pa got in the car in his shirt sleeves and humped his shoulders up on account of the cold, the cow thought maybe she had been unnecessarily alarmed, and maybe pa was her husband.
So she quit bellowing, and laid down and chewed her cud till daylight. Then when she saw that pa was another person she got mad and chased him up into the rafters of the car, and he had to ride there until the train got to Memphis. The hands rescued pa, but he got away from the creditors all right.
We made a new lot of creditors at Memphis, and they proposed to go along with us, but we shook them off.
Gee, but we made a killing in Memphis, and don’t you forget it. We had handbills on all the wagons in the parade, telling the people that the proceeds of the afternoon and evening performance would be given to deserving persons, in charity, and the intention was to use the money to pay off the hands. My, but how the people turned out. The tents were all full, and we had more money than we have had in a month before, and after the performance at night the mayor and some prominent citizens waited on the management and asked when and where we were going to distribute the money to the deserving persons.
The managers appointed pa to stand off the committee. Pa said he had noticed, in walking about the city, a beautiful park in the center of the town, and he told the committee that his idea was to have the deserving people gather at the park the next morning, which was Sunday, and wait there until the managers of the show could count the money, and prepare to distribute it, honestly and impartially, with the advice of the local committee. That seemed all right, and the committee notified the citizens to meet in the park at nine o’clock the next morning, and receive the money the citizens had so kindly contributed to such a noble cause, and they went away.
Our show has got out of a good many tight places, but we never got out of a town so quietly and unostentatiously as we got out of Memphis during that early Sunday morning. There was not noise enough made getting our stuff to the train to wake up a policeman, and before daylight the different sections of the train had crossed the big bridge into Arkansas, and were on the way to the Indian Territory. Pa and the other managers were on the platform of the last car of the last section, as it pulled out across the river, at daylight, and even that early it seemed as though the whole colored population of Memphis was on the way to the park, to secure good positions, so they could receive their share of the money. As the train got to the middle of the river, and safe into Arkansas, the whole management breathed a sigh of relief. The boss canvasman said: “It is like getting money from home,” and pa said: “It is like taking money from the tin cup of a blind organ grinder,” and the treasurer of the show said, as he put the day’s receipts in the safe in the business car: “It looks good to me.” Then they all turned in to sleep the happy hours away, that beautiful Sunday on the way to Indian Territory and Oklahoma.
Well, sir, you can never make me believe that money obtained dishonestly will stay by a person, or do him any good, and that was demonstrated in the case of our show the next day. We got acquainted with an old showman who was out of luck, who used to run a wild west show, but got busted up, and as he didn’t care where he went, we took him with us on the train, and all day Sunday he talked about his show experiences, and finally he said if we had any horses with our show that could run races, we could make a barrel of money at Guthrie, where we were to make our next stand. He said the Indians and half breeds all had Indian ponies that they thought could beat any horses that ever wore shoes, and that they would bet every cent they had on their ponies, and as they had just been paid their annuities by the government, they had money in bales, and we could get it all, if we had horses that were any good, and money to back them. His idea was to give out that owing to some accident we could not give an afternoon performance, and just get out the horses and bet the Indians to a standstill, and win all their money, and give a free evening show as a sort of consolation to the Indians.
Well, it looked good to pa, and he talked to the other managers, and the result was when we got to Guthrie we had made up our minds that as money was what we were after, the easiest way was to get it by racing our horses.
So when we got settled in Guthrie, and got the tent up, we announced that part of the show was in a wreck down the road in Arkansas, and we should have to abandon the afternoon performance, but in the meantime there would be a little horse racing on the side, if anybody in Oklahoma had any horses they thought could run some.
Well, I thought there were Indians and ponies and squaws enough before the announcement was made, but in less than two hours more than a thousand ponies were being brought in, and we got our chariot racers, and our bareback hippodrome horses, and they were being led around and admired, and we all laughed at the little runts of Indian ponies, and the Indians got mad and backed their ponies.
Pretty soon the races began in the vacant lot just outside the town. The old showman we had brought up from Memphis was made master of ceremonies, ’cause he could talk Choctaw, and Comanche, and other Indian jargon, and things got busy. The Indians wouldn’t run their ponies more than an eighth of a mile, or a quarter, and we consented, because the poor little things didn’t look as though they could run a block, they were so thin, and sleepy. Pa was afraid the humane society would have us arrested for cruelty to animals. All our fellows were provided with money, and they flashed rolls of bills in the faces of the Indians, and finally Mr. Indian would reach down under his clothes and pull out a roll, and wet his thumb and peel off big bills, and before we knew it we were investing a fortune in the racing game. Then the racing began, and the horses were sent off at the drop of a hat, or the firing of a pistol.
I was given some money to bet with the little Indians, ’cause pa said we wanted to get every dollar in the tribe, for if we didn’t get it the Indians would spend it for fire water. The first race was between one of our best runners and a sleepy little spotted pony, and when the hat was dropped the pony made a few jumps and was off like a rabb
it, and our horse couldn’t see him for the dust, and our horse was distanced. The next race resulted the same, and all day long we never won a race, and the Indians took our money and put it in their pants and never smiled. The old showman we had befriended seemed crushed.
When our money was nearly all gone to the confounded Indians, and the sun was going down, he went up to pa and said: “Uncle, what does this all mean? I thought your horses could run.”
Pa said: “Damfino, I never was no horse racer, nohow.”
When our money was all gone, and our horses were nearly dead from fatigue, the managers all got together in the big tent for a consultation on finances, and it was the saddest sight I ever saw. Pa tried to be cheerful, and he said: “Well, we will give the evening performance, and when the Indians are all in the tent we can turn out the lights and turn the boys loose on them, and maybe they will find some of the money in their breech clouts.”
“You don’t mean to rob them, do you?” said the boss canvasman, and pa said: “No, no; far from it. We will borrow it of them. It is no harm to borrow from an Indian.”
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