The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  Just then the treasurer came in with an empty tin box he had carried the money out in, and he said there would be no use of having an evening performance, ’cause the Indians had taken their ponies and squaws and money and gone towards the setting sun, and pa said: “Where is that old showman?” and the treasurer said: “He has gone with them. He is their legal adviser, and went down to Memphis to rope us into the game.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  The Circus Has Bad Luck in Indian Territory—A Herd of Animals Turned Out to Graze Is Stampeded by Indians—They Go Dashing Over the Plains, and the Circus Tent Follows, Picked Up by a Cyclone. No more horse racing for this circus.

  The managers held a meeting at Guthrie, Okla., after we had lost our money horse racing with the Indians, and pa said the consensus of opinion was that we better stick to the legitimate show business, and not try to work in any side lines. Pa says he made a speech at the managers’ meeting, in which he showed that the business man who attended strictly to the business which he knew all about, would make money, while the man who knew about dry goods, but worked in a millinery store or a stock of tinware, got it in the neck. He would either get stuck on the head milliner, or buy a stock of tinware that would not hold water.

  So a resolution was passed to the effect that hereafter no temptation could be great enough to get our show to go into anything outside of the business, no matter how good it looked as a get-rich-quick affair. So we gathered up our show and played a whole week in Oklahoma, and had full houses all the time, and made money enough to redeem our animals that had been attached by creditors. We have paid up our debts, and we got out of Oklahoma with flying colors.

  If we had gone right on to Kansas we would have shown sense, but some cowboys from the Indian Territory told pa and the other managers that if we would take the show to the Indian Territory we couldn’t get cars enough to haul the money away, as the Indians had got round-shouldered and bow-legged carrying the money they had made grazing cattle, and the territory was full of cowboys that had money to burn, and they hadn’t seen a circus since the war.

  Well, it seemed a shame to go by the Indian Territory, and allow those poor Indians to break their backs carrying money around, and so we sent a carload of bill pasters into the territory and billed towns that would hold us about a week, and we figured that we would clean up enough money to last us all a life-time. I wish I didn’t have to write about the result, ’cause we are broke up so we can’t look pleasant to have our pictures taken.

  It was a bright, beautiful Sunday morning that we arrived at Muskoka, and soon after daylight we had our tents pitched. As we had all day Sunday to rest, pa suggested that it would be a good idea to take all our animals that eat grass out on the grazing ground on the edge of the town and let them fill up on the nice blue grass that was knee-high all over the country. So after breakfast we detailed men to take charge of the different animals, and herd them out in the tall grass. It was a beautiful sight to see those rare animals, gathered from all over the world, eating grass together, in perfect peace, in this new country. The animals that we thought would stand without hitching, like the elephants, were cared for by their attendants, but the animals that might wander from their own fireside, were picketed out, or held by long ropes, the deer, the buffalo, the zebras, the sacred cattle, the elk, the yaks, the camels and that kind, were tied with long lariats, and held by the men detailed by the managers. For a couple of hours the animals just gorged themselves, after they had kicked up their heels a spell and rolled in the grass. Then one of the elephants got up on his hind feet and held up two toes, like boys in school hold up two fingers when they want to go in swimming, and the elephant started for a creek and went in the water, and the whole herd followed, and they spattered each other, and ducked and rolled around just like school boys. The whole population of the town, whites and Indians, came to the bank of the river to watch the fun.

  Pa was holding his elk by a rope and one of the managers had a rope around the neck of a giraffe: the treasurer and the ticket taker was leading the zebras, and everybody was busy with some kind of animal, and I had a rope around an antelope, and some of our men on horseback were herding the buffaloes. It didn’t seem as though anything wrong could happen. The elephants wouldn’t come out of the creek, so the boss canvasman went over to where there were about 500 cowboys and Indians on horseback, and asked them to ride into the creek and drive the elephants out where the rest of the animals were, on the prairie.

  Gee, but that was the greatest mistake he could have made. The men on horseback didn’t want any better fun, so they made a charge, in line of battle, just like Sheridan’s cavalry, down the bank, into the creek, yelling and waving lariat ropes, and snapping whips and the elephants got out of that creek in a hurry. The cowboys threw lassoes over the hind feet of the elephants, and tried to hold them, and the elephants bellowed, and dragged the cowboys and their ponies right amongst the other animals, and in about a minute, as the boss canvasman said when he came to, and they were picking the cactus thorns out of him: “Hell was just plumb out for noon.”

  The buffaloes smelled the Indians, and they started to stampede, like they used to do when they lived on the plains, and all the animals followed, dragging the men who had hold of their ropes, and away we all went over a rise of ground, the zebras in the lead and the elephants fetching up the rear, the cowboys and Indians behind, yelling and ki-i-ing, and more than 500 Indian dogs barking.

  Well, pa was the foolishest man in the lot, ’cause he had tied the lariat rope that he held his elk by, around his belt, and when the elk went over the hill pa was only hitting the high places, and he was yelling for me to head off his elk. But I was busy trying to keep up with my antelope, which was scared worse than any animal in the race. When the antelope and I overtook the boss canvasman, who was digging his heels into the ground trying to hold his zebra, I thought it was a good time to say something pleasant, so I said: “This is a lovely country we are passing through,” but I never heard his reply, ’cause just then the zebra jumped over a big cactus and the boss canvasman went into it, and stayed there, yelling for a piece of ice, while the zebras that were dragging the treasurer and the ticket taker passed us. I yelled to the treasurer and told him I should have to have my salary raised if I was expected to keep up with my antelope, but he told me where to go to get an increase of salary, some place in Arkansas—maybe Hot Springs.

  Then my antelope heard the Indians and cowboys coming behind, and he got his second wind, and I never did touch the ground no more, and I must have looked like a buzzard sailing through the air. When my antelope got up to where pa was trying to keep up with his elk. I told pa he better let go his elk and get the cowboys and Indians to ride around ahead of the stampede and head them off.

  Pa said he couldn’t let go of his elk ’cause the rope was tied to his belt, but for me to hit the ground somewhere ahead and let go of that jack rabbit I was chasing, and tell the cowboys to head off the stampede. So when I lit again I let go the rope, and the antelope got ahead of everything, and I wished I had bet on him.

  When the cowboys and Indians got up to me I delivered the message from pa, and they divided and went around the flanks of the stampeders, and in another mile they headed them off in a nice pasture, and kept riding around the animals so they couldn’t get away. They soon had the whole bunch under control, and we all got together to see if anybody was hurt.

  Well, pa was the worst sight of all If his belt had broke he never would have lost his pants, ’cause more than a million cactus thorns had gone through and pinned them on. We had to cut them off, and pull out the thorns with pincers, one at a time, and pa yelling murder for every thorn. The boss canvasman was in the same fix, and everybody that tried to hold an animal was pinned together with thorns, and they had gravel up their trousers from sticking their heels into the soil.

  Everybody was mad and they threatened to lynch pa when they got back to the tent for suggesting letting the animals out t
o graze. We started back to town, the cowboys and Indians driving the animals, and the zebras and giraffes kicking up and acting as though they had got out of school on account of the death of a dear teacher, like schoolboys.

  Before we got to town a wind came up so strong that we had to walk edgewise to go against it, and finally we met the tent coming out to meet us, ’cause a cyclone had taken it bodily and was blowing it all over the prairie. And when we got to town the animals in the cages, that can’t eat grass, were having an indignation meeting, and howling awful.

  Pa was the first man to get back to the lot, and he asked me what I thought he better do, and I told him he better get in the porcupine cage, ’cause he looked, with the cactus thorns sticking out of him, like the father of all porcupines. He said I thought I was smart, and he asked me if I was hurt any, and I told him all I could find was a stone bruise on my spine where I struck a prairie dog house.

  Well, we got the animals into a livery barn, and it took us almost the whole week to have the tent hauled back and sewed together, and we had to pay the cowboys and Indians more than the animals were worth to bring them back, and let them into the show free. The managers had a meeting and resolved to get out of the Indian Territory and into Kansas just as quick as possible.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Pa Is Sent to a Hospital to Recuperate—The Bad Boy Discourages Other Boys from Running Away with the Circus—He Makes Them Water the Camels, Curry the Hyenas and Put Insect Powder on the Buffaloes.

  This is the first time since we started out with the circus in the spring that pa and I have not been two “Johnnies on the spot,” ready for anything that the managers told us to do. Oklahoma, though, and the Indian Territory, have been too much for pa, and they sent him on to Kansas City to recuperate in a hospital for a week, while the show does Kansas to a finish, and makes a triumphal entry into Missouri.

  I wonder how the show will get along without us for a week, ’cause they sentenced me to go along with pa, so I could be handy to hold his hands when the doctors are pulling cactus needles out of his hide. I guess pa was willing enough to jump Kansas in the night from what he told us once.

  He said when he was a young man he and a railroad brakeman got busted at Topeka, and they had an order book printed, and went all over Kansas taking orders for Osier willows, which they warranted to grow so high in two years they would make fences for the farms that no animals or blizzards could get over or through, and make shade for the houses and the whole farm. It was the year when the Osier willow craze was on and every farmer on the plains wanted to transform his prairie into a forest. Pa says the farmers fought with each other to sign orders, and some paid in advance, so as to get the willow cuttings in a hurry. Well, pa and the railroad man canvassed Kansas, and sold more than forty thousand millions of Osier willow cuttings, and put in the whole winter. In the spring, when it was time to deliver the goods, they went into the river bottoms and cut a whole lot of “pussy willow” cuttings, delivered them to the farmers and got their money, and went away. When the pussy willow cuttings died in their tracks, or grew up just plain pussy willows that never got high enough to hide a jack rabbit, the farmers of Kansas loaded their guns and waited for pa and the brakeman to come back to Kansas, but they never went back.

  The brakeman became president of a great railroad, but when he has to go across the continent in his special car, he dodges Kansas, and goes across by the northern or southern route. Pa has so far dodged the farmers, but money wouldn’t have hired him to stay with the circus and meet those farmers that they sold the willow gold bricks to. And yet, when I bunco anybody around the show, pa takes me one side and tells me that honesty is the best policy, and to never lie, ’cause my character as a man will depend on the start I make as a boy. He don’t want me to go through life regretting the past, and being afraid of the cars for fear some act of my younger days will become known and queer me. I guess pa knows how it is hisself.

  Well, if there is one thing I am proud of, it is that I have always been good. When I grow up to be a man, prosperous in business, and belonging to a church, and married, and have children growing up around me, I can put on an innocent face and a bold front, and point to my past with pride, if I should go to live among strangers, where nobody took the papers, and the people were not on to me. Pa says as long as your conscience is clear, and your pores open, life is one glad, sweet song. Well, I don’t know, but if pa’s conscience is clear, he must have strained it the way they do rain water, to get the wigglers out, or else he has used an egg to settle his conscience, the way they settle coffee. If his pores are open, he has opened them in the old way, with a corkscrew. But, with all I have had to contend with in the way of a frightful example from pa, I am not so worse.

  How many boys of my age, do you suppose, could put in a season with a circus and have all the facilities I have had to go wrong, and come out as well as I have? The way the freaks just doted on me would have turned the heads of most boys, but when I found out that all of them, from the fat woman and the bearded woman, to the trapeze performers, ate onions three times a day, I said: “Nay, nay, Hennery will camp with the animals, whose smell is natural, and not acquired.”

  Say, do you know I have saved hundred of boys this summer from ruin, ’cause in every town there are lots of boys who want to run away from home and go off with a circus, and ’cause I belonged to the show they all came to me, and pa appointed me to discourage the boys, and drive them away from the show. I know in Virginia all the boys wanted to run away, and but for me the state wouldn’t have boys enough to grow up and shoot the negroes. But when I found boys who wanted to skip away from home, I would give them a job, and they would have slept in the straw with the horses, and eaten at the second table after the negroes had been fed, if they could only shake their comfortable homes and loving friends and join a traveling circus.

  Well, I always gave such boys a job watering the camels, and after they had carried water from daylight till dark, and had seen it disappear down a camel, and the camels grumbling because they didn’t bring water faster, the boys would ask me how long it look to fill up a camel, anyway. I would tell them that if they kept right at work, the camels ought to be filled up full along in the fall. The boys would reluctantly resign. Our camels have been the making of hundreds of boys by their tank-like capacity to hold water. One boy at Richmond, Va., got it on me by getting a section of fire hose and hitching it to a hydrant, and letting the water run into a trough at the camel stand in the menagerie, and before I knew it the camels had filled up until they were swelled four times as big as they ought to be. Then they laid down, and couldn’t march in the grand entree, and pa sent for a plumber to have the camels fixed with faucets. That boy was a genius, and we kept him and put him into the lemonade privilege. You can fill a camel with a hydrant all right, but if you bring the water in pails he will beat the game.

  I remember one boy at Wilmington, Del., who insisted on going along with the show, ’cause his mother made him work after school, and my heart was touched, ’cause I know how a boy hates to work after school, so I gave him a job sprinkling insect powder on the buffaloes, that were scratching themselves against the tent poles so much that I felt they had something alive concealed about their persons. That boy started in with his can of insect powder on a buffalo calf, and then he filled the cow’s hair full of the powder, and when he started on the bull, the bull took a sniff of the powder on the cow, and got it up his nose, and he held his head up kind of scared like, and turned his upper lip wrong-side out, and began to paw the ground. Then he made a charge on that boy, and tossed him through the tent, and I looked through the hole, and saw the boy scratching gravel towards town. If he is not running yet, he is probably doing chores for his mother both before and after school.

  I have discouraged most of the boys who wanted to run away and go with the show, by giving them a curry comb and brush and telling them they could have a permanent job currying off the hyenas. Most boys would loo
k sort of dubious about it, but would think it was up to them to be game, and they would take the curry comb and brush all right. I would take them to the cage, and tell them to just talk soothing to the hyenas through the bars, and when the hyenas began to get tame and act as though it would give them pleasure to be curried off, and laid down and rolled over, and purred like a cat that wanted to be scratched, and acted as though they would eat out of one’s hand, the boys might call me, and I would have the cage opened and they could go in and curry them off.

  Well, it would kill you dead to see a fool boy side up to a hyena cage and try to hypnotize a hyena by kind words and a pious example, saying soothing words like: “Soo, boss,” or “O, come off now, and be a good fellow,” and see the hyena snarl and show his teeth like an anarchist that a multi-millionaire might try to tame so he would take a roll of money out of his hand without biting the hand. I have had boys stand in front of a hyena cage with a curry-comb and brush all day, trying to get on good terms with the hyenas, and occasionally the hyenas would forget to snarl and the boy would think the animals were beginning to weaken, and the boy would work up closer to the cage, and say: “Pretty pussy,” and hold out his hand and say: “Good fellow.” Then the whole cageful of hyenas would make a rush for him, howling, snapping and scratching, with their bristles up, and the boy would fall backwards over a sacred cow. About this time I would come along and ask the boy if he had got the hyenas curried, ’cause if he had, I wanted him to curry the grave robbers—the jackals. Then the boy would reluctantly give up his tools, and say if I wanted the hyenas and jackals curried off I could do it myself. I would tell them they would never do for the circus business, ’cause faint heart never won fair hyena. Then they would go home and sell their mother’s copper boiler to get money to pay their way in the show. Gee, but I have saved lots of boys from a circus fate.

  Pa has an awful time in the hospital, ’cause twice a day the doctors strip him and pull a mess of cactus thorns out of him, and he yells and don’t talk very pious. The doctor told me I must try and think of something to divert pa’s mind from his suffering.