The two troopers came buzzing along on their motorcycles, but when they saw Freddy they stopped.
“Funny thing,” said Bill, “but that looks like that scarecrow over at Beans’.”
“Funny to see two with such grand clothes,” said Wes. “Folks must have been pretty dressy around here in the old days.”
Bill started to walk over for a closer look, but there was a deep ditch with water in it between him and the field, and he stopped.
“You know,” said Wes, “to me a plug hat is like a red rag to a bull. When I was a kid—”
“Bet you a quarter I can knock it off first,” said Bill, picking up a rock.
“Your first shot,” said Wes.
But just as Bill raised his arm, he dropped it again and said: “Hey!” in a startled voice. For Eek and Quik and Eeny and Cousin Augustus had jumped off the hat brim into the grass.
“Looked like mice,” said Wes. “What do you suppose—”
“Let’s go over and see,” said Bill.
Freddy knew that something had to be done, and done quickly. So all at once he dropped his arms. “Don’t you come over here!” he shouted. “Don’t you come near this place.”
“Doggone!” said Bill. “It’s alive!”
“Who are you, and what are you doing there?” demanded Wes in his most official voice.
“I’m out here makin’ my livin’, that’s what I’m doing,” said Freddy angrily, “and what business is it of policemen to throw rocks at me, I should like to know. Going about my lawful business, I am, and it’s your duty to protect me, not throw things at me. Wait until I report this to your commanding officer, my lads, and see what he says.”
The troopers glanced at each other. After all, throwing stones, even at a scarecrow, wasn’t part of their duty, and if they were throwing them at a man, and the matter was reported to the lieutenant—well, it wouldn’t be any help towards promotion.
“We’re sorry,” said Bill. “We thought you were a scarecrow.”
“A scarecrow!” yelled Freddy. “Me—a scarecrow? By George, young man, I’ll see you punished for that kind of insulting talk if I have to carry the matter to Albany. Fine guardians of the peace, you are! Calling names; throwing rocks—”
“Excuse me, mister,” said Wes. “We really didn’t mean anything against you. But you were standing out there with your arms apart, and not moving—”
“Course I’m not moving,” said the pig. “How can I catch ’em if I move?”
“Catch what?” asked Bill.
“Mice. I’m a professional catcher and trainer of mice. Put crumbs on my hat, come out and stand still, mice get on hat for crumbs, I scoop ’em into my pocket, take ’em home and train ’em. Anything illegal about that?”
“No, no,” said Bill soothingly. “It’s a new occupation to me, but as far as I can see, no harm in it if you like it.”
“And I hope,” said Wes, “that you’ll reconsider about reporting us. A report like that—”
“I can tell you one thing, my lad,” said Freddy; “you’ll be reported if you give me any more of your talk. Get along, and we’ll say no more about it. But keep this up another minute or two—” The balance of his remarks was lost in the roar of the motorcycles as the troopers kicked them into action.
“Wow!” said Freddy. “Now I have got to sit down and cool off!”
Chapter 10
The tents of Boomschmidt’s Colossal and Unparalleled Circus had been pitched in the fair grounds just west of the village of South Pharisee. Freddy and Jinx saw the flags flying a long way off, and then as they came closer they saw the big tent with the little tents around it, and the red and gold wagons, and the crowds of people. They went up to the gate where, in a little booth, an ostrich was taking tickets.
There was one thing about Mr. Boomschmidt’s circus that was different from every other circus, and that was that the animals weren’t kept locked up in their cages, but were allowed to mingle with the customers, and even did a good deal of the work usually done by attendants. Naturally at first people were inclined to be a little nervous when they were shown to their seats by a hippopotamus, or when they went into a sideshow and found a full grown tiger looking over their shoulder. But as the Boomschmidt show came back to the same towns year after year, they got used to it and began to like it. And when mothers saw their children being chased by a leopard or a hyena, they didn’t scream and carry on, but just smiled happily and said: “What fun they have, to be sure!” It was a very good arrangement all around.
Freddy and Jinx got in line and moved up to the gate.
“Hello, Oscar. How are you?” said Freddy.
But the ostrich just looked at him and said: “Tickets, please.”
Freddy took off his hat. “Remember me now? I’m—”
“If you haven’t tickets,” said the ostrich in a snippy voice, “kindly stand to one side.”
Some of the people giggled, and a woman behind Freddy said: “Oh, move on; we can’t stand here all day!”
“But I want to see Mr. Boomschmidt,” Freddy persisted. “I’m a friend of his. I’m Freddy, the pig that—”
“I see you’re a pig,” said Oscar, “but Mr. Boomschmidt isn’t hiring any more talent. We have all the trained animals we need for the show. Now kindly step aside or I shall have to use force.”
Freddy was a good deal embarrassed at being obliged to hold up the line, and he was about to step aside and try one of the other entrances, when Jinx, who had been getting madder and madder, suddenly stuck his face into the ticket window.
“Oh,” he said, “so you want to pretend you don’t remember us, hey? Well, it’s all right with us. Why anybody’d want to know an overgrown biped with his knees turned backwards and a length of garden hose for a neck I don’t know. But you let us in to the boss, or I’ll come through this window and take those plumes of yours to trim my friend’s hat!”
“Well, really!” said the ostrich, and he started out of the booth.
“Come on,” said Freddy, taking hold of Jinx’ paw. For an ostrich can kick as hard as a mule. But at that moment a large lion came bounding up.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded.
“These—these persons,” said Oscar, “are trying to force their way in without tickets. I was about to—”
“Well, dye my hair!” roared the lion suddenly. “It’s Freddy and Jinx! Why this makes the day perfect!” And he put his paws around Freddy’s neck and hugged him.
“Well, dye my hair!”
Then he pushed the pig back and looked at him. “What makes you squeak like that?”
“’Tisn’t me,” said Freddy, picking up the hat which had fallen off; “it’s the mice in my pockets. You were suffocating them.”
“Oh, sorry,” said the lion. “Hello, boys,” he said to the mice, who stuck their heads out and waved to him. “And Jinx,” he added, shaking hands with the cat. “My, won’t the boss be glad to see you!” He turned to Oscar. “No tickets, hey, you ninny? Of course they haven’t tickets. You know them as well as I do, and you know we wouldn’t take tickets from them if they had them. You ought to be ashamed, ostrich. You’re getting so stuck up that sometimes I wonder if you’ll even talk to yourself!
“I’m glad you’ve come,” the lion said as he led them across towards the big tent. “The boss is kind of low, and maybe you can cheer him up. Attendance hasn’t been nearly as good as usual this year, and he was planning to pep it up with a balloon ascension, but the fellow lost his balloon. Can you beat it? I should think a balloon would be about the last thing anybody could lose.”
“That’s partly what I want to see him about,” said Freddy. “I think I can fix that up.”
“Trust you,” said the lion. “I bet you’ve got something up your sleeve. Something besides mice, that is,” he added, nudging the pig in the ribs.
They found Mr. Boomschmidt out back of the big tent, inspecting what appeared to be a huge cannon. He was a short roun
d man in a suit of large bright checks and a silk hat, which he wore on the back of his head.
“Hey, chief! Company!” called the lion.
Mr. Boomschmidt looked up, and then hurried over to meet them with his hand outstretched. “Jinx!” he exclaimed. “Well, this is a pleasure! And this other gentleman—No, no, don’t tell me. Why, upon my soul! It’s Freddy. In disguise, of course. Detecting somebody, I suppose. Well, I should never have known you, Freddy.”
“You did know him though, chief,” said the lion.
“Eh?” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “Of course I knew him. What I meant was: if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have. Don’t be so technical, Leo. My goodness, you two have come at just the right moment. Tell them that they have come at just the right moment, Leo.”
“The boss means that maybe you can think of something to do with this cannon,” said Leo. “We got it a couple of years ago, and every performance Bill Wonks used to get into it and be shot out into a net. But last Thursday when the boss loaded it, he got too much powder in, and it shot Bill right over the big tent and into the window of a house across the road. There was a woman doing her washing in the house, and Bill landed in a tub of hot suds. He was kind of mad about it.”
“I don’t exactly blame him,” said Jinx.
“He was clean for once, anyway,” said Leo. “But he won’t do it any more, and we can’t get any more volunteers.”
“Why do you have to shoot anybody out of the gun?” asked Freddy. “You’ve got a good enough show without that.”
“That’s just the point,” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “You see, our show is mostly animal acts, but animal acts isn’t enough. We’ve got to have at least one act that is dangerous—or at least looks that way. I don’t know why it is, but if folks think somebody’s maybe going to get chewed up by a lion or fall off a trapeze and break his leg, they’ll fill every seat in the big tent. My goodness, why is that, Leo? No, never mind; don’t tell me; I want to finish what I was saying. Oh dear, where was I?”
“You have to have one dangerous act,” prompted Jinx.
“Oh yes, of course. Well, you see, we can’t make our lion taming act, for instance, look dangerous, because no matter how much Leo here roars, he can’t scare folks that call him by his first name and maybe had him over to supper the night before. So that’s why we got the gun.”
“They have to call me by my first name,” put in Leo, “because that’s all I’ve got.”
“My goodness, so it is!” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “Why Leo, why did I never think of that before? We must get a last name for you right away. It’s a dreadful oversight. How could people write letters to you, or—” He stopped. “There, now I’ve lost my place again,” he said.
“I wish you wouldn’t keep getting me off the track, Leo.” He pushed his hat back and scratched the front of his head thoughtfully, and then he pushed the hat forward and scratched the back of his head, and then he said: “Oh, yes; the gun, wasn’t it? Well, when Bill struck, I had to find something else to look dangerous, and I hired a man named Golcher to go up in a balloon. But my goodness, then it turns out he hasn’t a balloon. So then I tried to get some volunteers to be shot out of the gun. And that was a funny thing, and I don’t know quite how to explain it: we had nine volunteers, but every one of them was an elephant or a rhino or some animal too big to go into the gun at all. And none of the animals who were small enough volunteered at all. My goodness, how do you explain that? Are big animals braver than little animals, or—”
“I can explain it, chief,” said Leo.
“Well, don’t. You’ll get me off again, and I want to finish. Now where was … Oh, yes. Well, I did get some small volunteers. Five young blackbirds. I hired ’em and we had all the arrangements made. We were going to shoot ’em into that big tree over there. Load ’em into the gun, point it at that empty tree, bang!—tree’s full of birds. Instead of shooting birds out of trees, we’d shoot ’em into trees. Wasn’t that a good idea? Eh, Leo, you tell ’em what a good idea it was.”
“You tell ’em, boss,” said the lion. “It was your idea.”
“Well,” said Mr. Boomschmidt, “it was, anyway. But just as we were all ready, the birds’ mother came over, and my, my, what a rumpus she made about it! She said I had no business to hire young innocent birds hardly out of the nest for such dangerous work, and she said she was going to have the law on me because they were miners.” He stopped and thought a minute. “Now that was a funny thing to say, wasn’t it? I never thought of that until this minute. Miners, indeed! I guess I know a miner when I see one. He has a little lamp in his hat and a pickaxe and a dirty face. Now what did she mean—”
“She meant ‘minors,’ chief. With an o. Meaning they were too young to work.”
“With an o?” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “Oh.—That is, I mean: Oh, exclamation point. Why yes, of course. Well, I’m glad to have that cleared up. It bothered me. But anyway, then we couldn’t use ’em, could we, Leo? So there we were. I don’t suppose either of you two would like to be shot out of a gun?”
“No,” said Jinx and Freddy together.
“Well, I thought maybe you wouldn’t. Dear me, it’s very annoying. If that man Golcher hadn’t gone and lost his balloon. Said a pig stole it—can you imagine that? I can’t. Even Leo can’t, and he’s got a wonderful imagination.”
“Yes I can too, chief,” said Leo. “You remember Golcher said it was a special kind of pig?”
“My goodness, of course I remember. He said it was a talking pig. He said it … came … from …” Mr. Boomschmidt’s mouth stayed open, although his voice stopped coming out of it as he stared at Freddy, and then suddenly he said in a loud voice: “No!”
Freddy nodded. “Yes,” he said, “it was me. But I didn’t steal it.”
“Maybe you didn’t,” said Mr. Boomschmidt, “but if the police catch you you’ll have a hard time proving it.”
“That’s why I came to see you,” said Freddy, and he told them about his adventure, and about the two hundred dollars that Mr. Bean had paid Mr. Golcher. “Now,” he said, “if I could get the balloon over here in time for Mr. Golcher to go up in it tomorrow, you’d pay him his two hundred for it, and he would give back Mr. Bean’s two hundred, and everybody would be satisfied. I don’t believe he’d keep on trying to have me arrested after that.”
Mr. Boomschmidt thought that would work all right, but how was Freddy to get the balloon over to South Pharisee?
“I thought maybe you’d lend me a couple of the elephants, and we could go over for it after dark, and they could tow it back.”
“Why, we’d be glad to, Freddy. Wouldn’t we, Leo? I don’t usually like to have the elephants on the road after dark, because they’re so careless about remembering to carry lights. The last time Louise was out at night, a big truck ran into her.”
“Was she badly hurt?” asked Jinx.
“Oh, it didn’t hurt Louise, but it broke one of the truck wheels and I had to pay for it. But if you see that they keep their lights on, it’ll be all right.”
“Look, boss,” said Leo. “Golcher’s around somewhere. Suppose I go and see if he’ll agree to this.”
“Don’t tell him I’m here,” said Freddy. “Oh, and there’s another thing: you can tell him that as an added feature to make the ascension a success, I can lend him four mice who are parachute jumpers. I brought them along because I thought he’d like the idea.”
“You leave it to me,” said the lion. “And, boss,” he added; “you’ll have to get out of here. The evening show’s going to start, and you have to lead the parade.”
Jinx and the mice thought they would go in and see the show, but Freddy felt that he ought to keep out of sight until things were settled, so Mr. Boomschmidt took him into his private office. This was just one of the houses on wheels that the circus people lived in, and all it contained was a very large and comfortable bed in which Mr. Boomschmidt slept, and a very small and uncomfortable chair before the desk at which Mr.
Boomschmidt worked. The chair didn’t look as if it was used very much. At one end of the room was an oil painting of Mr. Boomschmidt’s mother, and at the other end, an oil painting of Mr. Boomschmidt himself. Except that Mr. Boomschmidt had on a silk hat and Mrs. Boomschmidt had on a bonnet, you couldn’t tell them apart.
Freddy was pretty tired after his long hot walk, and so he took off his silk hat and lay down on the bed, and Mr. Boomschmidt covered him up with an afghan. Over in the big tent he could hear the hurrahs and the hand-clapping, and the ta-ra, ra-ra, oompah, oompah of the band. It was all very pleasantly far away and soothing … and the next thing he knew, somebody was shaking his shoulder and Leo’s voice was saying: “Hey, Freddy, wake up! You’ve got to get out of here!”
Chapter 11
Freddy made one bound off the bed and into the middle of the floor, as if he had been set on springs. “Don’t you touch me!” he said. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t have anything to do with it. Send for my lawyer. Send for Mr. Bean. Send for—Oh,” he said, sinking down into the chair, “it’s you, Leo!”
“My! my! You certainly come out fighting, Freddy,” said the lion.
“Dreamt somebody stole the dome off the Capitol at Washington, and the police arrested me for it,” said the pig.
“Well, you better dream some more. You don’t gain much by waking up. Because old Golcher is going to send for the police and have them search the circus grounds for you.”
“You mean—you mean he wouldn’t play ball with us?”
“No. I made him your proposition, and at first I thought everything was all right, because he said if you got the balloon back in time for you to go up tomorrow, he’d tell the police you didn’t steal it. But when I said of course he’d give the two hundred back to Mr. Bean, he said: ‘Of course, nothing! Bean didn’t pay me to make an ascension.’
Freddy and the Perilous Adventure Page 7