The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings : or, Making the Start in the Sawdust Life

Titel: The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings : or, Making the Start in the Sawdust Life

von ca. 337-422 Faxian, Sir Samuel White Baker, Sax Rohmer, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Maria Edgeworth, Saint Sir Thomas More, Herodotus, L. Mühlbach, Herbert Allen Giles, G. K. Chesterton, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Rudyard Kipling, A. J. O'Reilly, William Bray, O. Henry, graf Leo Tolstoy, Anonymous, Lewis Wallace, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack London, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Jules Verne, Frank Frankfort Moore, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Anthony Trollope, Henry James, T. Smollett, Thomas Burke, Emma Goldman, George Eliot, Henry Rider Haggard, Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay, A. Maynard Barbour, Edmund Burke, Gerold K. Rohner, Bernard Shaw, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Bret Harte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jerome K. Jerome, Isabella L. Bird, Christoph Martin Wieland, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ludwig Anzengruber, Freiherr von Ludwig Achim Arnim, G. Harvey Ralphson, John Galsworthy, George Sand, Pierre Loti, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Giambattista Basile, Homer, John Webster, P. G. Wodehouse, William Shakespeare, Edward Payson Roe, Sir Walter Raleigh, Victor [pseud.] Appleton, Arnold Bennett, James Fenimore Cooper, James Hogg, Richard Harding Davis, Ernest Thompson Seton, William MacLeod Raine, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Maksim Gorky, Henrik Ibsen, George MacDonald, Sir Max Beerbohm, Lucy Larcom, Various, Sir Robert S. Ball, Charles Darwin, Charles Reade, Adelaide Anne Procter, Joseph Conrad, Joel Chandler Harris, Joseph Crosby Lincoln, Alexander Whyte, Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin, James Lane Allen, Richard Jefferies, Honoré de Balzac, Wilhelm Busch, General Robert Edward Lee, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, David Cory, Booth Tarkington, George Rawlinson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Christopher Evans, Thomas Henry Huxley, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Erskine Childers, Alice Freeman Palmer, Florence Converse, William Congreve, Stephen Crane, Madame de La Fayette, United States. Army. Corps of Engineers. Manhattan District, Willa Sibert Cather, Anna Katharine Green, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charlotte M. Brame, Alphonse Daudet, Booker T. Washington, Clemens Brentano, Sylvester Mowry, Geoffrey Chaucer, Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow, Gail Hamilton, William Roscoe Thayer, Margaret Wade Campbell Deland, Rafael Sabatini, Archibald Henderson, Albert Payson Terhune, George Wharton James, Padraic Colum, James MacCaffrey, John Albert Macy, Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller, Walter Pater, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Baron de Jean-Baptiste-Antoine-Marcelin Marbot, Aristotle, Gustave Flaubert, 12th cent. de Troyes Chrétien, Valentine Williams, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Alexandre Dumas fils, John Gay, Andrew Lang, Hester Lynch Piozzi, Jeffery Farnol, Alexander Pope, George Henry Borrow, Mark Twain, Francis Bacon, Margaret Pollock Sherwood, Henry Walter Bates, Thornton W. Burgess, Edmund G. Ross, William Alexander Linn, Voltaire, Giles Lytton Strachey, Henry Ossian Flipper, Émile Gaboriau, Arthur B. Reeve, Hugh Latimer, Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton, Benito Pérez Galdós, Robert Smythe Hichens, Niccolò Machiavelli, Prosper Mérimée, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Anatole Cerfberr, Jules François Christophe, Victor Cherbuliez, Edgar B. P. Darlington

ISBN 978-3-7429-2381-3

Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Es ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Erlaubnis nicht gestattet, dieses Werk im Ganzen oder in Teilen zu vervielfältigen oder zu veröffentlichen.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I THE LURE OF THE CIRCUS

II PHIL HEARS HIS DISMISSAL

III MAKING HIS START IN THE WORLD

IV THE CIRCUS COMES TO TOWN

V WHEN THE BANDS PLAYED

VI PROVING HIS METTLE

VII MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE ELEPHANTS

VIII IN THE SAWDUST ARENA

IX GETTING HIS FIRST CALL

X PHIL GETS A SURPRISE

XI THE FIRST NIGHT WITH THE SHOW

XII A THRILLING RESCUE

XIII THE DAWNING OF A NEW DAY

XIV AN UNEXPECTED HIT

XV A STROKE OF GOOD FORTUNE

XVI HIS FIRST SETBACK

XVII LEFT BEHIND

XVIII A STARTLING DISCOVERY

XIX TEDDY DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF

XX THE RETURN TO THE SAWDUST LIFE

XXI AN ELEPHANT IN JAIL

XXII EMPEROR ANSWERS THE SIGNAL

XXIII THE MYSTERY SOLVED

XXIV CONCLUSION

The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings

CHAPTER I

THE LURE OF THE CIRCUS

"I say, Phil, I can do that."

"Do what, Teddy?"

"A cartwheel in the air like that fellow is doing in the picture on the billboard there."

"Oh, pshaw! You only think you can. Besides, that's not a cartwheel; that's a double somersault. It's a real stunt, let me tell you. Why, I can do a cartwheel myself. But up in the air like that--well, I don't know. I guess not. I'd be willing to try it, though, if I had something below to catch me," added the lad, critically surveying the figures on the poster before them.

"How'd you like to be a circus man, Phil?"

Phil's dark eyes glowed with a new light, his slender figure straightening until the lad appeared fully half a head taller.

"More than anything else in the world," he breathed. "Would you?"

"Going to be," nodded Teddy decisively, as if the matter were already settled.

"Oh, you are, eh?"

"Uh-huh!"

"When?"

"I don't know. Someday--someday when I get old enough, maybe."

Phil Forrest surveyed his companion with a half critical smile on his face.

"What are you going to do--be a trapeze performer or what?"

"Well," reflected the lad wisely, "maybe I shall be an 'Or What.' I'm not sure. Sometimes I think I should like to be the fellow who cracks the whip with the long lash and makes the clowns hop around on one foot--"

"You mean the ringmaster?"

"I guess that's the fellow. He makes 'em all get around lively. Then, sometimes, I think I would rather be a clown. I can skin a cat on the flying rings to beat the band, now. What would you rather be, Phil?"

"Me? Oh, something up in the air--high up near the peak of the tent--something thrilling that would make the people sit up on the board seats and gasp, when, all dressed in pink and spangles, I'd go flying through the air--"

"Just like a bird?" questioned Teddy, with a rising inflection in his voice.

"Yes. That's what I'd like most to do, Teddy," concluded the lad, his face flushed with the thought of the triumphs that might be his.

Teddy Tucker uttered a soft, long-drawn whistle.

"My, you've got it bad, haven't you? Never thought you were that set on the circus. Wouldn't it be fine, now, if we both could get with a show?"

"Great!" agreed Phil, with an emphatic nod. "Sometimes I think my uncle would be glad to have me go away--that he wouldn't care whether I joined a circus, or what became of me."

"Ain't had much fun since your ma died, have you, Phil?" questioned Teddy sympathetically.

"Not much," answered the lad, a thin, gray mist clouding his eyes. "No, not much. But, then, I'm not complaining."

"Your uncle's a mean old--"

"There, there, Teddy, please don't say it. He may be all you think he is, but for all the mean things he's said and done to me, I've never given him an impudent word, Teddy. Can you guess why?"

"Cause he's your uncle, maybe," grumbled Teddy.

"No, 'cause he's my mother's brother--that's why."

"I don't know. Maybe I'd feel that way if I'd had a mother."

"But you did."

"Nobody ever introduced us, if I did. Guess she didn't know me. But if your uncle was my uncle do you know what I'd do with him, Phil Forrest?"

"Don't let's talk about him. Let's talk about the circus. It's more fun," interrupted Phil, turning to the billboard again and gazing at it with great interest.

They were standing before the glowing posters of the Great Sparling Combined Shows, that was to visit Edmeston on the following Thursday.

Phillip Forrest and Teddy Tucker were fast friends, though they were as different in appearance and temperament as two boys well could be. Phil was just past sixteen, while Teddy was a little less than a year younger. Phil's figure was slight and graceful, while that of his companion was short and chubby.

Both lads were orphans. Phil's parents had been dead for something more than five years. Since their death he had been living with a penurious old uncle who led a hermit-like existence in a shack on the outskirts of Edmeston.

But the lad could remember when it had been otherwise--when he had lived in his own home, surrounded by luxury and refinement, until evil days came upon them without warning. His father's property had been swept away, almost in a night. A year later both of his parents had died, leaving him to face the world alone.

The boy's uncle had taken him in begrudgingly, and Phil's life from that moment on had been one of self-denial and hard work. Yet he was thankful for one thing--thankful that his miserly old uncle had permitted him to continue at school.

Standing high in his class meant something in Phil's case, for the boy was obliged to work at whatever he could find to do after school hours, his uncle compelling him to contribute something to the household expenses every week. His duties done, Phil was obliged to study far into the night, under the flickering light of a tallow candle, because oil cost too much. Sometimes his candle burned far past the midnight hour, while he applied himself to his books that he might be prepared for the next day's classes.

Hard lines for a boy?

Yes. But Phil Forrest was not the lad to complain. He went about his studies the same as he approached any other task that was set for him to do--went about it with a grim, silent determination to conquer it. And he always did.

As for Teddy--christened Theodore, but so long ago that he had forgotten that that was his name--he studied, not because he possessed a burning desire for knowledge, but as a matter of course, and much in the same spirit he did the chores for the people with whom he lived.

Teddy was quite young when his parents died leaving him without a relative in the world. A poor, but kind-hearted family in Edmeston had taken the lad in rather than see him become a public charge. With them he had lived and been cared for ever since. Of late years, however, he had been able to do considerable toward lightening the burden for them by the money he managed to earn here and there.

The two boys were on their way home from school. There remained but one more day before the close of the term, which was a matter of sincere regret to Phil and of keen satisfaction to his companion. Just now both were too full of the subject of the coming show to think of much else.

"Going to the show, Phil?"

"I am afraid not."

"Why not?"

"I haven't any money; that's the principal reason," smiled the boy. "Are you?"

"Sure. Don't need any money to go to a circus."

"You don't?"

"No."

"How do you manage it?"

"Crawl in under the tent when the man ain't looking," answered Teddy promptly.

"I wouldn't want to do that," decided the older lad, with a shake of the head. "It wouldn't be quite honest. Do you think so?"

Teddy Tucker shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

"Never thought about it. Don't let myself think about it. Isn't safe, for I might not go to the show if I did. What's your other reason?"

"For not going to the circus?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't think Uncle would let me; that's a fact."

"Why not?"

"Says circuses and all that sort of thing are evil influences."

"Oh, pshaw! Wish he was my uncle," decided Teddy belligerently. "How long are you going to stand for being mauled around like a little yellow dog?"

"I'll stand most anything for the sake of getting an education. When I get that then I'm going to strike out for myself, and do something in the world. You'll hear from me yet, Teddy Tucker, and maybe I'll hear from you, too."

"See me, you mean--see me doing stunts on a high something-or- other in a circus. Watch me turn a somersault."

The lad stood poised on the edge of the ditch, on the other side of which the billboard stood. This gave him the advantage of an elevated position from which to attempt his feat.

"Look out that you don't break your neck," warned Phil. "I'd try it on a haymow, or something like that, first."

"Don't you worry about me. See how easy that fellow in the picture is doing it. Here goes!"

Teddy launched himself into the air, with a very good imitation of a diver making a plunge into the water, hands stretched out before him, legs straight behind him.

He was headed straight for the ditch.

"Turn, Teddy! Turn! You'll strike on your head."

Teddy was as powerless to turn as if he had been paralyzed from head to foot. Down he went, straight as an arrow. There followed a splash as his head struck the water of the ditch, the lad's feet beating a tattoo in the air while his head was stuck fast in the mud at the bottom of the ditch.

"He'll drown," gasped Phil, springing down into the little stream, regardless of the damage liable to be done to his own clothes.

Throwing both arms about the body of his companion he gave a mighty tug. Teddy stuck obstinately, and Phil was obliged to take a fresh hold before he succeeded in hauling the lad from his perilous position. Teddy was gasping for breath. His face, plastered with mud, was unrecognizable, while his clothes were covered from head to foot.

Phil dumped him on the grass beneath the circus billboard and began wiping the mud from his companion's face, while Teddy quickly sat up, blinking the mud out of his eyes and grumbling unintelligibly.

"You're a fine circus performer, you are," laughed Phil. "Suppose you had been performing on a flying trapeze in a circus, what do you suppose would have happened to you?"

"I'd have had a net under me then, and I wouldn't have fallen in the ditch," grunted Teddy sullenly.

"What do you suppose the folks will say when you go home in that condition?"

"Don't care what they say. Fellow has got to learn sometime, and if I don't have any worse thing happen to me than falling in a ditch I ought to be pretty well satisfied. Guess I'll go back now. Come on, go 'long with me."

Phil turned and strode along by the side of his companion until they reached the house where Teddy lived.

"Come on in."

"I'm sorry, Teddy, but I can't. My uncle will be expecting me, and he won't like it if I am late."

"All right; see you tomorrow if you don't come out again tonight. We'll try some more stunts then."

"I wouldn't till after the circus, were I in your place," laughed Phil.

"Why not!"

"Cause, if you break your neck, you won't be able to go to the show."

"Huh!" grunted Teddy, hastily turning his back on his companion and starting for the house.

Phil took his way home silently and thoughtfully, carrying his precious bundle of books under an arm, his active mind planning as to how he might employ his time to the best advantage during the summer vacation that was now so close at hand.

A rheumatic, bent figure was standing in front of the shack where the lad lived, glaring up the street from beneath bushy eyebrows, noting Phil Forrest's leisurely gait disapprovingly.

Phil saw him a moment later.

"I'm in for a scolding," he muttered. "Wonder what it is all about this time. I don't seem able to do a thing to please Uncle Abner."

CHAPTER II

PHIL HEARS HIS DISMISSAL

"Where you been, young man?" The question was a snarl rather than a sentence.

"To school, Uncle, of course."

"School's been out more than an hour. I say, where have you been?"

"I stopped on the way for a few minutes."

"You did?" exploded Abner Adams. "Where?"

"Teddy Tucker and I stopped to read a circus bill over there on Clover Street. We did not stop but a few minutes. Was there any harm in that?"

"Harm? Circus bill--"

"And I want to go to the circus, too, Uncle, when it comes here. You know? I have not been to anything of that sort since mother died--not once. I'll work and earn the money. I can go in the evening after my work is finished. Please let me go, Uncle."

For a full minute Abner Adams was too overcome with his emotions to speak. He hobbled about in a circle, smiting the ground with his cane, alternately brandishing it threateningly in the air over the head of the unflinching Phil.

"Circus!" he shouted. "I might have known it! I might have known it! You and that Tucker boy are two of a kind. You'll both come to some bad ending. Only fools and questionable characters go to such places--"

"My mother and father went, and they always took me," replied the boy, drawing himself up with dignity. "You certainly do not include them in either of the two classes you have named?"

"So much the worse for them! So much the worse for them. They were a pair of--"

"Uncle, Uncle!" warned Phil. "Please don't say anything against my parents. I won't stand it. Don't forget that my mother was your own sister, too."

"I'm not likely to forget it, after she's bundled such a baggage as you into my care. You're turning out a worthless, good-for- nothing loaf--"

"You haven't said whether or not I might go to the circus, Uncle," reminded Phil.

"Circus? No! I'll have none of my money spent on any such worthless--"

"But I didn't ask you to spend your money, even though you have plenty of it. I said I would earn the money--"

"You'll have a chance to earn it, and right quick at that. No, you won't go to any circus so long as you're living under my roof."

"Very well, Uncle, I shall do as you wish, of course," answered Phil, hiding his disappointment as well as he could. The lad shifted his bundle of books to the other hand and started slowly for the house.

Abner Adams hobbled about until he faced the lad again, an angry gleam lighting up his squinting eyes.

"Come back here!"

Phil halted, turning.

"I said come back here."

The lad did so, his self-possession and quiet dignity never deserting him for an instant. This angered the crabbed old uncle more than ever.

"When will you get through school?"

"Tomorrow, I believe."

"Huh! Then, I suppose you intend to loaf for the rest of the summer and live on my hard earned savings. Is that it?"

"No, sir; I hadn't thought of doing anything of the sort. I thought--"

"What did you think?"

"I thought I would find something to do. Of course, I do not expect to be idle. I shall work at something until school begins again next fall, then, of course, I shall not be able to do so much."

"School! You've had enough school! In my days boys didn't spend the best part of their lives in going to school. They worked."

"Yes, sir; I am willing to work, too. But, Uncle, I must have an education. I shall be able to earn so much more then, and, if necessary, I shall be able to pay you for all you have spent on me, which isn't much, you know."

"What, what? You dare to be impudent to me? You--"

"No, sir, I am not impudent. I have never been that and I never shall be; but you are accusing me wrongfully."

"Enough. You have done with school--"

"You--you mean that I am not to go to school any more--that I have got to go through life with the little I have learned? Is that what you mean, Uncle?" asked the boy, with a sinking heart.

"You heard me."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Work!"

"I am working and I shall be working," Phil replied.

"You're right you will, or you'll starve. I have been thinking this thing over a lot lately. A boy never amounts to anything if he's mollycoddled and allowed to spend his days depending on someone else. Throw him out and let him fight his own way. That's what my father used to tell me, and that's what I'm going to say to you."

"What do you mean, Uncle?"

"Mean? Can't you understand the English language? Have I got to draw a picture to make you understand? Get to work!"

"I am going to as soon as school is out."

"You'll do it now. Get yourself out of my house, bag and baggage!"

"Uncle, Uncle!" protested the lad in amazement. "Would you turn me out?"

"Would I? I have, only you are too stupid to know it. You'll thank me for it when you get old enough to have some sense."

Phil's heart sank within him, and it required all his self-control to keep the bitter tears from his eyes.

"When do you wish me to go?" he asked without a quaver in his voice.

"Now."

"Very well, I'll go. But what do you think my mother would say, could she know this?"

"That will do, young man. Do your chores, and then--"

"I am not working for you now, Uncle, you know, so I shall have to refuse to do the chores. There is fifty cents due me from Mr. Churchill for fixing his chicken coop. You may get that, I don't want it."

Phil turned away once more, and with head erect entered the house, going straight to his room, leaving Abner Adams fuming and stamping about in the front yard. The old man's rage knew no bounds. He was so beside himself with anger over the fancied impudence of his nephew that, had the boy been present, he might have so far forgotten himself as to have used his cane on Phil.

But Phil by this time had entered his own room, locking the door behind him. The lad threw his books down on the bed, dropped into a chair and sat palefaced, tearless and silent. Slowly his eyes rose to the old-fashioned bureau, where his comb and brush lay. The eyes halted when at length they rested on the picture of his mother.

The lad rose as if drawn by invisible hands, reached out and clasped the photograph to him. Then the pent-up tears welled up in a flood. With the picture pressed to his burning cheek Phil Forrest threw himself on his bed and sobbed out his bitter grief. He did not hear the thump of Abner Adams' cane on the bedroom door, nor the angry demands that he open it.

"Mother, Mother!" breathed the unhappy boy, as his sobs gradually merged into long-drawn, trembling sighs.

Perhaps his appeal was not unheard. At least Phil Forrest sprang from his bed, holding the picture away from him with both hands and gazing into the eyes of his mother.

Slowly his shoulders drew back and his head came up, while an expression of strong determination flashed into his own eyes.

"I'll do it--I'll be a man, Mother!" he exclaimed in a voice in which there was not the slightest tremor now. "I'll fight the battle and I'll win."

Phil Forest had come to the parting of the ways, which he faced with a courage unusual in one of his years. There was little to be done. He packed his few belongings in a bag that had been his mother's. The lad possessed one suit besides the one he wore, and this he stowed away as best he could, determining to press it out when he had located himself.

Finally his task was finished. He stood in the middle of the floor glancing around the little room that had been his home for so long. But he felt no regrets. He was only making sure that he had not left anything behind. Having satisfied himself on this point, Phil gathered up his bundle of books, placed the picture of his mother in his inside coat pocket, then threw open the door.

The lad's uncle had stamped to the floor below, where he was awaiting Phil's coming.

"Good-bye, Uncle," he said quietly, extending a hand.

"Let me see that bag," snapped the old man.