The child screamed, the father swore softly. There was a succession of exclamations from the crowd. A colored attendant, who chanced to be passing with a bundle of straw, dropped his burden to stare, open mouthed, at the cage.
When he again put his trembling fingers to the bundle of straw, it was to mutter:
“Tain’t no safe place fer a ’spectable colored man to wuck. ’T’ain’ safe. All dem raid flashes ever’whar. Can’t fry po’k chops fer ’em. Can’t wuck, can’t do nuttin’.”
That night, after the grand performance was concluded, after the surging crowd had passed out, after the arc lights had fluttered, blinked, and then left the place in darkness, Johnny went out for a breath of fresh air before turning into the bunk assigned to him. He was walking around the end of the big top when a sudden flash of crimson appeared against the canvas. It was a flash only, remaining not one second, but Johnny paused to listen.
In another moment there came a whispered, “Hello, Johnny,” and Pant appeared.
“You work for this circus?” Johnny asked.
“No. You?”
“Yes, got a job to-day.”
“What?”
“Horses.”
“Good. That puts you inside. You can help me, Johnny—help me a lot, and believe me, kid, it’s big—the biggest thing we ever worked on.” Pant’s words came quick and tense.
“What is it?”
“Can’t tell you now, but you can help. Here, take these three Liberty Bonds. They’re good ones. You take ’em over town and sell ’em. Here’s a hundred iron men. You buy me five more bonds from these circus men, see? Any of ’em. You’re inside, see? You can do it. Buy five. They’ve got ’em. They’ll sell ’em, too.”
“I call that light business, dealing in Liberty Bonds on a small margin,” grumbled Johnny. “What shall I pay?”
“Thirty-nine.”
“Nobody but a crazy man would sell ’em for that.”
“Mebbe not, Johnny, but they’ll sell ’em. Pay more, if you have to. The game’s a big one, I tell you. So long.” Pant vanished into the night.
The following day Johnny carried out Pant’s wish in the matter of selling the three Liberty Bonds. When it came to picking up other bonds at Pant’s excessively low price, he experienced greater difficulty than had Snowball. Indeed, in all his time off duty he secured only one bond.
“Guess I haven’t struck the right spot yet,” was his mental comment. “I’ll try again to-morrow.”
It was just as he was about to return to his dapple grays that he received a sudden shock. He had been idly glancing over the “Daily News” when a headline caught his eye:
“Offers $1,000 Reward for Return of Lost Gem.”
Quickly he read down the column, then his face fell.
“Guess he thinks I stole it,” he muttered.
It certainly looked that way, for Major MacDonald had publicly offered a reward of a thousand dollars for the return of the ring, and had made it plain that no questions would be asked.
“They won’t be asked, either.” Johnny set his teeth hard. “I’ll let him know that he can keep his reward. I’ll get that ring back, and I’ll send it to him with no return address.”
Even as he spoke, he started. A new thought had struck him. What if the girl who had the ring should read of the reward and return the jewelry? Where would he be then?
“He’d think I had stolen it and given it to a circus girl,” Johnny groaned. “Then what would he think of me?”
But the next moment he was resolute again. “I’ll get next to that boxing bear fellow right away, and I’ll cultivate the acquaintance of Millie, if she cuts my face open with that whip of hers. I’ll win yet! Watch my smoke!”
He hastened away, resolved upon getting better acquainted with Millie Gonzales at once.
That night, however, offered no further opportunity for making acquaintances. Indeed, he was made more and more conscious of the fact that in the circus there existed an almost unbreakable line of caste. There were the performers and the attendants. The attendants were kept in their places. They did not mingle with the performers; they were distinctly considered beneath them.
“Oh, well,” Johnny said to himself, “if that’s that, why I’ll have to get to be a performer, that’s all.”
But when he came to think it over soberly, he could imagine no means by which this end could be attained.
If he had but known it, the opportunity was to present itself in a not far distant time, and in a manner as startling as it was sudden.
In one thing that night he was extremely fortunate—he succeeded in securing a position where he could get a clear view of the performance of two very interesting persons, Gwen, the Queen, and Allegretti, the man who boxed the bear. The contrast of the two stood out in his thoughts long after the performers had moved out of the ring. Gwen was wonderful. Johnny was sure he had never seen anyone to equal her in all his life. Light as a feather, waving her delicate silk parasol here and there, she tripped across the invisible wire. Yet, fairy-like as she was, every move spoke of strength, of well developed and perfectly trained muscles. She wore the accustomed grease paint of the ring, but Johnny did not need to be told that beneath this there lay the glow of a healthy skin.
“She’s all right,” he decided. “I’ll wager she’s an American. Only an American girl could be like that.”
Through the quarter of an hour during which Gwen was the center of attention of the vast throng, he watched her. The breathless leaps in air, the light, tripping dance from post to post, the bow, the smile—he saw it all and breathed hard as she at last danced out of the ring.
“If she has the ring, it’s going to be hard to get it,” he decided. “If another could be bought, and I had the money, I’d rather buy it and let her keep the old one, but there’s only one in all the world, and if she has it I must get it from her. Gwen, big, wonderful American girl, I’m for you, but I’m also a hard hearted detective, and I’m on your trail.”
The antics of the swarthy foreigner who boxed the bear were as ludicrous and grotesque as Gwen’s act had been exquisite.
“Clumsy lobster!” Johnny exclaimed, after watching him for five minutes. “What he doesn’t know about boxing would fill an encyclopedia, and if he didn’t have a good natured bear, he’d get his head knocked off. All he’s good for is to dance with a bear on the street and hold out a tin cup for nickels. Nevertheless, Allegretti, old boy, I’ve got to scrape up an acquaintance with you someway, for that’s on the road to the heart of Gwen, though how she can stand the garlic and the look of your ugly mug long enough to box a round with you is more than I can understand.”
* * * * * * * *
While Johnny Thompson was watching the performance, two little girls, sitting bolt upright in their beds in the big house of Major MacDonald in far-away Amaraza, were planning wild things for the future. Through the aid of their maid they had succeeded in securing for themselves suits that would do with the circus—pink tights, exceedingly short blue skirts, red slippers and green caps. All that bright afternoon they had spent in the back yard practicing on their ponies. Standing up on the back of one of them had been easy after the first few attempts, but when Marjory had tried standing with one foot on each pony she had slipped down between them and had come near to being crushed.
“We’ll do that, too, some day,” she had exclaimed resolutely.
And now, before they went to sleep, they were planning.
“Yes, sir,” Marjory was saying, “that old circus will come back here some time; I just know it will! Maybe next week.”
“And Johnny Thompson will be with it,” broke in Margaret. “I just know he will, and we’ll get on our ponies when the parade is started. We’ll ride right in the parade, and Johnny will see us and say, ‘There are my friends, Marjory and Margaret.’ Won’t he be proud of us!”
“Won’t he, though!” The other twin clapped her hands in high glee.
They went to sleep finally, still thinking of Johnny and the circus, but little dreaming of the remarkable and thrilling adventures in store for them.
* * * * * * * *
That same night, after the circus tents had been darkened, two strange things happened. The first was never made public; the second was the talk of the circus people the next morning.
Scarcely had the last straggling sight-seer wandered from the grounds, than two figures emerged from the side entrance to a small tent. They were followed at a distance by a third. Darting directly for the wall that lined the railway tracks, which at this point run some twelve feet below the surface, but open to the air, they scaled the wall, and, by the aid of a rope, let themselves down to the track.
The third person, having followed them to the wall and noted the direction they had taken, contented himself with following along the wall. Coming presently to some stairs, he crept silently down, then having listened for a moment, possibly for the sound of footsteps, he peered down the track. For an instant a pale crimson light flashed down the track. It might easily have been mistaken for the glow of a switch lantern. Then he pushed on after the pair.
The two men left the tracks at Randolph street and, taking a zigzag course, headed for the river. Into a long, low-lying building facing the stream they went. Not five minutes later the individual who had followed them was braced against a wall, peering in through a crack in a broken window pane. What he saw within was a low-ceilinged, dimly lighted room, furnished only with a small table, four chairs and a dilapidated chest of drawers. Four men were bent over the table. The lines of their faces drawn in eagerness, they were staring at some flat object on the table. Soon one of them, with the tips of his thumb and forefinger lifted the corner of a sheet of paper. He had lifted it half off from the flat object, to which it appeared to cling, when a startling thing happened—the room was suddenly illuminated with a brilliant blood red light. This lasted only a fraction of a second. The room was then left in darkness, black as ink; for even the candle had been overturned and snuffed out. From the darkness there came the sound of overturned chairs, as the four men made good their escape. By the time they reached the open air their tracker had vanished utterly.
He was, at that very moment, flattened against the corner of a dark wall, and was quite as unhappy over the turn of events as they were. At the very instant when he was about to discover a secret of vast importance, his foot had slipped, his face bumped against the glass, and the unexpected happened.
The second occurrence, the one which caused much talk among the circus people, happened a short time later. As the attendants reported it, it would seem that their attention was first attracted to the strange phenomenon by the growl of a lion, whose cage was in the corner of the tent. To their surprise, the cage, the lion, and even the straw upon which he lay had turned blood red. Hardly had they finished staring at this than the snarl of a Siberian tiger at the opposite corner had called them to note that the red light, for light it must have been, had shifted to the tiger’s cage. The red glare had continued to play hide and seek with the distracted animals for fully five minutes and, during all that time, not one of the attendants could detect its source. At times it appeared to stream down from the canvas top, then to shoot from a corner, or to leap up from the floor.
One notable fact was reported: In every instance save one, the animals whose cages were illuminated with crimson light cowered in a corner in snarling fear. The single instance in which this was not true was that of the black leopard. That beast leaped, clawing and snarling, at the bars of its cage, as if it would tear the originator of the crimson flash limb from limb.
As the report spread, the negroes of the troupe were panic stricken. They quit in numbers. The owners and managers were hard pressed to keep enough men to do the menial work about the tents, and sent the employment agent to search the city for recruits. One of these recruits chanced to be Snowball, the bullet-headed friend of the strange hanger-on, Pant.
Johnny Thompson paced the beach up which the waves of Lake Michigan were rolling. There had been a storm, the aftermath of which was even now coming in. Johnny’s mind was in a turmoil. He had been with the circus five days now. Two more days they would remain in Chicago. He was still groom for Millie Gonzales’ three grays. Millie was as impossible as ever. Three times she had struck at him with her whip, when he had appeared to overstep his rights as her menial.
“If she has the ring, fine chance I’ve got unless I steal it from her,” he grumbled.
Allegretti, the Italian boxer, was quite as impossible as Millie. Once Johnny had bantered him for a boxing match, but the fellow had showed all his white teeth in a snarl as he said:
“No box-a da bum.”
He had meant Johnny.
Johnny’s blood had boiled, but he had made no response. Only when he was out of hearing, he had declared, “Never mind, old boy, I’ll get you yet.”
But thus far he had not “got” him. The way into the good graces of Gwen, queen of the circus, seemed effectually blocked. He had not tried approaching her, for he felt that would be folly.
In spite of the sharply drawn lines of caste which prevailed in the circus, life within the tented walls when the performers were off duty was astonishingly simple. Grease paint came off at the end of the last act. About the dressing tent and the assembly yard the women stars appeared plain and simple-minded people. There was nothing of the bravado that Johnny had expected to find. The three girls who held the center of his attention, because of the ring, were wonderfully well-developed physically. Millie was slender and quick as a cat. Mitzi von Neutin, the trapeze performer, was also slender and strong. She was French; Johnny knew that from the many “Mais, oui” and her “Mais, non,” with which she answered the questions of the other performers. With her abundance of yellow hair she was like a kitten, as she curled up on a rug in the corner of the tent reading a French novel.
But Gwen—Gwen was perfection itself. Not too stout, not too thin; strong, yet not masculine, she was indeed a queen. About the tent, when off duty, she wore a short blue skirt and a blue middy blouse open at the neck and tied with a dark red ribbon. Twice Johnny had seen her boxing with the Italian. Each time the blood had rushed to his temples. To think of such a queen taking her exercise with so coarse a creature filled him with inward rage.
“Oh, well, he’s of the caste,” Johnny had grumbled. “No matter; so shall I be in time. I don’t know just how, but I will.”
Pant, too, had puzzled him greatly. He had not forgotten his friend’s uncanny power of seeing in the dark. He had heard of the strange appearance and disappearance of the crimson flash in the animal tent and elsewhere, and suspected that Pant was at the bottom of it, but just what his game was, or what strange secret of the power of light Pant possessed, he could not guess.
Johnny had at last succeeded in buying the five bonds which Pant had wanted. He had obtained two of them for $39 each. These he had bought from a fat, red faced man who was a guard at the entrance to the big top. He was even now waiting to deliver them to Pant.
Presently that individual came shuffling by, and, motioning Johnny to follow him, continued down the beach until they had found a secluded spot in a turn of a breakwater.
“Got ’em?” Pant whispered.
“Sure.”
“Good! Let’s see!”
“Good! Fine!” he exclaimed, after he had glanced over the bonds. “Now can you tell me who sold you these two together?”
“I don’t know his name; a fat, red faced fellow at the entrance of the big top.”
“Good! That’s one of them. They’re the right kind, I’ll wager. Let’s see!”
Pant spread the bonds out on a broad plank.
“No, only one!” he mused. “Getting careful, I’d say, Johnny.” He turned suddenly. “Would you risk much for an old friend?”
“I’d do a lot for you, Pant.”
“Thanks!” Pant gripped his hand warmly. “Take these two bonds you got from that fat fellow and sell them to-morrow to some dealer in bonds on La Salle street. You bought them for $39, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“You should get $45. Good little gain, eh?”
Johnny grinned. He knew Pant too well to think for a moment that he would engage in a small business of trading in bonds two or three at a time. What his real game was, he was unable to guess.
“All right, old man. See you to-morrow,” he said, rising and tucking the bonds away in his inner pocket. “I’ll hurry back now. I think I’m going to box the fellow who boxes the bear, though how I am to arrange it, I can’t quite tell.”
Johnny wandered back to the big top. It was late morning. Many of the circus people would be in the big tent going through their stunts.
His hope of finding the boxer of the bear in one of the rings was not in vain. He was, at the moment of Johnny’s entrance, in the act of putting the bear through his mock heroic battle.
With an air of apparent indifference, Johnny leaned against a center tent pole and watched him. Allegretti hated being watched, Johnny knew. That was why he lingered.
The Italian stood his scrutiny for three minutes, then with an angry glare in his eye, he cried:
“Go ’way, you bum!”
Johnny’s only reply was a grin.
“Go ’way! No can box-a da bear when you all time loafin’ here.”
The Italian was dancing with rage.
“You can’t box anyway, so what’s the difference?” Johnny grinned again.
“No can box?” The Italian stormed, “No can box? You wan’na see?”
“Sure, show me,” Johnny grinned.
An extra pair of gloves lay near by. Allegretti kicked them toward him. “Putta dem on. ‘No can box,’ he says. Allegretti show dat bum!”
He squared away in such an awkward manner that Johnny found it hard to suppress a smile.
“Now where do you want me to hit you first?” Johnny asked politely.
The answer was a volley of quick blows, which all fell upon Johnny’s well managed gloves.
When the Italian paused for breath, Johnny tapped him lightly on the nose. Enraged at being so easily scored upon, the fiery foreigner fairly went wild in his efforts to reach Johnny with a blow that would send him to the surgeon. To avoid these wild swings was child’s play for Johnny. Time and again the Italian left him a wide opening, but Johnny only further enraged his opponent by tapping him lightly.
This farce lasted for five minutes. Johnny was puzzled to know what to do. He knew that the impostor, who called himself a boxer, was completely within his power. By a single jab of his powerful right, he could send him to dreamland. This, however, was farthest from his thought. To needlessly injure a man was never part of Johnny’s program.
A large, low, paper-topped barrel, used in the trained dog act, stood within ten feet of them. Suddenly Johnny resolved what he would do; he would humiliate his opponent. Perhaps that would bring him to terms.
Slowly he forced Allegretti back until he was within five feet of the barrel when, with a quick right to the chest, he lifted him off the ground and landed him square in the center of the top of the tub. There followed a ripping sound, the paper burst, and Allegretti dropped from sight.
With a smile Johnny stood waiting the Italian’s reappearance, when, to his utter astonishment, he was struck a sledge hammer blow in the middle of the back.
The blow sent him sprawling. In a flash he was on his feet, and faced about to meet this new and powerful foe. Imagine his amazement when he found himself facing, not a man but a bear. With gloved forepaws, with broad mouth grinning, the bear stood ready for his share of the match.
What had happened was evident. The Italian had neglected to remove the bear’s gloves. The bear had now entered the ring. Johnny had a choice of facing him or running. It was a novel experience, but he was not well acquainted with flight, so he held his ground.
The bear advanced with none of the skill of an experienced fighter. His training had been superficial. He had been taught to swing his arms in a certain way when his opponent swung his as a signal. The bear, however, was six times as heavy as Johnny. One fair smash in the face with that giant paw would send Johnny to the happy hunting grounds.
As Johnny squared back, with his guard high, the bear hesitated, a quizzical, almost human grin overspreading his face. Then, seeming to get a signal to rush in, he came plowing forward, striking straight out as he advanced. Johnny sidestepped, and, leaping off his toes, tapped him on the ear. It was a stinging blow. Bruin’s ears were sensitive. That blow came near proving the undoing of Johnny, for instantly flying into a rage, the bear forgot his training. Dropping on all fours, he rushed at Johnny with the fierceness of his forest ancestors. Dodging this way and that, Johnny sought to get in a felling blow, but in vain.
Again the bear reared upon his hind legs. So quickly was this accomplished Johnny did not escape the grappling swing which, open handed, the bear let fly. The animal’s stubby claws raked his face, leaving three livid lines of red. The matter was growing serious. Something must be done quickly. Johnny did it. Watching for an opening, he at last leaped high and forward. His arm went up in one of his short, lightning master blows. There was the sound as of a steel trap sprung. The bear whirled in a circle, then crumpled to earth.
“There’s your bear,” panted Johnny, wiping his face.
“No box-a da bear,” groaned the grief stricken Italian.
“I should say not,” said Johnny. “He doesn’t box fair. He scratches.”
“You kill-a da bear. I get-a your goat.”
“Oh! The bear’ll be all right,” grinned Johnny. “Just give him a lump of sugar and a sniff of smelling salts. He’s a bit dizzy, that’s all.”
“But say!” he said after a moment. “You can’t get my goat. I ain’t got any. But I have a notion that I’ve got yours right now.”
He had, but the Italian wasn’t to know it until some hours later.
As he turned to walk away, Johnny noticed a well built, wholesome looking girl in short skirt and middy standing a short distance off. She was looking his way and smiling. It was Gwen, the queen. He wanted to go over and speak to her. He was sure she had seen all that had happened.
“Can’t afford to rush things too fast,” he whispered to himself and, turning toward the bunk tent, he hastened away.
As an hour and a half remained before he must go on duty, Johnny slicked up a bit and went over to La Salle street to sell the bonds which Pant had entrusted to his care. The first two dealers he approached refused to buy; they did not purchase bonds in such small lots. The third looked Johnny over carefully, then examined the bonds. After that, he wet the tip of his right forefinger on a sponge and proceeded to count out a handful of bills. These, with some small change, he shoved beneath the lattice to Johnny.
“Fine day,” he smiled, as he turned away.
“You bet,” Johnny agreed, as he pocketed the money.
Out on the shore of the lake he found Pant.
The latter stared at him for a moment in silence. He was looking at the three red lines drawn on Johnny’s face by the bear.
“Say,” he whispered at last, “give me those bonds!”
“I, I,” Johnny stared, “I haven’t got them!”
“Haven’t got them? Where are they?”
“Sold ’em as you said to do.”
“Sold them? When?”
“Half an hour ago.”
“With that on your face?”
“Sure.”
With a low whistle, Pant sank down upon the sand.
“Why, what’s wrong?” demanded Johnny.
“Oh! Nothing much. One of those bonds was a counterfeit, that’s all.”
“Counterfeit?”
“I said it.”
“And you sent me to sell it?”
“I suppose I should have told you. You’d have done it just the same. Anyway, you would have, had I told you everything. But if I had told you, that would have made you nervous and spoiled everything. I’m a marked man. I couldn’t go myself. How was I to know that you’d go and get branded in that fashion?
“Ho, well,” he continued after a moment’s reflection, “it’s all right, I’m sure. The bond was perfect except for one trifling detail. It was a shade lighter print than those made by Uncle Sam, and, after all, that’s really nothing. Who knows but the Government printer failed to ink his rollers well some morning? I know it was a counterfeit, though.”
He bent over and wrote a name in the sand, then quickly erased it.
Johnny had read it. “Who’s Black McCree?” he asked promptly.
“He,” Pant whispered, “is the slickest forger that ever lived, and the worst crook. We’re going to get him, you and I, Johnny. And he’s with the circus.”
“Did—did you ever see him?” Johnny demanded.
“I can’t be sure. Perhaps. But we will, Johnny, we will!”
For a moment they sat there in silence; then Johnny arose and without a word, walked away.
There was one particular part of the show that afternoon which Johnny was anxious to see. So anxious was he, indeed, that even the danger and mystery connected with the sale of the counterfeit Liberty Bonds were crowded from his mind. So intent was he upon seeing it, that he half neglected his duties, and received for the first time, directly upon his cheek, a sharp cut from Millie’s whip. Even that failed to make him angry. Once Millie’s act was over, and he had rushed the dapple grays to their stable, he dashed out of the horse tent, through the assembly grounds, under the canvas wall of the big top and found himself at last beneath the bleachers in a very good position to see what was going on in the ring to the south of the center.
He breathed a sigh of satisfaction, as he saw the swarthy Italian bear boxer, dressed in his green suit, come marching pompously down the sawdust trail toward the ring. The lumbering silver tip bear was at his heels.
The first part of their performance, the ball rolling, the stilt walking and bicycle riding, went off very well. The expectant smile on Johnny’s genial face was beginning to fade when finally boxing gloves were produced, and thrust upon the fore paws of the waiting bear.
Johnny’s smile broadened. A wild look in the bear’s eyes told him that something was about to happen.
It did happen, and that with lightninglike rapidity. No sooner had the bear felt the gloves upon his paws than, without waiting for signals, he let drive a tremendous right swing at the trainer’s head. He missed by but a fraction of an inch.
“Zowie! What a wallop,” whispered Johnny. “He hasn’t forgotten. I thought he wouldn’t.”
Indeed, the bear had not forgotten the punishment he had received earlier in the day and, whether or not he had the intelligence to know that Allegretti was no match for him, he had at least resolved to demolish him as speedily as possible, for hardly had the Italian recovered from his surprise when a second blow aimed at his chest sent him sprawling.
Leaping to his feet, the trainer waved his arms in frantic signals. It was of no avail. The bear had known the taste of victory. He was not to be signaled.
Straight at his trainer he rushed. The Italian uttered a shout of terror, then, closely followed by the bear, bolted from the ring.
The spectators, thinking this was a part of the play, howled and screamed as they rocked with laughter.
To the Italian it was tragedy. Had not the bear grown fat in idleness, and so impaired his running power, the affair might have ended unfortunately for Allegretti.
As it was, having pursued his trainer halfway down the length of the tent, the bear paused, rose on his haunches, tore a glove from his paw and aimed it with such force and accuracy at the trainer’s back that it sent him clawing in the dust.
With one more yell, Allegretti rose and continued his flight. The second glove missed its mark. With mouth open, seemingly in a broad grin, the bear’s gaze swept the circle of delighted spectators, then, appearing to forget all about the incident, he dropped on all fours, and allowed an attendant to lead him quietly away.
Johnny ducked for the assembly enclosure. There he found the Italian waving his arms before the manager.
“No box-a da bear! No box-a da bear!” shouted Allegretti.
“No, I’d say you didn’t,” smiled the manager. “But you did better than that. You put on a scream; you made ’em laugh their heads off. Do that every day and I’ll double your pay!”
“What!” demanded the outraged trainer. “Do dat again! Not for five time, not for ten time my pay. He want-a keel me, dat-a bear. No box-a da bear. No more box-a dat-a bear.”
No amount of argument could make Allegretti change his mind. He was scared white. Johnny and the bear had got his goat. He was through. He would never box the bear again.
“Well,” said the manager, turning to Johnny, at last, “I guess it’s up to you!”
“Up to me? How?” gasped Johnny.
“You crabbed the Italian’s act by boxing the bear. Now you’ll have to become a professional bear boxer, and box him yourself. See?”
“No, I don’t see,” said Johnny stoutly. “Why, I don’t even know the signals.”
“Make up some of your own. Pete Treco, the tumbler, used to be a bear boxer. He can help you. We’ll be out of Chicago in three days. I’ll give you till then to get in form. What say?”
“I—I’ll try,” said Johnny.
“That’s all anybody can do. And say, if you can get him to pull that stunt, chasing you, throwing the glove and all that, the double pay offer stands.”
Johnny caught his breath. His opportunity had come. There had come a shake-up. In three days there would be another, and he would be “shaken up” to the position of a full-fledged performer, or he would be shaken down out of the circus altogether. Could he make it?
Closing his fists tight, he gritted between his teeth:
“By all that’s good, I will!”
Fiery and high tempered Millie lost her groom that very day.
As far as the circus people were concerned, Johnny Thompson vanished. In a small tented enclosure, eight hours out of every twenty-four were spent in strenuous attempts to teach that bear to do his bidding. It was a difficult task. More times than one he barely dodged a sudden swing of that powerful paw, which if it had landed would have increased the demand for cut flowers and slow music.
Pant alone saw him, and that after the shadows had fallen. It was at such times that they talked long of those other days in Arctic Siberia.