Chapter 13

ON THE ROAD

"Come oud!" said Hans Snitzellbaum.

"I'm glad to," answered Andy Wildwood.

He took a long, refreshing draught of pure air, and stood up and stretched his cramped limbs with satisfaction.

When the Man with the Iron Jaw had whispered to the fat musician outside the dressing tent guarded by Wagner's assistants, he had asked him to get Andy out of the clutches of the constable.

The fat sides of Hans Snitzellbaum shook with jollity, and his merry eye twinkled at the hint conveyed by Andy's staunch friend.

When Hans came inside the tent, a whispered word to Andy was sufficient to make the young fugitive understand what was coming.

Hans removed the top head of his big bass drum. Andy snuggled along the rounded woodwork of the instrument, and the drum head was replaced.

The double load was a pretty heavy one for the portly musician to handle, but all went well.

He got away from the dressing tent without arousing the suspicions of the constable's assistants. The drum was hoisted to the top of a moving wagon at some distance. Andy was rather crowded and short of breath, but he lay quiet and serene as the wagon started up.

They must have traveled four miles before the musician's welcome invitation to "come oud" followed a second removal of the drum head.

Andy looked about him. They were slowly traversing the main road leading from Centreville to Clifton.

There was bright moonlight, and the general view was interesting and picturesque. Ahead and behind a seemingly interminable caravan was in motion.

Chariots, cages, vehicles holding tent paraphernalia, a calliope, ticket wagons, horses, mules, ponies, seemed in endless parade. Performers and general circus employees thronged the various vehicles.

That in which Andy now found himself was a wagon with high, slatted sides, piled full of trunks, mattresses, seat cushions and curtains.

The fat musician reclined in a dip in the soft bedding; his bulky body had formed. Over beyond him lay a sad-faced man in an exhausted slumber, looking so utterly done out and ill that Andy pitied him.

A boy about Andy's own age, and two men whose attire and general appearance suggested side show "spielers," or those flashily dressed fellows who announce the wonders on view inside the minor canvases, lay half-buried among some gaudy draperies.

The two men lay with their high silk hats held softly by both hands across their breasts. The circus tinge was everywhere. One of them in his sleep was saying: "Ziripa, the Serpent Queen. Step up, gentlemen. Eats snakes like you eat strawberry shortcake. Eats 'em alive! Bites their heads off!"

As the wagon jolted on Hans comfortably smoked a pipe fully four feet long. His twinkling little eyes fairly laughed at Andy as the latter stepped out of the drum.

"Hey, you find him varm, hey?" he asked.

"I'd have smothered if I hadn't kept my mouth close to that vent hole," explained Andy. "Is it all right for me to show myself now?"

"Yaw," declared the fat musician. "You see dot sign?"

He pointed back a few yards. Andy recognized the four-armed semaphore set where a narrow road intersected the highway they were traversing.

"Oh, yes," said Andy quickly, "that shows the State line."

"Yaw, dot vas so. No one can arrest you now, Marco says, and Marco vas like a lawyer, hey?"

"Will I see Mr. Marco soon again?" asked Andy.

"For sure dot vas. He toldt me vot to do. Vhen we reach dot Cliftons, you vill go mit Billy Blow. He vill takes care of you till morning. Den you goes to dot Empire Hotel und sees Miss Stella Starr."

"Oh, I understand," exclaimed Andy brightly and hopefully. "And who is Billy Blow, please?"

"Him," explained Hans, pointing to the sleeping man with the sad, tired face--"dot is Billy Blow, the clown."

"Eh, what--clown? Not the one who rides the donkey and tells such funny stories?"

"Oh, yaw," declared the musician in a matter-of-fact way.

Andy was naturally surprised. He could hardly realize that the person he was looking at could ever make up as the mirth-provoking genius who was the life and fun of the big circus ring.

"Poor Billy!" said Hans, shaking his head solemnly. "First his vife falls from a horse. She vas in dot hospitals. Den his little poy, Midget, is sick. Poor Billy!"

Andy suddenly remembered something. He craned his neck and looked steadfastly along the road.

"I want to leave the wagon when we get a little further along," he said.

"I likes not dot," answered Snitzellbaum. "Maybe you gets in droubles, so?"

"No, it's when we reach an old barn," explained Andy. "I left something there earlier in the evening. I won't be a minute getting it."

In about half-an-hour, as they approached the hay barn where Andy had overheard the conversation between Daley and Murdock, he slipped down from the wagon. He ran ahead, went up among the hay bales, found the coat containing the marble bag holding his little stock of money, and speedily rejoined the musician.

Hans finished his pipe and sank into a doze. Andy could not sleep. He had gone through too much excitement that day to readily compose himself.

He lay listening dreamily to the jolty clatter of the wagons, the shouts of the drivers, and the commotion of the animals in the menagerie cages. Meanwhile he was thinking ardently of the next day. It would decide his fate. He felt hopeful that the show would take him on from the fact that Miss Stella Starr had required his presence the next morning.

"Hey," spoke a sudden voice, "give us a chaw, will you?"

Andy with a start turned to face the boy he had noticed asleep. The latter had rudely knocked his shoulder. He had looked mean to Andy while slumbering. He looked tough as he fixed his eyes on Andy, wide open.

"I don't 'chaw,'" said the latter.

"Teeth gone?" sneered the other.

"No, that's why I don't care to lose them," retorted Andy.

"Huh! Say, Snitzellbaum, loan me a little tobacco, will you?"

The speaker had nudged the musician. The latter eyed him with little favor.

"You vas a kid," he observed, stirring up. "Vhen you grow up, maybe. Not now."

The boy let out a string of rough expletives under his breath. Then fixing his eye on Andy curiously, he demanded:

"Who's the kindergarten kid? Trying to break into the show?"

"I may," answered Andy calmly.

"Oho!" chuckled the other, with a wicked grin--"we'll have some fun with you, then."

"Maybe not," broke in the musician. "Dot poy has a pull."

"Oh, has he?" snorted the other.

"Yaw. Maybe you don't know, hey, Jim Tapp? You hear about dot cut trapeze? Aha! It vas dis poy who discovered dot in time."

"Eh!" ejaculated young Tapp, with a prodigious start. "Yes," he continued very slowly, viewing Andy with a searching, hateful look. "I heard of it. Says Murdock put up the job to break Thacher's neck."

"Dot vas so."

"How does he know it?"

"He overheardt dose schoundrels tell dot."

"Maybe he's lying."

"Did dot cut trapeze show if he vas, hey?"

"Then he's a spy. Sneaking in on gentlemen's private affairs. Bah!" cried Tapp, with a venomous stare at Andy, "I wouldn't train with you two at a hundred per week!"

He crawled over to the edge of the wagon preparatory to leaving the vehicle and seeking more congenial company.

"Hey, you, Jim Tapp," observed Snitzellbaum, "you vas a pal of Daley, hey? You see him? Vell, you tell him ve hang him up by dose heels, und Murdock mit him, vonce ve catch dem. See you?"

Tapp disappeared over the edge of the wagon into the road.

"Mein friend," remarked the musician to Andy, "you vatch oud for dot poy."

Andy Wildwood recalled the solemn warning before the next day was over.