Part 2

“Say, to prove what I says is right, I’ll tell you a little experience I has. I was doin’ the litho work for a cheap price house that was playin’ the old favorites with a stock. They puts on ‘The White Squadron.’ The boss comes to me and says, ‘Look here, Jim, I wants you to do your best with this piece; its costin’ us a lot of money to get it on, and we wants to get it back. There’s a diamond stud coming to you if you gets what I calls a good showin’.’ Say, I would ’a’ done it anyhow for them kind words, but I says I’ll git that diamond if I puts bills all over the trees in Central Park an’ goes up in stripes for ten years for doin’ it. I was thinkin’ all the time some new gag to work, when one mornin’ comin’ down I reads that there’s a yacht race in Harlem river that afternoon. You know, boys, ‘The White Squadron’ is one of them naval pieces, an’ has a lot of ships in it. Well, the Sunday before I’d pasted up a lot of one an’ a half sheet boards with type an’ litho stuff, an’ I has it loaded in a wagon ready to git out on the street some night and sit the boards in doorways. But no, says I. Me partner an’ I drives the team out to the Harlem River bridge. The river is so thick with tugs and launches full of people to see the boat race that you can hardly find the water. We waits until the race starts, an’ then we clumps them boards into the river, carefully like, so they will fall with the picture side up. They hits the current and starts floatin’ down. They all seems to cling together, and make a big raft, an’ all you can see is ‘White Squadron.’ Everybody on the bridge and the boats is a readin’ and laughin’, and we knows it’s the showin’ of our lives. And say, the boards keeps on driftin’ wid the current an’ gits so thick that when the guys in the paper boats hits that part of the river they gits stuck and the race has to be called off.”

“Well,” said the Press Agent, coolly, “did the show do any business?”

“Business!” replies the Bill Poster; “you’d a thought there was a fire in the neighborhood ev’ry night, the crowd was there so thick fightin’ to git in. An’ say, the guys what got broke up in the boat race is so stuck on the joke that they gives a theatre party an’ the papers is full of it.”

“Yes,” said the Press Agent, “and it took the press agent to get that in the papers.”

“But the bill posters got ’em in the house,” retorted the Bill Poster, with the air of a man who had knocked the local welterweight over the ropes.

THE CANDY BUTCHER’S DREAM OF LOVE.

It was generally conceded that the Candy Butcher was the handsomest man in the outfit. To be sure, the gent who did the sixty-one horse act in Ring Three was a Charlie boy for good looks, but it was only when he was in the red coat and working. When he left the dressing tent and went red light hunting in a one night stand he looked like a canvasman on a visit home to his people, but he was a hot card when he had the dicer on in the horse act. It was so different with the Candy Butcher--he was always dressed up and he never looked like he felt it.

No one ever saw the Candy Butcher wear a coat, but his checked trousers were always creased whether the big show was playing a one night in Keokuk or doing a run in the Madison Square Garden over in the hot city. And he always wore a vest, but it was never buttoned and there was a red striped shirt with one of those Montana boys screwed in the bosom right under the dickey dot of a bow. The vest was something to speak about--it had the band wagon way to the bad on the distribution of colors and looked like page 89 in a wall paper drummer’s sample book. There was a shiny chain with an elk’s tooth and a tiger’s claw and in one vest pocket was a date book with a tooth brush and a blue pencil doing a duet on the other side of the rainbow. The Candy Butcher always wore pink underwear and had his sleeves rolls up to his elbows. And you don’t want to forget the little miniature of “blondy” that he had pinned right over his blood pump.

And as a matter of detail the Candy Butcher always had this get up the whole season and no grease spots ever scored--he was just the same whether it was back of the tub and the peanuts giving the “five tonight good people” gag, selling concert tickets during the run-offs in the hippodrome or Sunday afternoon in the ladies’ coach, section three, telling the big blonde who did the cloud swing in the round top rigging that of all the girls she was the onliest.

The gang was sitting on a carpet roll under the big top when the Candy Butcher came across the track and sat down on the ring bank. He was looking sad, but his pants were creased and the Montana boy was shining like a frozen hunk of Kennebec water. He rolled himself a cigarette and the gang being silent he edged in with this bunch of talk:

“I’m bluer this evenin’ than the paste boards they’re passin’ out of the ticket wagon an’ if it wasn’t for gettin’ the dock at the pay off I’d be up against some boozery workin’ the syphon like an engine at a tenement fire. I ain’t got no life in me ’t all an’ I won’t have until we leaves the east an’ strikes the west country. B’lieve me, me boys, the east is all right for business, for I can pass out the sour juice at five a throw right here as well as any where, but it’s myself an’ not the place. It was too much of a feather bed las’ season an’ I was fool enough not to remember that I had to wake up. There ain’t no use talkin’, whenever a guy gets a good dream in this here life some sucker has got to give him the alarm clock finish an’ he wakes up with a yell.

“Say, I can call the turn on the folks on the blue boards an’ have ’em all drinkin’ lemon juice and shellin’ peanuts an’ I likes to do it, but me heart ain’t in the work, this season and that’s no lithograph josh either. I’ll tell you and some of youse may give me the grin, but it’s ten to one you’ve had the soft spot yourselves, so I ain’t a-carin’. Remember the Congress of Nations gag they was workin’ las’ season? Well right back of me lay out there was a lot of maidens that was doin’ the gypsy village and fakin’ a lot of beads and fortune tellin’. There was one little fairy in the outfit that had me dead, an’ I don’t mind tellin’ you that she had me soft from the start. She wasn’t none of these city pick ups but a nice little gal that talked quiet and minded her own. She didn’t mix with the rest of the push an’ we got thick the first day the canvass went up. She tells me her story confidential like an’ I give her me sympathy, for her people was dead agin her for troopin’. You see she had been working in a New York hash house, where they had Bible talk on the wall an’ where they gave a splash of beans and a draw for a dime. She gets tired an’ a guy what has been eatin’ at the place gives her a job in a boardin’ house waitin’ on the table. Here she meets the man what has the Congress get up to put on an’ he tells her gilt edge stories about the circus business and to cut the talk down she joins out with the show. Well, say, she was the real thing to me. In two months she had me stoppin’ the booze an sendin’ money home to the folks, an’ it was a center shot to get that out of me. She was allus lookin’ for a chance to do me somethin’ kind an’ one day she did a little turn that I wont forget long after I’ve past the old man’ home.

“We had struck a rough run of one nighters in Ohio and was looking for bright things across the river in the West Virginney townships. I had to do the German Emperor in the parade an’ when we got back to the lot I begins to get me stand ready for the sale. I’d packed up careful on the last stand and thought it was sunny for the next. But when I got me chest open I finds the citric acid jug missing, and the floaters I’d saved to throw on the top of the tub was gone too. I had a cussin’ spell for a brief and then I goes on a still hunt for lemons--the real yellow. But bless me I couldn’t find one in the village an’ there was nothin’ doin’ with the barkeeper what had ’em. Comin’ back I see’s a dago doin’ the shaker across from the lot. He has ’bout a dozen lemons and I offers him a good price, but the brown boy wouldn’t sell an’ I was sorer than a doped lion. I goes into the tent and meets Maggie, that was the name of me fairy, an’ she was sewin’ silvers on her little coat. She sees me sad like an’ I unloads me woes. The gal didn’t say much, but she rubs her hand across me frowner an’ sez, never mind, John, I’ll help ye out, an’ goes ’way. Say, youse may give me the laugh, but durn me if that lass didn’t come back in ’bout an hour carryin’ a bucket an’ I mos’ had a fit when I see’s it full of gooseberries? What’s the game? sez I.

“Watch me?” sez Maggie, “an’ I’ll keep you in the business.”

“Durn me, boys, if that little maiden didn’t mash them berries to a pulp, strain ’em through the Hoochie Coochie gal’s veil and have the tub full of sour juice in seven minutes. I pours in the water, finds me floaters and puts them on the ice bank an’ before the gang is passin’ once ’roun’ I’m sellin’ the juice as if lemons was growin’ on locust trees. Gooseberries too an’ the yaps couldn’t git enough of it. It was better than any graft ever in the one ring days an’ the little gal had done it all. Ain’t no use tellin’ you that I gives her a new shirt waist an’ she gives me a squeeze that makes me top spin like a merry-go-round.

“An’ say I fixed that dago that wouldn’t give up. I tipped off one of the drivers and when the first pole wagon leaves the lot with the eight grays a pullin’ it, the leads shies into the shaker stand an’ gives it the apple cart finish.

“But the little fairy I lost her an’ that’s why I’m sad. It was this way. The gal what did the twistin’ for the Turks had the fever an’ they shipped her home. The guy what had the Congress comes to Maggie, gives her the jersey and the gauzy pants and sez she must do the part. Maggie kicked an’ said she was engaged for the gypsie village. The guy says “not at all” and Maggie pulls off the spangles an’ goes home. An’ say I ain’t been right since, an’ some days I feels like playin’ quits myself.”

The gang looked at the Candy Butcher consolingly, but no one spoke.

“The las’ I hears from her,” she said, “she had gone back to waitin’.” She’s slingin’ hash in a Brooklyn Caf’, but I loves her just as hard.

THE BOSS CANVASMAN’S YARN.

The Boss Canvasman was always sad. He never talked--he just chewed his tobacco and worked. Like the Candy Butcher, he never wore a coat, but he cut the pink underwear the Lemonade Boy flashed when he had his sleeves rolled up at the tub. Of course, the Boss had a coat, one that had run through a dozen seasons, but he always kept it strapped down under the driver’s cushion on the pole wagon. Whenever he did use it, the coat was doing duty for a pillow when the last section was late pulling out, and he was sleeping on a gondola with the wall poles for a mat.

The Boss Canvasman’s pants were ancient history, and his vest was always open. He wore one of those motorman watches, with a shoestring for a chain. He never looked at the watch except at night, for when it was daytime he could pull off the hour on the second by the slant of the shadows across the big “top.” The Boss never wore a collar. On Sunday he would put a gold button in the shirt band, lean disconsolately against the tongue of the pole wagon, and feel uncomfortable because he was dressed up.

There was no coin and jewel flash about the Boss Canvasman. But he did wear a rusty button in the lapel of his vest--one of those G. A. R. things. Across his face there was a long red scar, and sometimes when he had been drinking he talked about the first Ohio Cavalry--Gettysburg was the answer. He feared nobody nor anything. He had no friends, except probably the Stock Boss, and there was a tie there, because the two had done the wagon show long years back before three rings were dreamed of and farmers were living on their own hog meat and were happy. If he ever did talk, it was when something went wrong, and then his line of words were unfit for publication--even in a Chicago weekly.

It looked like a squall just as the matinee was breaking, and the boys at the cages were hurrying the people along to get the tent clear before the water fell. The Boss Canvasman was hard at it getting the guys tight and throwing in cinders around the big poles, where the dirt was soft. He was taking no chances on a blow. He had been mixed up in several of those wind things down in Texas, where a cyclone struck the lot, and all that was left when the sun got back was the ticket wagon and the elephants that were chained to earth. He knew his game.

After the usual beef stew and the splash of beans had been put away with a cup of black in the meal tent, the gang gathered about the rink bank for a little rest. The Sawdust Spreader and the Gasoline Man were talking scandal, as usual. This time it was the Snake Charmer, who mixed it too strong with the bottles on the last stand, lost the keys to her snake-box and two boas and a black boy starved to death before the feeders could get the rabbits under the fangs.

The gang sat down in silence until the Concert Manager cut in with some weather talk. It looked stormy, and as it was the last night of the stand and a long haul to the cars, everybody was feeling a little sore. With a storm coming up, the tent to watch, and then the haul and an eight-hour jump with a hustle for the march in spangles down the highway the next morning. It had everybody grouchy and thinking about hall shows with a roof and a stove.

“Youse is doing a lot of guff about a rain,” cut in the Side Show Spieler, as he polished up his shiny brim on the corner of the leaping tick, “but youse kin stay inside when its droppin’, but for me--the open and still the same old gab for the dimes.”

The Boss Canvasman came up along the ring bank, and without noticing the crowd on the sawdust began to jamb down the cinders around the net-pole with the heel of his boot. From the distance came a low rumble of thunder. The gang looked at each other. Everybody in the outfit feared a storm; not so much for the storm itself, but for the effect it had on the Boss Canvasman. He never talked, but when the basses under the hills were growling and the lightning was doing a fancy jig against the blue, he let loose a vocabulary that would put a canalboat captain to the blush of shame and send a sea-soaked old jib reefer to flight as a down and out cusser beyond appeal, cards torn up, tables turned over and police at the door. He used the same two-em words, but the way they hit the air would have made holes in a battleship.

The broadcloth boys, who came over in the sailing ships and scared the Indians into religion by telling them how warm it was in perdition, couldn’t touch the Boss Canvasman for a scare when he got on the same topic. He had a way of saying “hell!” that made you want to turn in a fire alarm just for personal comfort.

Presently he came across to the gang, and to the surprise of all the rink-bank squatters loosened up.

“Talkin’ ’bout workin’ in the rain, is you?” he said, with a sneer, and a cross-hook glance at the Side Show Spieler. “You’ve got no kick. Say, you’ll have your head on some Mamie’s shoulder in the last day coach, up an’ away, while me an’ my gang is still workin’ on this lot gittin’ this round top on the wagon without streakin’ her wid mud.”

There was not a reply, for the boys knew he was right. The Side Show Spieler hung around a bit, and, with a typhoid smile, remarked that he guessed he’d bow hisself out, and more than that, he did.

“Speakin’ about storms,” said the Boss Canvasman, as he tied a long, running knot in the guy that held the triple bars, “I guess you fellows ’ceptin’ some of the old boys, dunno what it is for a rain an’ a blow. I dun bin circusin’ it for forty year, and, say, I’ve met some blows an’ lightnin’ that no sailor chap ain’t hit, I don’t care how often he’s bin ’round the Horn.”

You couldn’t have looked into the face of that old fellow without believing every word. He was burned brown by every clime, creased and seamed by every frost, and parched and dryed by every wind, and his hands for knots and gnarls had an old oak twice around the track and then past the judges and turf writers, all off and back to the street cars.

“Say, I’m going to tell you fellers sumthin’,” said the Boss, as he sat down and began twisting together a piece of rope that was getting to look like a lion’s tail. The gang was startled, for in the memory of none there never lodged the fact that the Boss Canvasman had been seen to sit down as long as the pole was standing. But he did, and what’s more, he reeled off a yarn.

“Jes, ’fore the war broke out,” he said, “I had enlisted in the First Ohio, I was workin’ down the Valley of Virginia wid a little wagon show doin’ the same kind of work I’se doin’ now, ’cept it was nothin’ but play to this. Funny, too, for six months afore I was down that same valley wid the cavalry cuttin’ into them rebs, an’ I don’t mind telling you they was a cuttin’ us, too, wid Mosby in the woods an’ ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, God knows where.

“Well, we had been doin’ a day an’ a night stand in one of the little towns, an’ had a fourteen mile haul down the pike for the next. We was hopin’ for a moon, not so much to strike by, but for the drive, for the people hadn’t got the roads to right, an’ they was still full of artillery ruts an’ wagon train wrecks. But we pulled off the show, an’ before the last bareback was on I has the menagerie canvas on the wagons, all stakes up and the dens down the road, with the boys leadin’ the elephants and the two camels over the hills. It had been squally like, all night, but I had the round top tightened up so hard that youse could have walked the ropes an’ there was no danger.

“But jes’ as Dutch Andy was playin’ his last piece there was a bust of wind an’ a flash of lightnin’, an’ she began to come down in solid sheets. We gets the people out and gets to work on the tent wall. This peels off in a jiffy, an’ the rain lets up. Then down wid the big top an’ on the wagon. But sumthin’ catches in the riggin’ on the main pole, an’ I sees I has to send me helper up on a climb to get her clear. Everything was gone but the pole wagon and a few side show things, an’ the ’bus we bosses rode in, with four grays pullin’ it. Afore I sends my helper, Jim, a fine boy, what had been a sailor, up the pole, I send four men out to hold her up by hangin’ on the long rope to the far stake. Jim skins up to the top an’ gits her loose, but before he kin git down the gang holdin’ the long guy loses their holt, an’ the pole falls.

“Well, we picks up Jim, an’ he is pretty bad. Ribs in, an’ a lot of cuts. We tried ev’ry house aroun’, but no doctor, though there was one good old lady who gave us some arnicy and strips of bandage she said she’d kept to use on her husband when he got shot up in the Saturday night fights ’bout the tavern. So we piles poor Jim into the ’bus, and drives off easy, while we walks along quiet like an’ sore. Poor Jim, he jes’ groans an’ talks ’bout doin’ his best, an’ I keeps givin’ him liquor to make him forget it.

“But it was all over for Jim, an’ we jes pullin’ out of a clump of woods down by a river when we sees he’s dead. There was no use carryin’ his body long, an’ he didn’t have no people to ship it to, so we decided to give him a decent burial. Two of the stakemen digs the place, an’ we lays poor Jim away under a willow tree. Jes’ then one of the boys speaks up an’ sez:

“‘Say, boys, it don’t seem right to plant Jim without sayin’ sumthin’.’

“But there wasn’t a mother’s son in the crowd knew what to say, though they is all on to what the fellow means. We waits awhile an’ I sez:

“‘Well, there might be a little singin’.’

“An’ I wishes that I had the principal clown there, for he was good on sad songs, ’specially if he’d been boozin’ a little.

“‘Might git the band,’ sez one of the boys.

“‘But the band is way ahead.’ We is all studyin’ like, when over the hills comes the whistling wagon.

“‘Here is the calliope,’ sez one of the stakemen.

“So we stops it, and ‘Reddy’ Cavenaugh, who played the whistles, besides doublin’ for Peter the Great in the street parade, sez he has enough steam on to play a little. We backs the calliope around, an’ three of the boys holds the hosses. Then Reddy played soft like, jes’ as soft as he could, on the whistles, an’ we all lifts our hats.”

“What did he play?” asked the Candy Butcher, as he wiped away a tear with his red cuff.

“Well,” said the Boss Canvasman, “he only knowed two tunes, ‘When Johnny Comes Marchin’ Home’ and ‘The Blue Danube,’ but we planted Jim to both.”

THE SIDE SHOW SPIELER SPEAKS.

The Side Show Spieler was a tall dark man with a sad face. He was clean shaven, wore his hair slightly long and looked like William Jennings Bryan, after the vote was in and counted and the telegraph operators had gone home. He had a deep baritone voice and a vocabulary that was always It. The Spieler carried more education than any man on the pay-roll and it was said that he was the only man in the outfit that could read the Latin names on the animal cages. It was generally supposed that he was one of the better days’ boys, but he never told the story of his past life to any of the gang.

It had started to rain just after the afternoon performance, and as it was the night to strike and haul, the six squatters on the ring bank were silent and sore. The Spieler came in from the menagerie and joined the layout. He never sat down, so he stood for a while in front of the others. No one spoke and he let a little conversation hit the air.

“What’s the matter with you fellows? Sore ’cause it is raining! Don’t see why, you all are under cover. I’ve got to stand out there in front of the tent and talk for dimes.”

“Yes,” said the Boss Canvasman, “and I’ve got this tent to roll up an’ load.

“Well be happy, be happy,” said the Spieler. Then after a pause. “Say, you fellows can help me out a little. The Boss gives me a talk last night, and says while the spiel for the little show is all right and good he wants a new one for the big stands we strikes next week. I’ve been digging up the old talk I used to tear off on the Midway at the Chicago Show and I’ve about studied her out, if youse don’t care I’ll just unroll here an’ see if its the proper josh.”

There was no objection, so the Spieler mounts one of the red painted stools, the object holders stand on for the little lady to jump the banners. Then he serves his spiel:

“And now good people if you will kindly give me your attention for a few moments I will explain to you the great congress of freaks, oddities of mother nature and strange and curious collection of wonders shown in the tent. Remember you have plenty of time, the Big Show does not commence for fully harf an hour. Surely you will not leave the lot until you have seen all--all good people--all provided for you in this monster entertainment, this caravan of canvas covered world sought wonders. Come a little closer. Please. Thank you. First, let me call your attention to a remarkable group of reindeer. We have not one--three--five--or six of these specimens of the animal kingdom, but a whole herd of them--a herd of them--a herd of reindeer from the land of the midnight sun, where there is but one night, one day--reindeers, my friends, from the icy mountains of far away Norway the greatest group ever exhibited in any colossal enterprise that has ever been organized by mortal man.