Part 4

“I told him that he ought to have refused to fight, and it would have made the other little boy ashamed,” informed your mother.

“By all means,” approved your father.

Coming from your mother, the advice, while of course absurd, had not seemed so strange; after all, she never had been a boy, and girls didn’t fight; but your father’s traitorous acquiescence goaded you to desperation.

“Did _you_ ever da’sn’t back it when you were a boy like me, papa?” you appealed; and although you were not fully cognizant of the fact, you had him hip and thigh.

He glanced at your mother, and had you been looking at him instead of still eying your plate, you would have seen his mouth twitch in a funny way.

“You do as mama says. She’s always right,” he answered, and you had a dim suspicion that he was begging the question.

The little encounter between Ted and you was described much more quickly than it had occurred. The duello as practised in your corps did not admit of undue precipitancy in falling to blows. A certain amount of palaver was obligatory first—an exchange of witticism and defiance, beyond which, as often as not, one did not proceed.

When Ted had tripped you, and you had angrily accused him of having done it on purpose, he had denied it just as angrily:

“Didn’t, neither!”

“Did’t, either!” said you.

“Didn’t, neither!” said he.

“Did’t, either!” said you.

“Didn’t, neither. You’re a liar!” said he.

“Did’t, either. You’re another!” said you.

“You’re another ’nother!” said he.

“You’re twice as big as anything you can call me!” said you—a crusher, and quite unanswerable.

“You’re twice as big as that, an’ you da’sn’t back it!” said he, also scoring a point.

“He says you da’sn’t back it! Ya-a-a-a-ah! he says you da’sn’t back it!” gibed the boys about you, glorying in the crisis.

Ted and you were now uncomfortably in the center of a circle which was ever being increased by the jubilant cries of “Fight! Fight!” which summoned spectators from all quarters.

“G’wan an’ back it! You can lick him!” urged your supporters.

“Aw, he’s ’fraid to! He’s ’fraid to!” scoffed your rivals.

Ted and you, grimy fists doubled, not knowing exactly what to do, faced each other. Neither of you wanted to fight. Fighting was being forced upon you. You were to amuse the pitiless crowd.

“I ain’t, either, afraid,” you asserted sullenly.

“I wouldn’t let him trip _me_ up that way, you bet,” inspired a friend on your right, boldly.

“An’ call me a liar an’ everything!” added a friend on your left.

Oh, how solicitous of your honor were they who were not to do the fighting!

“He _is_ a liar if he says I tripped him on purpose,” stoutly reiterated Ted, slightly qualifying his former blunt statement.

“You’re another!” you returned. “Anyhow, it _looked_ as if you tripped me on purpose.”

You, likewise, were hedging a mite.

“There! He called _you_ a liar, too!” admonished the circle to Ted.

“Then he’s another, an’ he da’sn’t back it,” responded Ted, grimly performing his duty.

This harmless verbal fencing might have been continued up to the very present, and the ethics of the duello not have been violated, had not some over-zealous enthusiast pushed Ted and you together, with the result that, in fending each other off, you, according to the eager verdict of the highly observant critics, “backed it,” and he hit you, simultaneously; whereupon, not seeing anything else left to do, at each other you went like a couple of jumping-jacks, until (fortunately, you held, for Ted) the approach of the man caused him to be removed from on top of you.

Flushed, excited, and disheveled, you went your way; and flushed, excited, and disheveled, Ted went his way. Throughout your route, you and your babbling escorts, with many a “Gee!” and “Darn!” discoursed upon what you had done, and what Ted had not done, and what would have happened had the fight lasted only a minute longer.

Loudly you wrangled with them as to which got the worst of it, quite blind to the fact, which now you are free to acknowledge, that the one who got the worst of it was your mother, for she had to mend your clothes.

She was always getting the worst of it. She was the unlucky non-combatant.

The duello produced the best of feeling between Ted and you. Fights were for mutual benefit. Swelling dignity and biceps so demanded expression that they could not forever be gratified by merely playfully poking chums in the ribs.

Therefore it is plain why, when a friend mischievously reported to you, “Say, Speck says he can lick you,” it was all that was required. Like to a strutting cockerel who hears a distant crow, you bristled in answer.

“He can’t, either. I can lick him with one hand tied behind my back.”

Fast flew the news to Speck, and Speck promptly resented the slur, as he should. The boys of the neighborhood were pleased.

Now you, and likewise Speck, are the objects of much flattering attention. You let your following feel your muscle, and they let you feel theirs, and you are firmly convinced that yours is the hardest. Also, you are convinced that you have a great knack at fisticuffs, and are the inventor of a peculiar, irresistible blow which you deliver, the knuckle of the middle finger carefully protruded, under your warding left arm. More or less secretly you have demonstrated it while “fooling” with your companions.

You can chin yourself six times, and you are, in valor and strength, a boy wonder.

Your companions favor you with adulation to a degree compatible with their own self-respect; for most of them, too, are boy wonders.

Well as Speck and you are satisfied with bravado and careful avoidance of each other, it is inevitable that you meet.

“There’s Speck—see? Come on; _you_ ain’t afraid of _him_!”

You have committed yourself too far for graceful retreat, and in the midst of your crowd you advance boldly to join Speck and his crowd.

The rival clans come together and mingle, but Speck and you pretend not to see each other.

“John says he can lick you, Speck!”

Yes, you have said so, but it was under provocation of, presumably, a direct challenge from him. However, the duello does not thrive on explanations, and Speck and you are in the hands of your friends.

The all-engaging topic has been broached. Speck apparently does not hear. Maybe the matter will be dropped. But no.

“He says he can lick you with one hand—aw, Speck!”

“He can’t, though,” defends Speck.

“Speck says he can’t, either,” obligingly announces his backers.

“Well, he can, I bet you.”

“Bet you he can’t.”

“He’ll show him whether he can or not.”

“Huh! I’d just like to see him once!”

You find yourself hustled forward and set against Speck, who in like manner has been pressed to the front. Your hands hang limply by your side; so do Speck’s. You feel very tame and pale and artificial; not a whit mad; not a whit like fighting. The pugnacity is your seconds’.

Somebody laboriously balances a small block on Speck’s shoulder.

“Knock that off, if you dare,” bids a Speck chorus.

“I will if I want to,” you assert.

“Well, do it, then!” invites Speck.

“I will if I want to.”

“Well, do it, then!”

“I will if I want to.”

You strive to work up steam by biting your lips, and raising your voice, and spitting ferociously into the dust; you are assisted by the irritating shoves bestowed upon you from behind.

“Well, do it, then!”

“I will if I want to.”

Impatient fingers supply you also with a gage of defiance, an impertinent sliver laid athwart your collarbone.

“Now let’s see Speck knock _that_ off!”

Speck disdainfully lifts his hand and brushes the offending chip to the ground.

“Hit him, John!”

“Don’t you stand that!”

“There!” you say, tapping him gently on the breast.

“There!” he answers, tapping you a little harder.

“There!” you return, tapping him harder still.

“There!” he retaliates, tapping you yet harder.

Then with a final “There!” that breaks through all restraint, and amid shrill, rapturous cheers, two pairs of arms begin to whirl with wild rapidity, the sole thought of their owners being a blind offense according to hit-who-hit-can rules.

The engagement did not last long. A horrified and meddlesome old lady interfered, and after informing you both many times that “little boys shouldn’t fight,” your temperature down again to normal, she sent you off with your disappointed encouragers, while she conscientiously watched you out of sight.

Up to date the question whether you can lick Speck or Speck can lick you is no further settled. Henceforth the spirit of amity prevailed between you. Mettle had been proved, the fight had been fought, and now somebody else must furnish entertainment.

Although victory, actual or prospective, of course never was doubtful (either you were winning, or the other fellow was winning, according as to which did the telling), at some times it appeared to a spectator more decisive than at others.

You were feeling very spunky that noon when amid your preserves you descried a stranger boy; but civilly you challenged him. One may witness two bluff but wary fox-terriers thus approach each other, accost, and investigate.

“Hello!” you wagged; that is, said.

“Hello, yourself!” wagged he.

“Say—what’s your name?” you inquired, as you had every right to do.

“Puddin’ tame; ask me again, an’ I’ll tell you the same,” he replied insolently.

At the unmerited rebuff you stiffened.

“Better not give _me_ any of your sass!” you growled.

“Pooh! What’ll _you_ do!” he growled back.

“I’ll show you what I’ll do.”

“You couldn’t hurt a flea.”

“I couldn’t, couldn’t I?”

“Naw, you couldn’t, ‘couldn’t I.’”

Walking circles around each other, after this fashion you and he sowed crimination and recrimination, while larger and larger waxed an audience hopeful of seeing them spring up as blows.

Only when the flurry came did you discover too late how much taller and stronger and older than you he was. Your bleeding nose showed this to you; and cowed and weeping, you retreated in bad order.

“I’ll tell my big brother, an’ _he_’ll fix you!” you howled threateningly.

“Aw, he ain’t got any big brother,” jeered the heartless crowd, who saw no pathos in your abused organ.

That was true; you had none.

“I’ll tell my father, then,” you wailed angrily—another empty boast; and still sniffling and, fearsomely gory, with the handkerchiefs of yourself and your one faithful companion quite exhausted, you reached the haven of a friendly pump.

Yet you had not been whipped—not exactly.

“Got licked, didn’t you?” unkindly commented various friends and enemies.

“I didn’t, either!” you asserted, indignant. “I had to quit ’cause my nose was bleedin’. It takes more’n him to lick me.”

“He gave you a bloody nose just the samee.”

You would not admit so much as that.

“He didn’t, either; he never touched my nose. It bleeds awful easy. It bleeds sometimes when you just _look_ at it—don’t it, Hen?”

THE CIRCUS

THE CIRCUS

TIME: When “You” were a Boy PLACE: Up-stairs in Hen’s Barn

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

HEN SCHMIDT, Proprietor and Ringmaster YOU, Proprietor and Contortionist BILLY LUNT, Trapeze and Tumbling TOM KEMP, Trapeze and Juggling NIXIE KEMP, Trapeze and Tight Rope FAT DAY, Clown SNOOPIE MITCHELL, Everything

ADMISSION—Ten Pins to All, including Grand Menagerie

THE CIRCUS

CIRCUS was in the air. Circus had been in the air for some time, exhaled broadcast by village billboards and fences, and the fronts and exposed sides of numerous buildings. Breathing this atmosphere, small wonder is it that you and your compatriots were circus-crazy, and cared not who knew it.

The circus came. From half-past four, in the pink of the dawn, until nightfall, it was given your unremitting aid and presence—the two in one. Your fellows were equally assiduous. Nothing that might be done outside the tent was left undone; nothing that might be inspected was overlooked. As for the inside, some of your friends penetrated, like yourself, with the escort of father, mother, uncle, brother, or neighbor; some, like Snoopie Mitchell, “snuk under”; but all were there.

The circus went. Behind it remained, as evidences of its visit, the still contagious bills; one more welt in the shape of a ring, added to the other similar but older welts upon the face of that historic pasture patch; and a burning ambition in the breast of every youth.

Now witness each back yard a training-school for tumblers, trapeze-experts, weight-slingers, jugglers, bareback-riders, and tight-rope walkers. Right among the foremost were _you_.

“Hen and me are goin’ to have a circus,” you vouchsafed importantly at the family board.

“Hen and who?” queried father, quizzically.

“Hen and _me_.” Why fuss with grammar, when greater things were impending? It is not what one says, but what one does, that counts: at least, according to your copy-book at school, in which you had laboriously written, “Deeds, not Words,” twenty times.

“We’re goin’ to give it in Hen’s barn, and you and mama’ve got to come.”

“I don’t know that I can get away, having just been to one,” stated father, gravely. “I didn’t expect another so soon.”

“_I_’ll come,” comforted mother. “When is it?”

“We dunno yet; but everybody that gets in has got to bring ten pins—and bent ones don’t count, either. Hen’s mother’s comin’.”

“Do you think we can spare ten pins?” inquired mother of father.

The idea seemed preposterous to you, with a whole cushion bristling on the bedroom bureau; but nevertheless you awaited, with considerable anxiety, father’s reply.

“I guess so,” answered father. “But members of the performers’ families ought to go in free. How’s that, John?”

You shook your head decidedly. Such a suggestion must be nipped in the bud.

“_Naw_, sir! Everybody has to pay!”

* * * * *

There was no dearth of performers; they were as plenty as ball-players, and you had an embarrassing number of volunteers, who offered themselves as soon as the news of your circus spread through the neighborhood.

Snoopie Mitchell was among the earliest.

“Say, I’ll be in your circus,” he proposed. “I can skin the cat twice, an’ do the giant’s swing, an’ turn flip-flops both ways, an’—”

“Pooh! That’s nothin’. So can I,” scoffed Hen.

“You can’t, neither!” contradicted Snoopie. “Le’ ’s see you, now.”

Hen obligingly cut a caper.

“Aw, gee!” sneered the redoubtable Snoopie, in high scorn. “That ain’t no hand-spring! That’s a cart-wheel! Anybody can turn a cart-wheel! Aw, gee! Lookee here! Here’s the way _you_ did.” He demonstrated. “Lookee!”—and again he demonstrated.—“_That’s_ a reg’lar hand-spring.”

“Well—I can do it, only my back’s lame,” faltered the abashed Hen. “And I can skin the cat, too. Can’t I, John?”

You nodded.

“But I’ve skun it twice, an’ John’s seen me, haven’t you, John?” trumpeted Snoopie.

You nodded confirmation to this, also.

“Yep,” you said; “he did, Hen; truly he did.”

“Without changin’ hands?” insisted Hen.

“Of course,” asserted Snoopie.

Snoopie was accepted.

Tom Kemp and Nixie Kemp were organizing a circus of their own, but consented to be in yours if you’d be in theirs.

Over Billy Lunt occurred almost a fight, because a rival company set up the claim that he had promised them; but by bribe of a jews’-harp he was won to your side. Fat Day was asked chiefly on account of his pair of white rats, which would prove a valuable addition to the prospective menagerie.

“If you’ll lemme be clown, I’ll bring ’em,” consented Fat.

“But John he’s clown,” explained Hen.

This was true. Before advertising for talent, Hen had preempted ringmaster, and you, clown, as the choice positions, which was only the part of ordinary discretion.

“I tell you, Fat: you can be fat boy, and wiggle your ears and make folks laugh,” suggested Hen, eagerly.

“Uh-uh! If I can’t be clown, I won’t be nothin’,” declared Fat. “An’ you can’t have my white rats, either.”

Hen looked at you dubiously.

“All right. I don’t care. Let him,” you assented moodily, kicking up the dirt with your toe.

“You can be one clown, Fat, and John’ll be the other,” proffered Hen, with fine diplomacy. “And you and he can make b’lieve fight, and things. We ought to have two clowns, you know.”

But the glowing picture of the two clowns did not appeal to Fat’s imagination.

“Naw,” he whined. “If anybody else is goin’ to be clown, _I_ don’t want to.”

Accordingly Fat was awarded the clownship, and you said you’d just as lief be contortionist, which he _couldn’t_ be.

Clowns were really a drug on the market. Not a boy but aspired to the chair, and it required no little tact to steer them into other lines.

The organization, as finally effected, was as follows:

Hen, ringmaster.

You, contortionist.

Billy, who could hang by his toes and do other things on the trapeze, and who, as a tumbler, could stand on his head (sometimes) without touching his hands.

Tom, who could do things on the trapeze, and who was a juggler learning to keep three balls going in the air.

Nixie, who also could do things on the trapeze, and who was an aspiring (and at times almost an _ex_piring) clothes-line walker.

Fat, who could wiggle his ears.

Snoopie, indefatigable, marvelous, a genius of one suspender, whom a special providence seemed to have endowed.

Menagerie (in prospect): Don, your dog; Snap, the Kemps’ dog; Lunt’s cat; Fat’s white rats; Hen’s “bantie” rooster.

A rehearsal was not only unnecessary, but impracticable as well; that is, a rehearsal in company. However, individual practice went on daily, and not a member of the troupe but emulated the most daring feats produced under Barnum’s tent, as could be testified to by the most casual observer, and by that emergency Band of Mercy, the Sisterhood of Mothers, adepts with court-plaster and needle.

“Oh, John!” sighed your own mother. “How _do_ you manage to tear your pants so! This is the third time, and in the very same place! Can’t you be careful?”

“I’m practisin’ splits,” you offered.

“‘Splits’?” repeated mother, densely ignorant.

“Yes. You straddle, and you keep on straddlin’, and see how near you can come to sittin’; and you’ve got to get up again without usin’ your hands. There was a man and woman and little girl and boy no bigger ’n me in the circus that could go clear down till they touched. I can ’most do it.”

“John!” exclaimed mother, in horror. Then she noted something else. “And your waist, too!”

You condescended to explain farther.

“Yes; I tumbled off the trapeze when I was swingin’. Look here!” Pulling up your sleeve you proudly exhibited an elbow. It was an elbow that earned you distinction among your comrades, although Nixie had a knee which he boasted was “skinned” much worse.

The date of the circus was set for Wednesday afternoon, and that morning a show-bill, tacked upon the Schmidt front gate-post, announced it to all the world.

All the little girls of the neighborhood were by turns flippant and wheedling, and boys, your rivals, were positively libelous in their derision.

Schmidt’s barn-loft had long been empty of hay and tenanted chiefly by spiders and rats and mice. It was a splendid place for the circus, a commodious tent being lacking.

Throughout the morning you and Hen, assisted by your associate performers, labored like fury, a profound secrecy enveloping your operations. No one except Billy’s small brother (he having sacredly been sworn “not to tell,” an investiture of confidence that gave him a decided strut) was admitted to gaze upon the advance proceedings; but the noise of hammering and other preparations was carried afar, together with a cloud of dust out of the open loft door.

“Where was your parade?” asked father at noon, when, hot and excited and somewhat grimy, you feverishly attacked your well-heaped plate.

“Didn’t have any,” you mumbled. “Fat wouldn’t let us take his rats out on the street, ’cause he said they’d get away; and, besides, we didn’t have wagons enough for all the cages.”

But to the timid inquiries of the little girls during the morning you had replied boldly:

“There ain’t goin’ to be any parade. Of course there ain’t! Do you s’pose we’re goin’ to let everybody see what we got?”

At half-past one o’clock the public was invited to ascend. The ticket-taker was Billy’s small brother aforesaid, and never was receiving-teller of a national bank more vigilant or particular.

“You didn’t gimme only nine!” he would accuse shrilly. “You didn’t, either! You didn’t, either! You’ve got to gimme another pin or you sha’n’t come in!”

“I gave you ten! I did! I did! Didn’t I, Susie? You dropped one.”

Peace would be restored by the number being made up through the prodigality of a friend, and the ruffled damsel would pass in.

Your mother and Hen’s mother, and your hired girl, and the Schmidt hired girl arrived together, their appearance causing a flurry and contributing to the circus the importance due it. Mrs. Schmidt panted heavily after the toilsome climb,—she was a large, short-winded woman,—and, choosing a seat near the door, fanned herself vigorously.

A few boys, after poking their heads above the floor and grinningly surveying the scene, ended by trooping in with apologetic and bantering mien. But in the main the spectators were feminine.

The amphitheater, constructed of boards laid across boxes, in two lines, slowly filled. As the etiquette of the profession required that circus-performers not be seen until the time for their act, you and Hen and the other stars remained in close seclusion, huddled in the dressing-room—the far corner, veiled by a calico curtain (from the Schmidt clothes-press) tacked to convenient rafters. Meanwhile the public might enjoy the collection arrayed at one side of the loft, where was conspicuously exposed the sign, in white chalk: “Managerie.”

In a soap-box with slats across the front wrathfully crouched Lunt’s gaunt gray Thomas-cat, who had been rudely awakened from a matutinal slumber in the Lunt cellar and ignominiously confined. At regular intervals he uttered an appealing, protesting “Yow!” while he glared through his bars.

Next to him was Hen’s red “bantie,” also in a soap-box, but more composed.

Then came Don, for whom no cage procurable was ample enough; so he was tied to a nail, which afforded him liberty to fawn impartially upon old and young, and occasionally to make frantic endeavors to reach you in the dressing-room.

Next to him was Snap, the Kemps’ black-and-tan, miserable in close quarters; and at the end of the row, quaking in abject terror over the proximity of so many enemies, were Fat’s precious white rats.

“Is _that_ all the m’nag’rie you kids got? Aw, gee!” sneered the invidious boys among the spectators.

“It’s more’n _you_ got, anyhow!” you and Hen retorted from your covert.

“Don’t you touch those rats!” commanded Fat, with a jealous eye out for meddling fingers. “They’re my rats.”

It was very hard restraining the members of the troupe in their quarters until time was ripe. Fat, his face streaked in red and white water-colors, and wearing a costume devised by his mother from large-figured calico, was wild to exhibit himself; and Snoopie, bursting with prowess, demanded careful watching or he would anticipate the program.

“Stay in here, darn you! You’ve all got to wait till the ringmaster says to come.”