Girl Alone Part 16

"Sure! but not with a dame like Nita, if I was you! You ain't no match for her. Now, you trot along to the dress tent and rest or cry or say your prayers or anything you want to-except fight!-till show time again.

And for G.o.d's sake, don't turn your back when Nita's around!"

Sally did not see the Hula dancer again that afternoon, for Nita belonged to the "girlie show," which had a tent all its own. To encourage her in her confidence as a crystal-gazer, or rather to bolster up the faith of the skeptical audience, which had somehow become wise to the fact that "Princess Lalla" had "pulled some bones," Gus, the barker, arranged for four or five "schillers"-employes of the carnival, both men and women, dressed to look like members of the audience-to have their fortunes told.

Sally, tipped off by a code signal of Gus's, let her imagination run riot as she read the magic crystal for the "schillers," and to everything she told them they nodded their heads or slapped their thighs in high appreciation, loudly proclaiming that "Princess Lalla" was a wow, a witch, the grandest little fortune-teller in the world. Business picked up amazingly; quarters were thrust upon Gus with such speed that he had to form a line of applicants for "past, present and future" upon Sally's platform.

She did not see David at supper, while she ate in the cook tent after having carried "Pitty Sing," the midget, to the privilege car. Buck, the negro chef of the privilege car grinned at her, but David was nowhere to be seen. Was he "trailin' Nita," as Gus, the barker, had called it?

Jealousy laid a hand of pain about her heart, such a sort of pain that she wanted, childishly, to stop and examine it. It claimed instant fellowship in her heart with that other so-new emotion-love. She wanted all afternoon, until Gus had stopped her heart for a beat or two with his casual reference to David and Nita, to fly to David for comfort, to pour out her news to him. She had heard, in antic.i.p.ation, his softly spoken, tender "Dear little Sally! Don't mind too much. We have each other." So far had her imagination run away with her!

It was the last evening of the carnival in Stanton, and money rolled into the pockets of the concessionaires and the showmen.

"Last chance to see the tallest man on earth and the littlest woman!

Last chance, folks!"

It was already a little old to Sally-the spieler's ballyhoo. She could have repeated it herself. Glamor was fading from the carnival. The dancing girls were not young and beautiful, as they had seemed at first; they had never danced on Broadway in Ziegfeld's Follies; they never would. They were oldish-young women who sneered at the "rubes" and had calluses on the bottoms of their aching feet from dancing on rough board platforms.

Just before the last show Sally wandered out into the midway from the Palace of Wonders, money in her hand which Pop Bybee had advanced to her. But it was lonely "playing the wheels" all by herself, and although Eddie Cobb fixed it so that she won a big Kewpie doll with pink maline skirts and saucy, marcelled red hair, there was little thrill in its possession. When a forlornly weeping little girl stopped her tears to gape covetously at the treasure, Sally gave it up without a pang, and wandered on to the salt water taffy stand, where one of her precious nickels went for a small bag of the tooth-resisting sweet.

She no longer minded or noticed the crowd that collected and followed her-wherever she went; she had become used to it already. The crowd did not interest her, for it did not hold David, who was forced to hide ignominiously in the show train, for fear the heavy hand of a local constable would close menacingly over his shoulder. At the thought Sally shuddered and flung away her taffy. They would be leaving Stanton tonight, leaving danger behind them. It had not occurred to her to ask where the show train was going. But it was going away, away. David could come out of hiding. Bybee had said the authorities in other states wouldn't be interested in a couple of minors who had done nothing worse than "bust a farmer's leg and beat it-"

"What kinda burg is the capital?" she was startled to hear a hot-dog concessionaire call to the ticket-seller for the ferris wheel.

"Pretty good pickin's," the ticket-seller answered. "We run into a spell of bad weather there last year and it was a Jonah town, but it looks good this season. The Kidder says he has to plank down half a grand for the lot-the dirty b.u.ms-them city councillors."

"We're going to the capital next?" Sally leaned over the counter to ask the hot-dog man.

"Sure, kid. Didn't you know? I heard you come from that burg. Old home week for Eddie, too. You and him going out to give the old homestead the once-over?"

Sally did not wait to answer. Although it was almost time for the last show the little red sandals flew toward the side-tracked show train-and David. Her jealousy, even her just-realized love for him, were forgotten. There was only fear-fear of iron bars and shameful uniforms, iron bars which would cage David's superb young body and break his spirit; fear of the reformatory, in which she would again become a dull-eyed unit in a hopeless army, but branded now with a shameful scarlet letter which she did not deserve.

They couldn't go to the capital city where they were both known; they would have to run away again, walk all night through the dark, fugitives from "justice."

"Poor kid!" David consoled her after her first almost hysterical outburst. "I can't talk to you now, and you shouldn't be here. You've got to go back for your last performance. The show has to go on. They've been decent to us, and we can't throw them over without warning."

"But David, we've got to run away again!" Sally whimpered, clinging to both his arms, bare to the shoulders in antic.i.p.ation of his work in helping to load the carnival for its thirty-mile drag to the capital.

"We can't go back to Capital City! We'll be caught! Listen, David-"

"Go back to your show tent," David commanded her sternly. "I'll be working pretty late helping to load up, but I'll whistle a bar from 'Always' under your Pullman window. We all sleep on the train tonight, and pull out for Capital City some time before morning. We pick up the engine at three o'clock, I believe. Plenty of time then to decide what to do." He shook her a little to make her stop shivering and whimpering with fear. "Buck up, honey! I'm not going to let the police get you; neither is Pop Bybee. Dear little Sally!" and he stooped from his great height to brush the tip of her short, brown-powdered nose with his lips.

During the last performance in the Palace of Wonders a village constable, his star shining importantly from the lapel of his Palm Beach suit, sauntered leisurely through the tent, eyeing the freaks with skeptical amus.e.m.e.nt and asking all the Smart-Aleck questions which the more timid members of the carnival crowd longed to ask and did not dare.

"Bet you wouldn't let me put any of that gla.s.s you're eatin' in my coffee," he guffawed to the ostrich man whom Gus, the barker, was ballyhooing at the moment. "I'm on to all you guys. Rock candy, ain't it?"

"Sure, officer," Gus interrupted his spiel to answer deferentially.

"Won't you have a little snack with the human ostrich? I particularly recommend these nails. Boffo eats only the choicest sixpenny nails; will accept no subst.i.tutes. And if a nail's rusty, out with it! Sort of an epicure, Boffo is! Have a handful of gla.s.s and nails with Boffo, officer! Bighearted, that Boffo!"

The constable refused hastily and the crowd roared with delight. The discomfited officer of the law ambled over to make his disparaging inspection of Jan, the giant from Holland.

"Pull up your pants legs and let me see your stilts," the constable ordered authoritatively. "I ain't the sucker you guys think I am. I'm on to your tricks-been going to carnivals man and boy for fifty years."

With his eyes as remote and sad and patient as if he had not heard or understood a word of the constable's insult, Jan obeyed, rolling his trousers to the knees. When the Doubting Thomas representative of the law had pinched the pale, putty-colored flesh of Jan's pitifully thin calves and found them to be flesh-and-blood indeed, he pa.s.sed on, red of face, furious at the snorts of laughter which filled the tent.

"What if he takes a notion to wash my face?" Sally shivered, bending low, in an att.i.tude of mystic concentration, over the crystal which she was pretending to read for a farmer's wife who had no interest in Boffo, the human ostrich, but who did have perfect faith in the powers of "Princess Lalla." "What if he is just pretending to be interested in the other freaks and is really looking for me? Has Nita dared to tip him off that Sally Ford is here?"

But her little sing-song voice droned on, predicting prosperity and happiness and "a journey by land and sea" for the credulous farmer's wife.

"What's your real name, sister?" the constable demanded loudly, officiously, stamping up the steps that led to the little platform.

"Please," Sally pleaded prettily, making her eyes wide and cloudy with mystic visions, "do not een-terr-upt! The veesion she will go away!"

"You let her alone, Sam Pelton!" the farmer's wife commanded tartly. "Go on, Princess Lalla. I think you're just wonderful-knowing about my mother being dead and even her name and all."

And Sally continued the reading with Constable Pelton breathing audibly upon her neck as she bent her small head gravely over the crystal. When she could think of nothing else to tell the highly pleased woman, she was desperate. It seemed to her that everyone in the tent was looking at her, reading panic in her trembling fingers, in her fluttering eyelids.

"Gimme a knockdown to my past, present and future, Sister," the constable suggested with heavy sarcasm and jocularity. "Reckon an officer of the law don't have to pay. And you'd better make it a good one, or I'll run you in for obtaining money under false pretenses. Come on, now! Miz Holtzman has already give you a good tip-off, and I guess my star speaks for itself. Knowing my name and my business, you oughta be able to fake a pretty good line for me, but if you don't tell me my wife's name, how many kids I got, where I come from, and anything else I'm a-mind to ask you, I'll make you a present of free board and lodging at the county's expense."

Unknown to Sally, whose eyes were fixed, blind with fear, upon the crystal tightly cupped in her ice-cold palms, Gus, the barker, had drawn near enough to hear the constable's threats and demands.

"Sure, officer!" he boomed heartily, to Sally's amazement, "just ask the little lady anything you like. She sees all, knows all. Step right up, folks, and hear Princess Lalla, favorite crystal-gazer to the Sultan of Turkey before she escaped from his harem, tell your fellow-townsman, Constable Sam Pelton, the truth, the whole truth and something besides the truth-a few things that are going to happen to him that Officer Sam don't yet dream of! Step right up, folks! Don't be bashful! Step up and get an earful about your esteemed fellow-townsman and officer of the law-"

Sally felt the ice melting slowly in her veins. Dear Gus! He was stalling, gaining time, subtly frightening the constable, whose face had gone redder and redder, whose eyes glanced with furtive unease from the crystal to the grinning faces of his "fellow-townsmen," who apparently had no great love for Constable Sam Pelton.

Then that which Gus had arranged by means of a code signal took place.

Two "schillers," hastily summoned by a carnival employe, suddenly broke into loud curses and sharp, slapping blows which echoed in the instantly quiet tent.

"Pick my pocket, would you?" the raucous voice of a "schiller" demanded between slaps and punches. "I seen you-sneakin' your hand in my pocket!"

Constable Pelton, glad to be able to a.s.sert his authority, glad also, possibly, to escape a too intimate revelation of his past, bounded from the platform, collared the fighting "schillers," and dragged them triumphantly away.

When the last stragglers of the carnival crowd had been ushered rather unceremoniously from the tent, Sally rose from her chair and pattered swiftly to where Gus, the barker, stood talking with Pop Bybee, owner and manager of Bybee's Bigger and Better Carnival.

"Thank you, Gus! I was scared nearly to death! It was wonderful the way you stalled along till those two rubes-" she was already becoming familiar with carnival lingo-"got into a fight. Wasn't it lucky for me they did?" she added naively.

"h.e.l.l, kid!" Gus grinned at her and tilted his derby more rakishly over his left eye. "It was a frame-up. Them's our boys. The guy that pretended to have his pocket picked will swear he made a mistake, and the worst old Sam can do is to have 'em fined for disorderly conduct.

I'll square it with 'em, and they'll be in Capital City by show-time tomorrow."

Pop Bybee chuckled richly, his bright, pale-blue eyes gleaming in the lobster-red expanse of his old face. "Didn't I tell you, child, that the law couldn't touch you long as you stuck with the carnival? Dave tells me you're babbling about running away again because we're hitting the trail for your home town tonight. You stick, Sally. Pop Bybee and Gus and the rest of us will take care of you."

Sally's lips parted to tell him of Nita's threat if she did not relinquish her claim upon David's love and friendship, but before the first word tumbled out, the old inhibition against tattling, taught her in the stern school of life in an orphanage, restrained her.

"You're all so good to me," she choked, then turned abruptly away to where "Pitty Sing," the midget, was impatiently awaiting her human sedan-chair.

"I don't want to influence you unduly," the midget piped in her prim, high little voice, "but Mr. Bybee and Gus are right. You are safer with the carnival than anywhere else in the state, and if you ran away I should be very sorry. I like you, Sally. I like you very much."

The dress tent was taken down by the "white hopes" almost before the women performers had had time to change from show clothes to nightgowns and kimonos. By twelve o'clock the lot was as bare of tents and booths and ferris wheels and motordromes and "whips" and merry-go-rounds as if those mechanical symbols of joy and fun had never existed.