The Wit and Humor of America Volume VIII Part 29

"Oh, yes, Gib--oh, yes, you can. They won't--" Aunt Huldah's voice sank to a murmur, which Troy Gilbert answered with a shake of the head.

"Well, ef they do see anything, they'll keep still--my chil'en are trained to mind; and these others are all good people;" and Aunt Huldah beamed upon the palpitating, expectant, alarmed little band.

"Keep still!"--what an awful phrase for such a connection! Gilbert turned and asked them kindly, "Will you, kids? Will you keep right still, whatever you see?"

Only Gess and Tell were bold enough to put the horror into words.

"'Tain't no use fer us to promise," Gess said huskily. "We're jest bound to holler when the fireworks begins to go off, even if we had promised cross-yer-heart."

And Tell piped in, after him, as usual:

"W'y, a circus is jest hollerin'--or some hollerin' is the best part of a circus." And he added, with a suspicious tremble in his voice, "I'd rather go downstairs an' set in the kitchen, if we can't holler."

Troy burst out laughing at sight of the dejected faces.

"Oh, holler all you want to--holler as much as you can--I don't mean hollerin'. I expect to do some pretty considerable hollerin' myself, and I've got a lot of the boys promised to holler at the right time.

But there's to be a little--a little extra performance up here on the roof, and if you see anything queer about it, you mustn't let on--you mustn't tell."

"That's all right," a.s.sured Aunt Huldah, turning to descend the narrow little stairway. "They'll do jest as you tell 'em, Gib. Mind you don't tip them soap boxes over an' fall off'n the roof, chil'en. Sissy, you keep tight hold of Ally's hand--she's apt to fly when the big performance comes;" and Aunt Huldah's rich, mellow, chuckling laugh came back to them up the stairs.

One would have said that nothing on earth could make matters more glorious to the children of the Wagon-Tire House on this Fourth of July evening; but after Troy Gilbert's words, they trod not upon the earthen roof of the hotel, but on air; they sat not upon soap boxes, but on thrones.

Nay, kings were small people compared to them. There was to be a mysterious extra performance, in which the sheriff was implicated; it would take place under their very noses, and they were asked to a.s.sist, to keep still about it!

Gilbert had said truly: the crowd was a big one, and most enthusiastic.

As a matter of fact, there were nearly a hundred cowboys on hand who had been let into Gilbert's scheme. The fireworks were equally successful whether they blazed splendidly or fizzled ingloriously. It was enough for the boys that Troy Gilbert was doing the act; they whooped at every figure, and whooped again at Troy's unaccustomed drollery.

There was a strain of intense expectancy in the audience, communicated, though without their knowledge, to those not in the secret from those who were; so that the crowd was wildly eager, without altogether knowing why.

After the display of pin-wheels, fiery serpents, bouquets, Roman candles and rockets, old Frosty and Mrs. Frosty (otherwise the Signorina Ippolita di Castelli) came on the small platform to do their knife-throwing-act, the knives trailing fiery tails. This kept the audience entertained during the time necessary to prepare the Columbia act.

"Bet you'd be scared to do that," whispered Eddie Beach.

"Bet I wouldn't," Gess made answer. "I'd jest as soon sling them old knives--Mr. La Rue said me an' Tell was likely boys to train. I bet Ally'd hold as still as the Signorina 'f I was to throw them knives at her."

For the Columbia performance Gilbert had, during the day, stretched another wire about five feet and three inches above the big wire on which Minnie was to walk. Indeed, it was this secondary wire which had caused the eruption of old Frosty demanding to "know."

When the knife-throwing act was finished, there was a short pause followed by a little murmur of applause; and this grew louder and louder, until it was a medley of whoops, yells, stamping, and calls in every tone and key for the next act--the grand stroke of the performance. Frosty and the Signorina forbore to go upon the roof of the Roundup to receive Minnie, until they should see her start from the roof of the hotel.

Figures were seen upon the top of the Wagon-Tire House (both roofs were flat) and Frosty strained his eyes eagerly toward that end of the big wire. The wondering children drew back and refrained even from whispering among themselves--Troy's caution was not needed. Strange doings, indeed, were going forward about the end of the wire. Troy Gilbert was apparently pushing a reluctant figure toward it--it looked as though the person were tied, and he laughed and struck her when she seemed unwilling.

Finally, Columbia began to move out slowly along the wire. She was everything that audience or proprietor could desire. The spiked tiara was on her head, blazing with violet light. Down her back hung her fair curling hair; in her hands was the long balancing pole--Columbia's scepter of power; and her white draperies were illuminated with fires of blue and crimson and violet.

The children stared, silent, motionless, expectant. They were nearer than those in the street and had had opportunity to observe the irregularity of Columbia's launching.

There was a little outburst of applause when she first appeared. But as she moved out over the wire, the silence was so complete that the coughing of one of the patient ponies on the outskirts of the crowd was plainly audible.

Those in the secret were silent, in ecstasies of admiration. The children kept still because they had been told to--whatever they saw.

Those not instructed were mute with amazement--a sort of creeping awe.

Most of the audience had seen Minnie that afternoon in the tent-show, her slender girlish form clad in spangled gauze, her delicate blonde prettiness enhanced by the attire, doing her trapeze act. She had then moved with the lithe grace of a young deer; her face had been all eager animation. What sort of thing was this, that seemed to advance along the wire as though it were on casters--that was never seen to take a step?

What face was this, strange, staring, immobile as a face carved in wood?

"Gee!" murmured one of the X Q K boys, who had come in late and was uninformed. "Gee, I ain't been a-drinkin' a thing--what in the name o'

pity ails that gal!"

"Great Scott; she gives me the mauley-grubs! Ugh!" and his companion shivered. But save for these murmured comments, the crowd was intensely still.

Suddenly, about the middle of the street, Columbia's forward movement slackened, checked altogether. This was not unexpected, for midway the rockets fastened about her waist, and upon her crown were to be discharged. The manner in which these latter went off brought shrieks and groans from the crowd below. They fizzed up into Columbia's face, they burned against her bodice, they struck her arms. "Oh! oh! Poor soul! she'll have her eyes put out! She'll be killed!" cried a woman's voice from the street.

"I might 'a' known better than to trust that fool Gilbert with them fireworks," groaned old Frosty. "That there girl is worth more'n a hundred dollars a month to me. If I was to take her East I could hire her out for two hundred, easy, an' here she's likely to get all crippled up, so's't she won't never be no account."

Columbia was the only personage unmoved by all the fiery demonstrations; she stood rigid, looking strangely ma.s.sive and tall, till the last rocket had spent itself. Then her progress began again with a sort of jerk. A shudder went over her frame, the pole wavered in her hands--those hands that seemed so limp and lifeless--she tottered, made a violent movement with her head, then swayed out sidewise and fell--holding the pole tight in her hands!

And the strangest sound went up from that big a.s.sembly, a mingled sound of groans and smothered outcries, and also what one might have sworn--had it not seemed impossible--was wild hysteric laughter.

Gess and Tell and Eddie Beach, luxuriating in Troy's permission to "holler as much as they pleased," emitted shrieks that would have chilled the blood of any whom this strange spectacle had not already terrified.

For, instead of falling to the ground twenty feet below, as would have been natural, and lying there, a mangled body, Columbia hung to the wire, a mad, fantastic, incredible spectacle, head downward, in a blaze of inverted patriotic splendor!

The wildest confusion ensued. Frosty was beside himself. He simply danced and yelled where he stood. Those who were in the secret shouted themselves hoa.r.s.e with rapture, capering like dervishes, embracing one another; those who were not, screamed with horror and dismay.

As all gazed fascinated, something drifted down from the hanging figure.

A cowboy plunged forward, caught it up, and there broke upon the sudden stillness which had followed this incident, a roar of hearty laughter, as he held high in the blaze of light that came from the pendent figure, Columbia's wooden-seeming countenance--a false face!

Instantly, the shouting and confusion broke out again. The figure began to sway; and the light draperies were ignited by some bit of fire which had been brought into contact with them, by the inversion of Columbia's proper position.

The figure showed that, beyond the streaming golden hair--the beautiful fair hair which Aunt Huldah had cut from Daisy's head, and which Daisy had given with loving generosity--and the stuffed-out waist of Columbia's cla.s.sic robe, the only anatomy Columbia possessed was an upright post with a wheel at the bottom--a caster indeed!--which had run upon the big wire.

At the top of Columbia's head there had been another wheel, which ran, trolley-like, upon the upper wire; and a slender wire traveling along the lower, or footway wire, had drawn the figure forward.

Some obstacle had been met in the overhead wire; and when the figure was jerked forward, harder and harder, to overcome this, the upper attachment finally gave way entirely and allowed the figure to fall.

Only Gilbert's precaution of looping a heavy wire from axle to axle of the lower wheel around the footway wire, had prevented Columbia from falling to the ground.

As the explanation began to spread over the crowd--not in whispers, but in shouts, mingled with roars of laughter--those who had been instructed beforehand pressed round old Frosty and the Signorina in a dense ma.s.s.

Threats, complaints, demands, all sorts of outcries filled the air.

"You old fakir!"

"What do you mean by it, Frosty?"

"Do you think you're a-goin' to run a blazer like this on us, and we'll swaller hit like hit was catnip tea?"

"What fer did ye want to fool us thataway?"

"We ain't a-goin' to stand it--we'll----"

"Gentlemen, jest be quiet. Let me out--let me git across the street to the Wagon-Tire--where my daughter is--and I can explain things."