Part 13 (1/2)

”Yanker didel doodle down, Didel, dudel lanter, Yankee viver, voover vown, Botermilk und tanther.”

”Poor Zoraya!” muttered the clown under cover of the applause that greeted his vocal effort. And his a.s.sociates looked down from their perches high in the air, gazing in wonder upon the clown who was bowing so low that, each time he did so, he was obliged to turn a somersault to gain his equilibrium.

”Dangerously hurt--went through the net head first. Hurry!”

panted a belated clown, running by to his station.

”Boy hurt, too.”

”Told you so!” grumbled Teddy.

But s.h.i.+vers did not flinch, and, as he neared the reserved seats on the grandstand, his voice again rang out, this time in a variation of the ancient harvest song:

”Yankee doodle, keep it up, Yankee doodle, dandy; Mind the music and the step, And with your feet be handy.”

Never had the show people seen s.h.i.+vers so uproariously funny.

Under the spell of his merriment, the audience quickly forgot the tragic scene that they had just witnessed.

Teddy, however, noticed little dark trenches that had ploughed their courses down through the makeup of the clown's cheeks from his eyes. Teddy knew that tears had caused those furrows.

As s.h.i.+vers looked down the long, gra.s.sy stretch ahead of him, that he still must cover before his act would be finished, the goal seemed far away. He flashed one longing glance toward the crimson curtains that shut off the view of the paddock and the dressing tents, vaguely wondering what lay beyond for him and for little Zoraya. Then s.h.i.+vers set his jaws hard, plunging into a mad whirl of handsprings and somersaults, each of which sent him nearer to the end of that seemingly endless way.

”Here, here, what are you trying to do?” gasped Tucker, unable to keep up with the clown's rapid progress by doing the same things.

Teddy solved the problem by running. He could keep up in no other way.

At last s.h.i.+vers reached the end. With a mighty leap he sprang for the paddock and the dressing tent. And how he did run!

Such sprinting never had been seen in the big show, even between man and horse in the act following the Roman chariot races.

Once a rope caught s.h.i.+vers' toes. He fell forward, but cleverly landed on his shoulders and the back of his neck, bouncing up like a rubber man and plunging on.

s.h.i.+vers had darted through the crimson curtain by the time Teddy Tucker had succeeded in picking himself up from having fallen over the same rope.

Stretched out on a piece of canvas in the dressing tent, her head slightly elevated on a saddle pad, they found Zoraya, her pallor showing even through the roughly laid on makeup.

Phil was sitting on a trunk holding his head in his hands, for he had received quite a severe shock.

”If she regains consciousness soon she may live,” announced the surgeon. ”If not--”

”No, no!” protested the white-faced clown, dropping on his knees by the side of the child, folding Zoraya tenderly in his arms.

”She must not die! She cannot die!”

His jaunty baker's cap tilted off and fell upon her tinseled breast, while groups of curious, sorrowful painted faces pressed about them in silent sympathy.

Teddy crushed his white cap between his hands twisting it nervously.

”She isn't hurt. Can't you see? Look, she is smiling now,”

pleaded the clown.

The surgeon shook his head sadly, and s.h.i.+vers buried his head on Zoraya's shoulder, pressing his painted cheek close to hers, while the dull roar of the circus, off under the big top, drifted to them faintly, like the sighing of a distant cataract.