Volume VIII Part 28 (2/2)

La Rue was almost ready to embrace the sheriff of Wild Horse County. His burdens had not been light, even before the despised Jose's defection.

There was a mult.i.tude of things, big and little, which could not well be carried with a show of the sort, but had always to be picked up locally, at the last moment; and a crude little cow-town like Blowout not only failed to supply many of these, but stood, as one might say, with dropped jaw at the very suggestion of them--at the mere mention of their unfamiliar names.

And so the company--otherwise the La Rue family--had to produce much of the paraphernalia out of its inner consciousness, which meant that the old man's temper was continually rasped, that the Signorina's nerves and her ingenuity were on a strain, and that Minnie was hard at work from dawn till dark, practising between whiles.

Troy Gilbert had put it most hopefully when he said that he knew fireworks pretty well--or one might say that the statement was susceptible of two different interpretations. As a matter of fact, Troy knew fireworks only from the spectator's side of the question.

He now had Jose Romero moved over into the back room of his place, where he might mitigate the rigors of that alien's confinement, and at the same time receive from the Mexican very necessary instruction.

Mercifully, there was an ample supply of fireworks, for the show was to be repeated at Antelope, over in Lone Jack County, and again at Cinche.

Moreover, drawing heavily, as he had been instructed, upon Kid Barringer's bank account, Gilbert wrote to Fort Worth and ordered a duplicate set of these fireworks sent on to Cinche. And in the darkness of night, when Blowout was wrapped in slumber, Gilbert and Romero rode silently out, down the flank of the divide, across the plain and into a little canon six or seven miles distant in the breaks of Wild Horse Creek.

All day, in the intervals of his business duties, Gilbert had been receiving theoretical instructions; now with the set of fireworks which was to have dazzled and delighted the residents of Antelope, he made practical experiment of the knowledge so gained. The little show, witnessed only by the naked walls of the canon and such prairie-dogs and jack-rabbits as had been untimely aroused from their slumbers, went off fairly well--which is to say that most of Gilbert's fingers and nearly all of his features went back to Blowout sound and entire.

”Oh, I got the hang of the business,” he declared again and again, as they rode along through the soft Texas night; ”I got the hang of it. I can make the whole first part go all right. The thing now is to get that Columbia act fixed so as to give the boys a run for their money, and leave a chance for Minnie and Kid.”

The two rode home, and later Jose went to bed in Gilbert's back room, where work was going forward upon a mysterious-looking structure.

II

”In our village hall a Justice stands: A neater form was never made of board.”

Frosty La Rue's grand aggregation of talent had given two shows in a tent on the third of July.

On the Fourth there would again be two tent-shows, one in the afternoon and one at night; and at the close of the night performance, when the ”concert” of an ordinary circus takes place, there was to be ”a grand open-air spectacle,” as Frosty himself put it.

For this purpose a platform had been erected, upon which Frosty and the Signorina could do a knife-throwing turn; and where the Aerial Wonder could give an infantile exhibition with a small bicycle.

A wire had been stretched across Comanche Street from the top of the Roundup to the top of the Wagon-Tire House, and upon this was to be given the most ambitious performance of the evening, ”Columbia Enlightening the World.”

All day long on the Fourth, the town was full of rejoicing young Texas masculinity, mounted upon Texas ponies, careering about the streets in conspicuously full enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And all day long Frosty La Rue's tent-show did a land-office business.

Poor old Frosty! Many of the cowboys could shoot better than he; but they didn't shoot at colored gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s. The bareback riding also came under some contempt; but the spangles and pink fles.h.i.+ngs carried much weight, the Signorina painted most artistically, and, as Aunt Huldah said, ”When she was a-goin' right fast on that fat white hoss, with the little platform on his back, an' a-smilin' an' kissin' her hand, she did really look right nice.”

Minnie's trapeze acts were truly fine, and were appreciated at their full value; and the beautiful little figure walking the wire twenty feet above the ground was greeted with unlimited enthusiasm.

When the evening came, old Frosty, inclined to be as nervous and irritable with Gilbert as he dared, came running into the latter's place worrying about the fireworks.

”Now you chase yourself along,” advised the sheriff, good-naturedly.

”Just get right along, an' 'tend to your little old illuminated knife-throwin' trick. 'Tain't ten minutes till that's due, an' you've got a crowd that's good for five hundred dollars if it's good for a cent, when you pa.s.s the hat. And,” he added, delight in the scheme he was working getting the better of his natural instinct for literal truth, ”and luck--just fool luck--has sent you the finest fireworks operator in West Texas. Shoo out of here now, an' 'tend to your own job, an' let me 'tend to mine!”

As for the children of the Wagon-Tire House, they were perhaps more glorious on that warm, dark July night than anything in their after lives could make them. This is not to say that the six were not destined for happy or distinguished careers; but, after all, the magnificence of an occasion depends greatly upon the point of view; and the small hill is a high mountain to the little child.

They had been permitted to extend invitations to the more favored of their young friends. Bunt Tarver and Roach Porterman's two small girls, with Eddie Beach, who lived on a ranch outside of Blowout and stayed all night at the Wagon-Tire House (in a state of bliss that was almost cataleptic), were among the little bunch that presented themselves to go upon the roof of the kitchen, from which a magnificent view of the fireworks was to be had.

”I can't have it,” Troy announced. ”I can't have you children up here.”

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