Part 5 (2/2)
Both Djuna and Tommy jumped backward as Angel started to leap about his cage, screaming and shrilling, pounding the floor and the roof, rocking the large, steel-barred structure, biting and tearing at anything in his way. He was a perfect specimen of a mad animal.
”Okay, Angel!” Socker shouted.
The chimpanzee sat down suddenly, and this time when the skin furled back from his yellow teeth it looked as though he were laughing.
”Good boy, Angel!” Socker said and the chimpanzee put a hand through the bars of his cage and shook hands with Socker.
”Chattering chimps!” Tommy said in amazement. ”I thought he was going to tear everything in Riverton apart! And it was just an act? I mean, he was just pretending?”
”Sure,” Socker said. ”There's a lion down here that will do that, too. It puts on an act the same way, hissing and growling and leaping at his trainer. Then, in the side show, it plays like a kitten with the trainer and even lets him put his head in its mouth.”
”I don't see how they ever train them to do things like that,” Tommy said. ”I should think-”
”Excuse me, sir,” a man in an usher's cap said to Socker, ”but have you a big bill that you would care to exchange for smaller ones? You see-”
Socker listnd to the man for a second or two and then pretended that his attention had been diverted as he looked down at Djuna and Tommy. He half-turned his back to the man who had spoken to him and said, softly, ”Cannonball will be up near the chow tent. Get him!”
Djuna didn't ask any questions. He studied Socker's expression for a split fraction of a second and then he whirled and started to run toward the exit with Tommy right behind him.
”Excuse me!” Socker said as he turned back to the man who had spoken to him. ”I just remembered my wife wanted me to bring home a colored balloon. She's sickly, so I sent my boy out to get one while I remembered it.”
”That's all right,” the man in the usher's hat said. ”I just wondered if you had a couple of big bills that you would care to exchange for smaller ones? You see we get so many little ones that it makes it pretty hard to carry them.”
”Why, sure,” Socker said, and he reached in his inside pocket for his wallet. He pulled it out and scowled as he looked in it. ”Here's a couple o' twenties. Will they do?”
”They'll do fine,” the man said and reached into his own pocket and brought forth a big handful of crumpled bills. He very carefully counted them out and then handed some to Socker, saying, ”There's forty dollars. Thank you very much.”
Socker as carefully counted the bills himself, with the man's eyes on him; and when he got through he said, ”You only gave me thirty-nine dollars. A ten, two fives, and nineteen ones. See?”
”You're sure?” the man in the usher's cap said. ”Let me count 'em again.” He took the bills and counted them again and when he had finished he said, ”By cracky, you're right. I'm terribly sorry!”
He added a dollar bill to the ones he held and counted them into Socker's hand again. ”Thirty-nine, forty. Right?” he asked.
A large, powerful hand dropped on the collar of the man's coat as Socker stood in front of him with the money still in his hand. ”Count it, Socker,” Cannonball McGinnty said as he tightened his grip on the man's collar. ”You're probably short a ten and a five this time.”
Socker counted the money very carefully this time and when he had finished he said, ”Just a ten. I now believe the hand is quicker than the eye.”
Cannonball's other hand stabbed downward and grabbed at the closed fist of the man he was holding. He twisted and with a howl of pain the man opened his hand. A wadded ten dollar bill dropped to the ground.
”That'll do it!” Socker said to Cannonball. ”Let's take him over to your substation in Riverton. I'll put a charge against him, and maybe we can make him talk.”
”He'll talk, or else!” Cannonball growled. ”He-”
”Is he a grifter, Mr. Furlong?” Tommy wanted to know.
”That's just what he is,” Socker said, ”and before we get through with him maybe we'll know what cooks around here. You kids go on into the big show. I'll join you later. Get seats in the front, right below Spitfire's rig, and I'll find you.”
”Okay, Socker,” Djuna said as Cannonball and Socker moved away, with the tricky-looking man wearing the usher's cap between them.
Chapter Five.
The Leap of Death
The circus band was playing Liszt's ”First Hungarian Rhapsody” to end the preliminary concert before the main performance, when Tommy and Djuna slipped through the gateway from the menagerie, around to the right, and down into the front row just below Spitfire Peters's flying rig.
Over five thousand people were crowded on tier after tier of seats under the big top. The cries of candy butchers selling ”juice” rose and fell throughout the length of the big tent. Children screamed and cried and laughed with delight and antic.i.p.ation.
There was a long ruffle of drums as Tommy and Djuna sat down. The band struck up a spirited march. The great curtains from the performers' tent opened and the ”grand spec,” in all its spangled glory, moved around the hippodrome arena.
Clowns, aerialists, acrobats, equestrians and equestriennes, tightrope walkers, roaring lions and black panthers, elephants and gnus, jugglers, and more elephants, and clowns. Pageants unfolded as dainty, daring and dazzling elfs in shorts and bras and bobbed hair danced around the great track, seeming to float through s.p.a.ce effortlessly.
Tommy and Djuna were on their feet cheering and applauding as the great spectacle moved around the track, and then a coloratura soprano, perched high above the bandstand, sang ”The Star-Spangled Banner.”
And the show was on!
”Laugh, clown, laugh,”-and thirty buffoons of all sizes and shapes-the pegs upon which the circus is hung-burst from behind the great curtain to swarm over the rings and platforms, up the rigging and around the track, dressed in their individual versions of the cap and bells. Fat clowns, lean clowns, tall clowns, midget clowns-all with a laugh in every motion they made, from the one who pretended he had got on a tightwire by mistake, thirty feet above the tanbark with no net under him, and who kept slipping off the wire to hang by his fingers and toes while people screamed with fright and laughter, to the sad-faced little midget who sat down on the track and cried, with swerving horses racing around him and plunging over him.
Around the rings galloped the aristocracy of the circus, the equestrians and equestriennes, piling on each other's shoulders while the snow-white Percherons galloped to the whistling tune of the ringmaster's singing whip.
Far overhead, the aerialists stood, each at the end of his pedestal bar with the fly bar in his hands-poised, confident-moving now with flowing grace as they swung high under the top folds of the big tent or dropped the fly bar and whirled into s.p.a.ce until their catcher's hands slapped on their wrists, and people let out great gulps of air that they had almost swallowed.
”Jumping Jupiter!” Tommy Williams said with a wail. ”I can't watch it all! There's so much you can't look at everything. We'll have to come every day and look at something different every day, or we won't remember anything! ... Look!”
Djuna followed his finger with his eyes and saw Fifi Lamont, queen of all the high-wire artists, balancing perilously fifty feet above the center platform, with no net under her, smiling and bowing as she went through her marvelous performance. Well she knew that a split second of wrong timing might send her cras.h.i.+ng to the ground, to her death or permanent injury; but it was all in a day's work for an artist of Fifi Lamont's charm.
Elephants, seals, dogs and horses were performing on the platforms and in the rings, now, while jugglers and tightwire walkers worked on the wires overhead. Tumblers cut graceful arcs through the air as teeter-board artists bounced people high and the ”risly” acts juggled people with their feet-and all the while, clowns went on with their buffoonery.
”Look! Look!” Tommy said suddenly. ”There's that girl Socker was talking to in the chow tent!”
Djuna looked and saw three matched Percherons, snow-white, loping easily around the ring right in front of him, and on their backs were a man and a woman. Each had one foot on one of the outside Percherons and both had a foot on the back of the middle Percheron. Riding on the shoulders of the man was Joy Maybeck, her hands flung gracefully above her head as she smiled down at Djuna, and standing on the shoulders of the woman was another equestrienne who was almost as pretty as Joy.
In another moment Joy was standing alone on the back of one of the Percherons, and just before she did a back somersault and came down on the rump of the still-galloping Percheron she waved a hand at Djuna. When she stood up and waved and shouted she made a curtsy as she pa.s.sed him and Djuna said, ”Golly, but she's wonderful! I bet that back somersault was the new trick she was going to do.”
Then both Djuna and Tommy forgot about Joy Maybeck for the moment as the lights of the big tent began to fade, leaving a single spotlight aimed at the performer's entrance.
Into the spotlight stepped Trixie Cella, her elfin figure wrapped in a silver cloak, her dark hair curled tight on her lovely head. Right behind her was Spitfire Peters, his athletic body clothed in snow-white tights, his carrot-colored hair flaming above his smiling face. And then came Ned Barrow, his black hair even blacker above his snow-white tights that emphasized the swelling muscles of his figure.
Ears strained to catch every syllable as the announcer introduced them, while they walked gaily across to the rope ladder that led up to the pedestal board and the rope that would take Ned Barrow up to the catch bar. The band struck up a lively air as Trixie dropped her cloak into waiting hands, wiped the soles of the cloth pumps she had made herself and stepped on the slender rope ladder with wooden rungs that led up to the pedestal board far overhead.
She maneuvered neatly around the bulge made by the net as she went up the ladder skillfully, while Spitfire made a last inspection of the net. He looked at and tested the horizontal stretch that would be directly under them-it was called the ”big net”-and at the pieces that angled up from the ends and were called ”ap.r.o.ns.” He then tested the cables between the ap.r.o.ns and the big net. They were known as ”ridge ropes,” and caused more injuries than anything else.
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