Anything Once Part 7

CHAPTER V

Concerning an Omelet

There was a confused babel of sound in Jim's ears when he awoke Wednesday morning; hammering and clanging and the squeak of ropes, shouting and cursing, and now and then the roar or yell of some protesting animal.

He was lying on a narrow bunk in a tent, and opposite him a husky-looking individual was climbing into a pair of checked trousers and yawning vociferously.

Jim's head ached confoundedly, and he was stiff and sore, but his mind cleared rapidly from the mists of slumber. What sort of a place was this, and how had he got there? Then all at once he remembered, and there came a horrifying thought. What had become of Lou?

"Where's Lou? M--my sister?" he demanded, sitting bolt upright.

"h.e.l.lo, there! Come out of it all right, did you?" The occupant of the tent hitched a suspender over one shoulder and grinned cheerfully. "The kid's took care of! She's with Ma Billings. That was a nasty header you took last night. O. K. now? We gotter pull out in an hour."

"Oh, I'm all right; but say, did I pull that bonehead stuff out there before all of them?" Jim reddened beneath his tan at the thought. "Fall off the horse like that, I mean?"

"In the ring? No, you made a grand exit, and then slumped; n.o.body saw it but the little girl, and she beat it right down to the ring and out after you. Fit like a wildcat, too, when we tried to keep her away from you till we could find out what had struck you." The other grinned once more.

"Some sister, ol'-timer! When we found that big muscle bruise on your side, and she told us that you had been tossed by a bull a couple of days ago, we didn't wonder you keeled over."

Jim sat up dizzily.

"It was mighty good of you people to take us in for the night," he said.

"Who is Ma Billings?"

"Marie LaBelle she used to be; worked up on the flyin' rings until she got too hefty," his companion explained. "Now she takes care of the wardrobes and sort of looks out that the Human Doll don't get lost in the shuffle; the midget, you know. Now peel, and I'll give you a rub-down with some liniment."

Jim tried to protest, but the husky individual only grinned the broader.

"You may be some boy when it comes to bronco-bustin', but I'm the Strong Man in the sideshow, and you haven't a chance."

Meekly Jim submitted to his companion's kindly ministrations, and then dressing quickly, made his way out into the glare of the early morning sun.

The big top was down, and poles and animal cages were being loaded on long trucks as he emerged. An appetizing odor of fried pork floated upon the air from the direction of the cook tent, and people seemed to be rus.h.i.+ng all over the lot in wildest confusion, but Jim caught a glimpse of a bit of pink-and-white check through the melee, and headed for it.

Lou was sitting on the gra.s.s in cordial confab with a melancholy-looking, lantern-jawed man, but at his approach she jumped up precipitately and ran to him.

"Oh, Jim, you feelin' all right?" There was a little tremble in her voice. "I knew it was you the minute you rode past an' picked up that handkerchief Mr. Perkins give you yesterday, an' when you pitched off that horse I thought you was dead. You hadn't no call to take any chance like that with your back hurt an' that long tramp an' all; but it was splendid."

She paused, breathless, and he patted her shoulder. Somehow she didn't look so downright homely this morning, or else he was growing used to her little, turned-up nose. Her tow-colored hair was looser about her face, and where the sun struck a strand of it, it shone like spun gold.

"I'm fine," he a.s.sured her. "But who was that man you were talking to just now?"

"Him? Oh, that was the clown," Lou replied. "He says the old man is just crazy 'bout your ridin', an' if you'll stay along with the show he can teach me to stand still for the knife-thrower; the last girl got scared, an' quit just because she got a little scratch on the neck. The clown says I got the nerve for it, an' I guess I have, only they ain't goin'

towards New York."

She added the last almost reluctantly, and Jim shuddered. The knife-thrower! What wouldn't the little dare-devil be willing to try next?

"I guess you have got the nerve," he admitted grimly. "But we're going to be in New York by Sat.u.r.day night, remember. As soon as I get my quarter from the stout gentleman over there with the striped vest, we'll be on our way."

But it was nearly an hour before they took to the road again. The boss insisted on starting them off with a hearty breakfast, and there were good-bys to be said to the rough, kindly folk who had taken them in as friends. Except for the litter of hand-bills and peanut-sh.e.l.ls, the last vestiges of the circus were being removed from the lot as they finally departed, and what had been to Lou a wondrous, glittering pageant had become but a memory.

"I dunno but I'd as lief join a circus," she observed, meditatively, after they had traveled a mile or more. "Maybe I could learn in New York how to do some of them tricks. I could git the hang of that business up on them swings in no time, only I don't like the way that girl dressed----"

"Nonsense!" Jim snapped, and wondered at his own indignation. "We'll find something suitable for you to do, or you can go to school----"

"School!" she interrupted him in her turn. "I--I'd like to learn things an' be like other folks, but I ain't--I mean I'm not--goin' to any inst.i.tootion."

He glanced at her curiously. This was the first time she had made any conscious effort to correct herself, the first evidence she had given that she had noted the difference between his speech and hers.

"I didn't mean an inst.i.tution, but a real school, Lou," he explained gently. "One where you'll have no uniform to wear, and no work to do except to learn."

"I quit learnin' when I was twelve." There was an unconscious note of wistfulness in her tones. "I kin read an' do a little figgerin', but I don't know much of anythin' else. I couldn't go to school an' begin again where I left off, Jim; I'd be sort of ashamed. Oh, look at that big wagon drivin' out of that gate! Maybe we'll git a lift."

She had turned at the creak of wheels, and now, as the cart loaded with crates and pulled by two lean, sorry-looking horses pa.s.sed, she gazed expectantly at the driver. He was as lean as his team, with a sharp nose and a tuft of gray hair sticking out from his chin, and his close-set eyes straight ahead of him, as though he were determined not to see to the two wayfarers.

"He looks kinder mean, don't he?" Lou remarked. Then impulsively she ran after the wagon: "Say, mister, will you give us a lift?"

The old man pulled in his horses and regarded her sourly.

"What'll you pay?" he demanded.

"What's in them crates," she parried.

"Eggs." The response was laconic. "What you gittin' at, sis?"

"Who unloads them when you git to where you're goin'?" Lou persisted.

"At the Riverburgh dock? I do, unless I'm late, an' then I have to give a couple o' them loafers around there a quarter apiece to help. I'm late to-day, an' if you ain't got any money to ride--Giddap!"

But Lou halted him determinedly.

"If you'll give me and Jim--I mean my brother--a ride, he'll unload the crates for you for nothin' when we git there. You'll be savin' fifty cents, and the ride won't cost you nothin'."

"Well"--the old man considered for a moment--"I'll do it, if it's only to spite them fellers that's allus hangin' 'round the docks. Reg'lar robbers, they be. Quarter apiece, an' chicken-feed gone up the way't is.

Git in."

Jim had overtaken the wagon in time to hear the end of the brief conversation, and he wasted no further time in parley, but hoisted Lou up over the wheel and climbed in beside her.

As the reluctant horses started off once more the driver turned to him:

"Hope you're a hustler, young man; got to git them eggs off the wagon in a jiffy when we git to Riverburgh, in time to ketch the boat. Don't you try no scuttlin' off on me after I give you the ride; Riverburgh's a reg'lar city, an' they's a policeman on the docks."

"I'll keep the bargain my sister made for me," Jim answered shortly. He had observed the poultry-farm from which the old man had started, with its miserable little hovel of a house and immense spread of chicken-runs, and drawn his own conclusions as to the character of its owner. "You needn't be afraid I'll s.h.i.+rk."