Leo the Circus Boy: or, Life under the great white canvas

CHAPTER IX. – THE MAD ELEPHANT

From Middletown the circus went to Dover, and then to Grasscannon.

At each of these places a big business was done, and at every performance Leo did better.

The young gymnast became a great favorite with all but two people in the “Greatest Show on Earth.”

These two people were Jack Snipper, who remained as overbearing as ever, and Jack Broxton, the fellow discharged for intoxication.

Broxton had been following up the circus ever since his discharge, in the vain hope of being reinstated.

But the rules in the “Greatest Show on Earth” are very strict, and no intoxication is allowed.

After leaving Grasscannon, the circus struck up through New York State, and at the end of the week arrived at Buffalo.

It was while at this place that Broxton tried to play a dangerous trick upon Leo.

He met the young gymnast on the street one night after the performance.

He was under the influence of liquor at the time, and in his pocket he carried what is known by the boys as a giant torpedo.

As Leo turned a corner he threw the torpedo at Leo’s feet.

Luckily the torpedo failed to explode.

Had it gone off the young gymnast would have been sadly crippled.

“You rascal!” cried Leo, and he made for Broxton and landed him in the gutter.

Some of the other performers then came up.

“What’s the row, Leo?”

“Look what Broxton threw at me,” he replied, and handed the torpedo around for inspection.

While the explosive was being examined, Broxton sneaked off, and it was well for him that he did so, for otherwise the crowd would have pounced upon him and given him the greatest warming up of his life.

But that ended Broxton’s hope of rejoining the circus. The story of his attempt on Leo circulated, and he did not dare to show his face anywhere around the dressing tents.

After leaving Buffalo the circus turned southward toward Pennsylvania.

One night they arrived at Harmony Falls.

“To-morrow, if all goes right, I am going to take a train for Hopsville and see Squire Dobb,” said Barton Reeve to Leo.

“I hope you have luck,” replied the boy. “If he is keeping any of my property back from me I want to know it.”

The day in Harmony Falls opened very warm. A haze hung over the mountains to the westward.

“We’ll have a storm by night,” said Natalie Sparks to Leo.

The two were now warm friends.

“That will make it bad for the ticket-wagon,” laughed the young gymnast.

“Oh, I hate a storm during a performance,” went on the girl, “especially if it thunders and lightens.”

“Well, that’s what it’s going to do.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, didn’t I live on a farm?”

“That’s so!” Natalie laughed merrily. “You don’t look much like a farm hand now.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” and Leo blushed.

During the afternoon it grew hotter and hotter. Under the big tents it was suffocating.

“Dandy weather for lemonade,” said the owner of the main drinking stand, but he was about the only person who appreciated the sudden rise in the thermometer.

At seven o’clock the circus tents were again crowded, and amid the general excitement but few noticed the flashes of lightning over in the west. The low rumblings of thunder they attributed to the lions in the cages.

At last the grand entrée was over, and then the performance settled down to the various specialties.

Then, as Leo and Snipper came on, a louder peal of thunder attracted every one’s attention.

To quiet fears the band struck up. Of course Leo and Snipper could not talk against the music, and so they tumbled around instead, Leo casting himself into the most awkward of shapes.

The rain began to fall, but as the canvases were waterproof this did no great harm.

Then the wind freshened up, and every one realized that a big storm was at hand.

Leo had just thrown off his clown’s dress and mounted up to a pair of rings when a fearful crack of thunder caused every one to leap up in terror.

The lightning had struck a pole in the menagerie tent!

Down came the heavy stick, straight across the backs of three of the largest elephants.

The thunder and the fall of the pole frightened the huge beasts. They roared and plunged and finally broke from their fastenings.

Two of them were secured without much difficulty, but the third, the largest, could not be managed.

With a fearful roar he rushed into the main circus tent, under the spot where Leo was performing, and directly in the faces of the crowd, which tried in vain to flee from his path.

CHAPTER X. – CAPTURING THE ELEPHANT

For the moment it looked as if the mad elephant would crush a dozen or more of the audience.

He was making straight for the crowd, which tried in vain to clear a path for him to pass.

The uproar was terrible, but it was nothing compared to the trumpeting of the gigantic beast.

Several attendants rushed toward the elephant with prods, but he was too angry to notice them.

“Turn him back!”

“He’ll walk right over the crowd!”

“Lasso him!”

“Shoot him!”

And so the cries went on.

The uproar had caused Leo to stop his performance; indeed, it had stopped everything but the stampede of the audience.

Suddenly the elephant ran directly under the young gymnast.

As he did so there came another crash of thunder.

The elephant raised up on his rear legs, and his trunk went up to where Leo swung.

And then a startling thing happened.

Leo dropped directly upon the beast’s head. With remarkable rapidity he slid back on to the neck.

“Throw me a rope!” he yelled to the nearest attendant, and the fellow did so.

Then the end of the elephant’s trunk came up angrily. He intended to catch hold of the young gymnast and hurl him to the earth, there to trample on him.

But Leo slipped further back, and at the same time threw the noose of the rope over the uplifted proboscis.

He hauled it taut, and with the end of the rope in his hand, sprang down and ran at lightning speed to the nearest centerpole.

Around this he went half a dozen times.

“Now keep him back with your prods!” he sang out.

More enraged than ever, the elephant tried to pull himself free.

But the rope held, and he was forced on his knees, roaring with pain, for an elephant’s trunk is his most sensitive organ.

A shout of approval went up, and the crowd paused in its hasty flight.

But the elephant was not yet a prisoner. He pulled and tugged, and had the centerpole not been so strong and so deeply set in the ground, he would surely have either broken it off or pulled it up.

But now he hesitated, and in that moment more attendants came up. One began to soothe him, while the others slipped a leather and iron harness over him. Soon he was a complete prisoner, and realizing this, he shambled back to the menagerie tent as mildly as a lamb.

The rain was now coming down in a perfect deluge, and the audience would not remain. In less than a quarter of an hour the circus grounds were deserted, saving for those who had to remain on duty, and the performers in the dressing-tents.

Every one praised Leo for what he had done; every one, that is, but Snipper. He had not a word to say, but looked more morose than ever.

Leo did not wait, however, to hear all that the others had to say. He donned his regular clothing just as quickly as he could, and with Natalie Sparks rode from the grounds to the hotel at which they were stopping.

Barton Reeve was nowhere around. He had gone off to Hopsville to see Nathan Dobb.

He came in about half-past ten, and then Leo and he had a long discussion concerning the boy’s past and future.

“The squire is a sly one,” said the menagerie manager. “It was about as easy to get information out of him as it is to get milk out of a stone.”

“Then you learned nothing?” returned Leo, much disappointed.

“I did and I didn’t. He admitted that your folks were once wealthy; but he said the money was lost in speculations before you were left an orphan.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Nor I. I asked him for some proofs, but he would give me none. Then I asked him flatly how much there was coming to you when your folks died, and he said not more than a couple of hundred dollars. I wanted to see the papers, but he wouldn’t show them.”

“Didn’t you tell him we would take the matter to court?”

“I did, and it worried him a good bit. That is what makes me think there is considerable at stake. If he had nothing to hide, what is he so scared about?”

“Just wait till I have money enough, I’ll stir him up!” cried Leo.

He had not yet forgotten how Nathan Dobb and Daniel Hawkins had mistreated him.

“We’ll both stir him up, Leo. But I guess before we go much further we had better get a lawyer’s advice. In a few weeks the circus will make two three-day stops and that will give us a little time, certainly more than we get when we go to a new town every day.”

They talked the matter over for some time longer, and when Leo went to bed it was with the fixed determination to make Squire Dobb “toe the mark.”

And while the young gymnast was meditating thus, Nathan Dobb was walking up and down his office, his face dark and full of cunning.

“The boy’s getting too big and he’s making too many friends,” he muttered to himself. “Why couldn’t he remain a simple farm hand, without trying to rake up the past and make a place for himself?” He took a turn or two and clenched his bony hands. “I wish I had stuck to my original idea and sent him to Africa on that freight steamer without a cent in his pocket.”

Then Nathan Dobb dropped into the chair beside his safe, and from the strong box took a package of documents. These he looked over for nearly half an hour.

“Ten thousand dollars!” he muttered. “It would be a fortune to him! But he shan’t have it. I’ve worked too hard for it to have it slip through my fingers at this late day. I had better burn all these papers and then concoct some scheme for getting him out of the way.”

Nathan Dobb’s soliloquy was interrupted by a crash in the rear of the house. Some one had broken into the kitchen, most likely a burglar.

CHAPTER XI. – A CRIMINAL COMPACT

There had been several robberies in Hopsville lately, so the squire was certain the burglar had now come to his house.

Instantly he turned out the light in the office. Then opening the door to the hall he listened attentively.

He was right; some one was moving cautiously about the kitchen.

Moving back to his desk the squire secured his pistol and also a club.

When he came out into the hall on tiptoe he heard the would-be burglar moving around the dining-room.

Presently the fellow struck a light, which he set on the table.

Then he began an examination of the silverware on the sideboard.

By the light the squire got a good look at the would-be burglar. He was astonished beyond measure.

“Hank Griswold!” he muttered, half-aloud.

The man whose name he mentioned had formerly been a tavern-keeper in Hopsville.

But he had been sent to jail for robbing and beating a drunken man. His discharge had taken place but two weeks before.

As Squire Dobb spoke, the would-be burglar turned swiftly.

“Collared!” he muttered laconically.

Then he tried to escape by a rear door, but Nathan Dobb covered him with the pistol.

“Stop, Griswold!”

“Confound the luck! The game is up!”

“It is. Stop where you are.”

“Don’t be hard on me, squire.”

“So you were going to rob me, eh?”

“Let me go this time, squire,” went on the man pleadingly.

“What for? So you can rob somebody else?”

“I ain’t got a cent to my name, squire.”

“I can’t help that.”

Suddenly a thought flashed over Squire Dobb’s mind.

“Griswold, step into my office.”

“Don’t lock me up, squire.”

“I won’t – if you will do as I wish you to.”

“I’ll do anything you say, only don’t arrest me again.”

“Step into the office, and see to it that you don’t wake up the whole household.”

Hank Griswold complied. The squire followed him, still, however, keeping his pistol ready for use.

But when the office was reached, and the door shut, Nathan Dobb’s manner changed. He took Griswold’s hand.

“Griswold, you are just the man I want to see.”

“I – I – don’t understand,” was the confused reply.

“I’ll explain. Sit down and take it easy. You love to smoke? Have a cigar,” and a box was shoved toward him.

“See here, Nathan Dobb, what’s your game now?”

“I want to throw some work in your hands, work that will pay well.”

“What kind of work?” asked Griswold suspiciously. He was half-inclined to believe Nathan Dobb was out of his mind.

“You just said you would do anything for me if I didn’t have you arrested.”

“So I will.” “Supposing I put a job in your way that will pay you an even hundred dollars – ”

“You’re foolin’ me, squire.”

“I mean it, Griswold, a hundred dollars. Would you do the work and say nothing?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a – a – job that isn’t strictly – ah – all right, you know.”

“I don’t care what it is,” returned Griswold recklessly. “I’ll do anything you say. You can trust me.”

“Will you?” cried Nathan Dobb eagerly. He hesitated. “I want to get a boy out of my way.”

“Who?”

“Leo Dunbar, who used to live with Dan Hawkins.”

“I know him. Didn’t his father once have my tavern shut up as a disorderly house?”

“Well, as I said, I want to get that boy out of my way.”

“Where is he now?”

“He is traveling as an acrobat with that circus which performed here a week or so ago.”

“And you want me to – to – ?” Griswold hesitated.

“I want him removed from my path. I never want to see him around here again.” “And you’ll give me a hundred for the job?”

“I will.”

“It’s not enough. Make it two hundred.”

“Well, I will.”

“In cash?”

“Yes.”

“When can I get the money?”

“You can get it right here as soon as – well, I’m sure Dunbar won’t bother me any more.”

“You’re a cool one, Dobb. But I said I’d go you, and I will. But, say?”

“Well?”

“You must let me have fifty dollars on account. I’ll have to hang around the circus for awhile and lay my plans. It’s no fool of a job to do as you wish.”

“Here are thirty dollars. And one word more, Hank. Never mention my name in this, and if I were you, don’t ever let Leo Dunbar see you.”

“I’ll remember,” replied Griswold.

Ten minutes later he left Nathan Dobb’s house as secretly as he had entered it.

CHAPTER XII. – THE STOLEN CIRCUS TICKETS

ON the following week the circus moved down through Pennsylvania. Fine weather favored the show, and the crowd at each performance was very large.

“This is going to be a banner season,” said Giles, the treasurer, “unless we get tripped up as we were last season.”

He referred to a serious matter, namely, that of thousands of stolen tickets, which during the previous summer had been secured and sold by outside speculators.

This season a few tickets had thus far been missing, but the number was not sufficient to cause a serious loss.

Leo’s performances in the ring improved every day. Already was he as good as Jack Snipper, and soon he would outrival the other acrobat in every way.

Leo’s acts, while disguised as a clown, were highly amusing, even better than some of the regular clowns, of which there were eight.

“He could do clown and get big wages, even if he didn’t know a thing about gymnastics,” remarked Natalie Sparks.

Natalie was now a warm friend to Leo, much to Snipper’s disgust.

The second-rate gymnast had always been enamored of the Fire Queen, but he could make no progress in his suit.

One day he met Natalie in the dressing-tent when no one else was present.

He began to talk familiarly to her, and then attempted to kiss her.

“Don’t you dare!” she cried angrily.

“I guess you won’t mind very much,” said Snipper, and then, despite her struggles, he bent over and stuck his repulsive face close to her fair cheek.

But just then Leo came on the scene. For a moment he stood in amazement.

“Leo, make the horrid fellow go away!” panted Natalie.

“Do as Miss Sparks wishes, Snipper!” cried the young gymnast.

“Mind your own business!” grumbled Snipper.

“This is my business,” returned Leo warmly.

And rushing up, he collared the second-rate gymnast and hurled him halfway across the tent.

Snipper was clearly in the wrong, and, as Natalie had called on Leo for assistance, he did not dare raise a row.

He sneaked out, shaking his fist at Leo as he did so.

“Oh, Leo, I am very thankful you came in,” panted Natalie as soon as she could recover.

“So am I,” went on the boy honestly, and then, as he looked at the beautiful girl, both blushed.

Following the scene just recorded, Jack Snipper was more ugly than ever. Whenever he met or passed Leo he would mutter something under his breath.

“Look out for him, Leo,” said Dick Pomeroy, the tumbler, one day. “He’s cutting a club for you.”

“I’ve got my optics peeled,” laughed Leo.

That afternoon, after the performance, Leo was walking around outside, near the side-show.

Presently he saw something that at once interested him.

A “flim-flam worker,” as such criminals around a circus are called, was trying to swindle a countryman out of twenty dollars.

He was working an old game, which consists in getting an outsider to hold the stakes in a bet with another flim-flammer.

The game is to mix the stakeholder up and make him put up his own money, and then secure all the cash in sight.

Leo was interested for two reasons.

In the first place, he did not wish to see the countryman swindled.

In the second place, he knew that swindlers of any kind were not allowed to work in the vicinity of the “Greatest Show on Earth.”

The flim-flam man was about to receive the countryman’s money when Leo stepped up.

“Drop this,” he said quietly.

“Wot yer givin’ us, sonny?” came in a hoarse growl from the swindler.

“I say drop the game.” Leo turned to the countryman. “Put away your money, or you will be swindled out of it.”

“By gum! Is thet so?” ejaculated the farmer, and he at once thrust the cash out of sight.

At this the would-be swindler turned on Leo.

“I’ll thrash you for that!” he howled, and rushed at the young gymnast, while the two partners in the deal did the same.

Leo knew it would be foolish to attempt to stand up against all three, so he gave a peculiar whistle, known to all circus hands.

A cry of “Hi! Rube!” arose and soon several circus detectives reached the spot. But the swindlers vanished before they could be captured.

The countryman, whose name was Adam Slocum, was much pleased over what Leo had done, and insisted on shaking hands. He invited Leo to call on him when the circus came to the next town.

“Thank you, I’ll call,” said Leo.

Snipper had witnessed the scene between the swindlers and Leo. When the three men went off he followed them.

All four met at a low resort half a dozen blocks from the circus grounds.

Snipper knew the men. As a matter of fact, he would have left the circus and joined them in their work, but he had his reasons for remaining as an employee of the “Greatest Show on Earth,” as will be seen later.

The four men had a conference, which lasted over an hour.

Then Snipper and one of them called on a local locksmith.

The swindler told a long story of having lost the keys to his trunk, and he ordered the locksmith to make him three keys from impressions furnished by Snipper.

With these keys in his possession, Snipper went back to the circus grounds.

On the following day, toward evening, there was a commotion at the entrance to the main tent of the circus. One of the managers of the great aggregation had discovered that hundreds of circus tickets had been sold throughout the district at a discount from the regular price, fifty cents.

A hurried examination was made, and then it was learned that two thousand tickets had been stolen from one of the box-office wagons.

These tickets were now either sold to individuals or in the hands of the outside speculators.

Who could have stolen the tickets was a mystery, until a slip of paper was handed to Giles, the treasurer, which read:

“Leo Dunbar was hanging around the ticket wagon last night. Better watch and search him.

“A Friend.”

Giles lost no time in acting upon the suggestion given in the note. He ran to the dressing-tent and, finding a key to fit Leo’s trunk, opened it.

A first examination of the contents revealed nothing, but then the treasurer brought to light three heavy strips of red paper, each marked 100 – 50s.

They were the strips used around bundles of tickets.

This was sufficient proof against Leo for Giles. He told several of the others, including Mr. Lambert, the general manager, and then waited for the boy to come in from his performance in the ring.

Amid a generous round of applause, the young gymnast finished his turn and bowed himself out.

On his appearance in the dressing-tent, Giles at once placed his hand on our hero’s shoulder.

“Consider yourself under arrest, Leo Dunbar,” he said sternly.

Leo was much startled.

“What for?”

“For stealing two thousand circus tickets.”