Anything Once - Isabel Ostrander (reading tree TXT) 📗

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 71us 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 rushing all over the lot in wildest confusion, but Jim caught a glimpse of a bit of pink-and-white 72check through the mêlée, and headed for it.

Lou was sitting on the grass 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 assured her. “But who was that man you were talking to just now?”

“Him? Oh, that was the clown,” Lou replied. 73“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 Saturday 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-shells, the last vestiges of the circus were 74being 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 institootion.”

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 institution, but a real school, Lou,” he explained gently. “One 75where 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 passed, 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.

76“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 77Lou 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 shirk.”

“Well,” grumbled the other, “I don’t hold with pickin’ up tramps in the road, but I’m sick of handin’ out good money to them loafers at the dock to unload, an’ I ain’t got a hired man to take along no more; they’re allus lazy, good-for-nothin’ fellers that eat more’n 78they work out, let alone their wages goin’ sky-hootin’!”

“But you must be making a handsome profit, with the price of eggs going up, too, all the time,” Jim remarked.

The old man gave him a sly glance.

“That’s how you look at it,” he replied. “They oughter go up twice the price they be. My wife’s doin’ the hired man’s work now, an’ she’s allus pesterin’ me to git an incubator, but them things cost a powerful sight of money, an’ I don’t hold with new-fangled notions; too much resk to them. You can allus sell hens when they git too old to set or lay, but what’re you going to do with a wore-out incubator?”

He cackled shrilly at his own witticism and then grew morose again. “The way things is, there ain’t no profit skeercely in nothin’.”

They jogged along drowsily through the slumberous heat, while the old man continued his harangue against the cost of everything except his own commodity, and the underfed horses strained to drag their burden over the hilly road. The mountains had been left behind, 79and all over the rolling hillsides about them on either hand the vineyards stretched in undulating lines, each heavy with the load of purpling grapes.

Mile after mile passed slowly beneath the creaking wheels of the wagon; noon came, and still Riverburgh remained tantalizingly ahead. At last, on the rise of a hill, the old man pulled up and pointed with his whip to the spreading sweep of brick buildings fronting on the river’s edge below.

“There’s the town,” he announced, adding, with a touch of regret: “We’re ahead of time, after all, an’ I could have unloaded by myself. Well, it don’t matter noways except for the extra drag on the horses. Giddap!”

“There’s–there’s an ottermobile comin’ up behind,” Lou ventured. “They been tootin’ at you for some time, mister.”

“Let ’em,” the old man cackled shrilly once more. “I’ve been drivin’ on these roads afore them things was heard of, an’ I don’t calc’late to turn out for ’em.”

The warning of the siren sounded again disturbingly close, and the rush of the oncoming 80car could be plainly heard. Jim glanced at the old man, and, noting the stubborn set of his jaw, said nothing; but Lou spoke again, and her voice held no note of alarm, but rather indignation at the obvious lack of fair play.

“But they got a right; you’re on their side of the road,” she exclaimed. “If you’d give them their half, mister, they could pass easy.”

“Don’t calc’late to let ’em,” he responded obstinately. “Ain’t goin’ to take their dust if I kin help it.”

Deliberately he tugged on the left reins and headed the team straight across the road. Lou gave a quick glance over the side of the wagon and behind, and then gripped Jim’s arm. He turned and caught one glimpse of her set face, and then with a roar and a grinding crash they both felt themselves lifted into the air and landed in some golden, slimy fluid in the ditch.

“Lou, are you hurt?” Jim tried to wipe the clinging stuff from his eyes and ears with his sleeve. “Where are you?”

The rapidly diminishing clatter of horses’ hoofs 81down the hill, and the old man’s vigorously roared recriminations assured him of the safety of the rest of the entourage even before Lou replied.

“Not hurt a mite, but I’m laughin’!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “Oh, Jim, you–you should have seen it. That ottermobile hit square in the middle of the wagon, and there ain’t–isn’t–a single egg─”

“Here, you!” the old man, dripping from head to foot with the golden slime, rushed up and tugged excitedly at Jim’s arm. “Come on an’ help me to ketch them horses! What’d I bring you along for? Let the girl be, I don’t ker if her neck’s broke! I got to lodge a complaint against them rascals, an’ have ’em stopped! You’re my witnesses that they run into me, an’ I’ll make ’em pay a pretty penny─”

“I care whether my sister’s neck is broken or not!” Jim retorted grimly. “Go after your own horses. I engaged to unload