The Second Western Megapack

by Various Writers

  The girl had bloomed into sudden and lovely girlhood when Kid Barringer saw her at Abilene, in April, patiently performing the tricks that had been taught her, obediently risking her young life that there might be plenty of money for her father to lose at the monte table, and that they might all be clothed and fed.

  Kid had known the La Rue family and the girl for years, and when he promptly lost his heart to this surprising development of its daughter, he went frankly to the head of the clan and asked for her like a man.

  There was no fault to find with Kid Barringer. He was good-looking, more intelligent than most of his mates, an honest, industrious and kind-hearted fellow, of whom his employers spoke well. If the girl cared for him—and Kid asserted that he had asked her and found out that she did care—she could not hope to do better.

  But, of course, for La Rue to give up this most valuable chattel was out of the question. What he did, therefore, was to fly into a rage, refuse the Kid’s offer in language which would have precipitated a brawl had the young man been less earnest in his wooing, and consign Minnie to the watchful vigilance of her stepmother.

  And the cowboy had been vainly following the show during the whole two months that had passed since this episode, anxiously watching his poor little hard-worked sweetheart, hoping to get a word from her, meaning in any case to reassure her, and show her that he had not given up.

  Matters were in this state when the “aggregation” settled down at the Wagon-Tire House for the week during which the Fourth of July was to occur. For this occasion La Rue promised a display of fireworks “superior to anything ever shown in West Texas.”

  The fame of this spectacle had preceded the show. It had been given in Emerald the year before, and all the cowboys who had seen it there brought back word that it was “the finest ever.” The particular feature was in the closing act which La Rue had christened “Columbia Enlightening the World.”

  For this performance a wire was stretched across the street from the top of one building to another. La Rue intended this year to have it stretched from the Roundup to the Wagon-Tire House. Across this wire Minnie was to walk, dressed as Columbia, with a high-spiked diadem upon her head, her whole form outlined with colored fires, and bearing certain rockets which were set off when she reached the center of the street.

  Everybody in the Wagon-Tire House liked the girl; Frosty was offensively polite or aggressively insulting; Mrs. La Rue was, as Troy Gilbert said, “a pretty tough specimen”; or, if one would rather follow Aunt Huldah’s cheerful and charitable lead, “She looked a heap nicer, and appeared a heap better, in the show than out of it”; the Aerial Wonder was something of a terrestrial terror; but there was no question that Minnie La Rue was one of the sweetest and best little girls ever brought up in an inappropriate circus.

  Therefore, when Kid Barringer appeared, a day after the La Rue family, and told the boys freely what the situation of his affairs was, he received unlimited sympathy and offers of assistance.

  “I wish I could help you, Kid,” Troy Gilbert said. “There isn’t a soul in town that doesn’t feel as though that little girl ought to be taken out of that man’s keeping. But you see he’s her own father, I reckon—says he is—and the law can’t go behind that.”

  “If you boys would fix up a scheme to get me a chance to speak to Minnie—” Kid began. “At first I thought I could steal her just as easy as anything. She’d be glad to go; I had a little note from her—Say, Gib,” he broke off suddenly, with a catch in his voice, “he’s liable to strike her—to hurt her—when he’s drinking.”

  “Well, if it went as far as that, here in Blowout, I would arrest him, you know,” Gilbert suggested.

  “It won’t,” Kid returned, dejectedly; “not at the Wagon-Tire House. Aunt Huldy has a good effect on him—or rather, bad effect, for that purpose. He’s jest behavin’ himself so straight, that Aunt Huldy won’t hear a word about him bein’ the meanest that ever was.”

  Troy was thinking intently.

  “Say, Kid, I’ve got an idea. Do you reckon Aunt Huldy thinks too well of Frosty to help us out a little? If she doesn’t, I believe the thing’s as good as done. I saw that there ‘Columbia Enlightening the World’ at Emerald last year, and I know exactly how I could fix it so as to let you—well, you wait a minute, and I’ll give you all the details. It’s the only thing on the program that separates your girl from the Signorina for five minutes.”

  It must have been that Aunt Huldah saw more harm in Frosty La Rue than she was willing to mention; for an hour later Gilbert had made his arrangements.

  “Now, Kid,” he counseled, “I want you to make yourself scarce around here from now on. Don’t let Frosty know you’re in the diggin’s at all. We boys are going to give it out that you’ve gone to Fort Worth, so that he and Mrs. La Rue won’t watch Miss Minnie quite so close.”

  The Kid obediently withdrew from public life, spending most of his days in the back room of the big store, where a few sympathizing friends were always ready to bear him company; and the word went out that he had, in despair, given up camping on Miss Minnie’s trail and gone off to Fort Worth.

  This intelligence reaching old man La Rue—Gilbert wondered a little if it were possible any of it came to him through Aunt Huldah—had the desired effect of relaxing the watch upon the girl.

  The first move in Gilbert’s game was to waylay Frosty’s Mexican, and bribe him to feign sickness. To this José promptly consented; and he counterfeited with such vigor, and so to the life, that the proprietor of the show was beside himself; for it was too late to teach a new man the management of the fireworks.

  And now came Gilbert’s second move. He approached the old man with the inquiry, “Why, what’s the racket, Frosty? Something the matter with some of your outfit?”

  La Rue sweepingly condemned the whole republic of Mexico in general, and José Romero in particular, winding up with the statement that the no-account greaser had gone and got sick, here at the last minute—Frosty would seem to imply, out of sheer perversity—and when it was too late to teach another his duties.

  Upon this, Gilbert unfolded his scheme with a careful carelessness.

  “Fireworks? Why, do you know, Frosty, I believe I could do your fireworks for you all right. I know fireworks pretty well, and I saw your ‘Columbia’ at Emerald last year.”

  “And would you do it, Gilbert?” asked La Rue. “It wouldn’t pay,” added the tight-fisted old fellow. “It wouldn’t pay you—a man like you; but—”

  “Oh, I just don’t want to see the boys disappointed and the show spoiled,” rejoined Gilbert. “I don’t want any money.”

  La Rue was almost ready to embrace the sheriff of Wild Horse County. His burdens had not been light, even before the despised José’s defection. There was a multitude 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 José 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 i
n 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 José 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 glass balls. The bareback riding also came under some contempt; but the spangles and pink fleshings 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 pass 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.”

  “Oh, yes, Gib—oh, yes, you can. They won’t—” Aunt Huldah’s voice sank to a murmur, which Troy Gilbert answered with a shake of the head.

  “Well, ef they do see anything, they’ll keep still—my chil’en are trained to mind; and these others are all good people;” and Aunt Huldah beamed upon the palpitating, expectant, alarmed little band.

  “Keep still!”—what an awful phrase for such a connection! Gilbert turned and asked them kindly, “Will you, kids? Will you keep right still, whatever you see?”

  Only Gess and Tell were bold enough to put the horror into words.

  “’Tain’t no use fer us to promise,” Gess said huskily. “We’re jest bound to holler when the fireworks begins to go off, even if we had promised cross-yer-heart.”

  And Tell piped in, after him, as usual:

  “W’y, a circus is jest hollerin’—or some hollerin’ is the best part of a circus.” And he added, with a suspicious tremble in his voice, “I’d rather go downstairs an’ set in the kitchen, if we can’t holler.”

  Troy burst out laughing at sight of the dejected faces.

  “Oh, holler all you want to—holler as much as you can—I don’t mean hollerin’. I expect to do some pretty considerable hollerin’ myself, and I’ve got a lot of the boys promised to holler at the right time. But there’s to be a little—a little extra performance up here on the roof, and if you see anything queer about it, you mustn’t let on—you mustn’t tell.”

  “That’s all right,” assured Aunt Huldah, turning to descend the narrow little stairway. “They’ll do jest as you tell ‘em, Gib. Mind you don’t tip them soap boxes over an’ fall off’n the roof, chil’en. Sissy, you keep tight hold of Ally’s hand—she’s apt to fly when the big performance comes;” and Aunt Huldah’s rich, mellow, chuckling laugh came back to them up the stairs.

  One would have said that nothing on earth could make matters more glorious to the children of the Wagon-Tire House on this Fourth of July evening; but after Troy Gilbert’s words, they trod not upon the earthen roof of the hotel, but on air; they sat not upon soap boxes, but on thrones.

  Nay, kings were small people compared to them. There was to be a mysterious extra performance, in which the sheriff was implicated; it would take place under their very noses, and they were asked to assist, to keep still about it!

  Gilbert had said truly: the crowd was a big one, and most enthusiastic. As a matter of fact, there were nearly a hundred cowboys on hand who had been let into Gilbert’s scheme. The fireworks were equally successful whether they blazed splendidly or fizzled ingloriously. It was enough for the boys that Troy Gilbert was doing the act; they whooped at every figure, and whooped again at Troy’s unaccustomed drollery.

  There was a strain of intense expectancy in the audience, communicated, though without their knowledge, to those not in the secret from those who were; so that the crowd was wildly eager, without altogether knowing why.

  After the display of pin-wheels, fiery serpents, bouquets, Roman candles and rockets, old Frosty and Mrs. Frosty (otherwise the Signorina Ippolita di Castelli) came on the small platform to do their knife-throwing-act, the knives trailing fiery tails. This kept the audience ente
rtained during the time necessary to prepare the Columbia act.

  “Bet you’d be scared to do that,” whispered Eddie Beach.

  “Bet I wouldn’t,” Gess made answer. “I’d jest as soon sling them old knives—Mr. La Rue said me an’ Tell was likely boys to train. I bet Ally’d hold as still as the Signorina ‘f I was to throw them knives at her.”

  For the Columbia performance Gilbert had, during the day, stretched another wire about five feet and three inches above the big wire on which Minnie was to walk. Indeed, it was this secondary wire which had caused the eruption of old Frosty demanding to “know.”

  When the knife-throwing act was finished, there was a short pause followed by a little murmur of applause; and this grew louder and louder, until it was a medley of whoops, yells, stamping, and calls in every tone and key for the next act—the grand stroke of the performance. Frosty and the Signorina forbore to go upon the roof of the Roundup to receive Minnie, until they should see her start from the roof of the hotel.

  Figures were seen upon the top of the Wagon-Tire House (both roofs were flat) and Frosty strained his eyes eagerly toward that end of the big wire. The wondering children drew back and refrained even from whispering among themselves—Troy’s caution was not needed. Strange doings, indeed, were going forward about the end of the wire. Troy Gilbert was apparently pushing a reluctant figure toward it—it looked as though the person were tied, and he laughed and struck her when she seemed unwilling.

  Finally, Columbia began to move out slowly along the wire. She was everything that audience or proprietor could desire. The spiked tiara was on her head, blazing with violet light. Down her back hung her fair curling hair; in her hands was the long balancing pole—Columbia’s scepter of power; and her white draperies were illuminated with fires of blue and crimson and violet.