Chapter 4 A SANDEBAGO CIRCUS

Just how it started nobody ever knew-it may have been Sandhelo's turning out to be a trick mule, or it may have been because Slim was fat and would make such a beautiful clown, besides being fine for a sideshow-but before they knew it the Winnebagos and the Sandwich Club were hard at work getting up a circus. The Sandwiches had taken possession of their half of the Open Door Lodge and had converted it into a gymnasium.

They had built it on purpose to reduce Slim, they carefully explained to their friends, and regularly put him through a course of exercises strenuous enough to reduce a hippopotamus to an antelope in three weeks, but at the end of that time he had gained just five pounds, so the Sandwiches declared their efforts to be love's labor lost and left him in peace.

Sandhelo was becoming a well-known and conspicuous figure in the streets. Hitched to an old pony cart of Gladys', with bells jingling around his neck and ribbons flying from his harness, he never failed to attract a crowd of children. He had all the vagaries of the artistic temperament, some of which caused his drivers no little inconvenience. For one thing, he would not go at all unless he heard music, and it was no small accomplishment to drive with one hand and play a mouth organ with the other if you happened to be alone in the cart. And then, if he happened to pass anything unusual in the street he had a way of sitting back on his haunches and holding up his front feet and looking at them. As he invariably sat down unexpectedly, the cart would go on and bump into him and the shock would throw the driver from her seat, besides making a great mess of the harness. Several times he had done this in the middle of a busy crossing and held up traffic in both directions, while motormen fumed and policemen threatened, and Sahwah (it usually was Sahwah, because she drove him more than the others) played her sweetest on the mouth organ in an effort to make him go on. Nothing would make him move until his curiosity was satisfied and then he would dash off like an arrow from the bow for half a block, after which he would slow down and look over his shoulder to see how his driver was getting on. There was always such a look of anxious solicitude in his eye on these occasions that it was impossible to be angry with him and he continued to exercise his temperament without reproof.

After half a dozen of these free shows Sahwah declared that such an ability to draw a crowd was worth money, and they had better give a real show and charge admissions.

The big space in front of the Open Door Lodge was an ideal place for the ring. Seating arrangements for the audience gave them some anxiety at first.

"We ought to have a grand stand," said the Captain, who had been chosen Ringmaster.

"Well, we can't build one," said the Bottomless Pit. "The audience will have to stand through the performance, and that'll be a grand stand, all right."

"Innovation in circuses," said Nyoda. "Have the audience stand and the circus sit down. Like the picture of the bride standing while the groom sprawls at ease in the photographer's gilt chair."

"I think I can get a lot of chairs from a man who rents them out," said the Captain. "He lets people have them for nothing if it's a charitable enterprise."

"Do you call a circus a charitable enterprise?" asked Nyoda.

"Well, ours will be," said the Captain. "We're doing it to make money so we can buy the new apparatus for the gym, which will surely make Slim thin, and that surely is charity."

Upstairs in the Lodge the six Winnebagos were all seated on the bearskin bed having a lively argument as to who should drive Slim in the Chair-iot Race. The Chair-iot Race was a grand inspiration of Sahwah's, who was keen on features in the circus line. Once, on a rummage, through Gladys' attic, they had found six horsehair covered chairs furnished with excellent china castors, which caused the chairs to roll with enchanting speed. Sahwah now thought of the chairs and conceived the brilliant idea of harnessing a Sandwich to each one, seat a Winnebago in the chair, and race six abreast down the long cement walk from the barn to the road. The idea was hailed with delight until the Winnebagos began comparing the merits of the prospective steeds, and nobody wanted to be the one to drive Slim and go lumbering along like an ice-wagon in the rear of the others.

"It's too bad the Captain had to be Ringmaster and can't take part in the show," sighed Hinpoha. "Then there'd be enough without Slim."

"We wouldn't dare leave him out, anyway," said Gladys. "It would hurt his feelings. So we'll just have to draw lots for him, and whoever gets him will have to make the best of it, that's all." So they drew slips of paper from a hat and Hinpoha drew Slim, just as she had feared right along. Sahwah drew the Monkey, which suited her down to the ground, for he was a famous sprinter, and she lost no time getting the girls to ask the boys whose names they had drawn in that secret ballot upstairs to be their steeds in the race. Slim's face lighted up with such a delighted smile when Hinpoha apparently chose him for her own that her heart smote her when she thought how this choice had been thrust upon her. Slim was already beginning to learn the bitter truth that nobody loves a fat man. Nyoda and the Captain plotted the circus parade and it was a triumph of ingenuity. The advance bills which they scattered broadcast among their friends announced that the parade would embrace "Five ferocious animals from the Other Side of Nowhere, these animals being respectively The Camelk, The Crabbit, The Alligatortoise, The Kangarooster, and The Salmonkey.

Other numbers on the program were as follows:

Ivan Awfulitch, world's greatest magician; royal entertainer to the King of Spain. Was banished to Siberia; escaped and swam to America; has now opened up a complete line of magic. One day only.

Mr. Skygack, from Mars, in a special song feature entitled the Mars-y-lays.

La Zingara, the bareback rider.

Sandhelo, the famous trick mule. As intelligent as two men and a school teacher.

Mr. Avoirdupois Slim, fattest man on earth. Will sit on a toothpick.

Mr. E. Lastic, Inja rubber man.

Archibald Dimples the better baby.

Chair-iot Race. Feat never attemped before on any stage.

Monkey, the Aerial Gymnast, in the sensational dupe-the-dupes.

Twenty Other Great Features

ALL CHILDREN WILL GET A FREE RIDE ON SANDELHO,

THE FAMOUS TRICK MULE, AFTER

THE PERFORMANCE

Bottomless Pitt owned a little hand-printing press and printed wonderful tickets to be sold at five cents apiece, which Gladys declared were worth the money as souvenirs, with the circus thrown in extra.

"What are you making, a circus tent?" asked Gladys, dropping into the Lodge, where Nyoda sat stitching together great lengths of red and white striped material.

"No; only a clown suit for Slim," laughed Nyoda. "Gracious, how much it does take!"

"It reminds me of the riddle: 'If it takes thirty yards of cloth to make a shirtwaist for an elephant, etc.,'" said Gladys. "Poor Slim! You would have died to see him practice his clown stunt with Sandhelo. You know the boys built him a tiny red cart with two big wheels, and when he sat down in it, it tilted way over backward and the shafts stuck up in the air and pulled poor little Sandhelo right up off his feet, and there he dangled, pawing for dear life. But, whatever are you making, Hinpoha?" she finished, examining the thing which Hinpoha was working on and which resembled nothing in the universe.

"This is Peter's costume," answered Hinpoha; "he's the hind leg of the Kangarooster, you know. By the way, Nyoda, has a Kangarooster one hump or two?"

"None at all," answered Nyoda hastily. "The humps are on the 'Cam' part of the Camelk. That reminds me, have we something to stuff the humps with?"

"Take excelsior," advised Gladys. "Dear me, who's screeching like that downstairs?"

They all crowded down the ladder at the sound of a lusty yell from below and found Sahwah hanging head downward from a heavy hook in the wall. She had improved a moment's leisure to climb up to the top of the window with a spray of bittersweet to see how it would look, and in descending had caught her skirt on the hook and lost her footing. The skirt tore through until the stout serge hem was reached and that offered successful resistance, and Sahwah hung, as Nyoda remarked, like a lamb on the spit.

"I got an idea hanging upside down," were the first words she gasped as they restored her to the perpendicular and revived her with peanuts.

"It's the only way you ever would get an idea," said Hinpoha.

"Is that so?" returned Sahwah, with spirit "Who thought up the Chair-iot Race, I'd like to know?"

"Stop bickering and tell us your idea," said Nyoda.

"Why, it's this," said Sahwah. "Sell hot cocoa with marshmallows in it after the show. Everybody'll be cold sitting around. We can make almost as much money that way as with the circus."

"A lake of hot cocoa with an island of marshmallows in it is my dream of heaven," said Hinpoha, clasping her hands in ecstasy. "Sahwah, you're a genius. I yield the palm to you without a struggle. You have a 'head in your mind,' as absent-minded old Fuzzytop used to say. There's nothing in the whole world that'll separate a nickel from its owner like a cup of hot cocoa with a marshmallow floating in it on a cold day."

"Another innovation," said Nyoda. "We'll have that instead of circus lemonade. See to getting the supplies, will you, Sahwah dear? I have so many details to look after now that I simply cannot be responsible for another thing, or my head will burst and out will come everything that's safely packed in now. Come in, Captain. What's on your mind?"

"Slim," said the Captain, with a look of comical despair, as he sat down among the girls. "I'm afraid he won't do for a Better Baby. He's smashed three perambulators and a high chair and we can't get any more. And the biggest size white dress we could buy in the store won't go half-way around him."

Nyoda knitted her brows. "We simply have to have a Better Baby," she affirmed. "It's one of the best features. We'll drape cheesecloth around him for a dress and he can play on a quilt on the floor-I mean the ground-instead of being taken for a ride by his nurse in a perambulator."

"Poor Slim!" said Hinpoha. "How many more things are going to be wished on him? I'm afraid his 'gall will be divided into three parts,' too!"

"That would have been a very clever thing for you to say," remarked the Captain, "if it had been original, but it wasn't. They spring that over at our school, too. Slim isn't doing any more than the rest of us at that. Only he's so conspicuous that everything he does seems like a lot more than it really is."

"How are the tickets going?" asked Sahwah.

"We've sold over a hundred," announced the Captain with pride. "We're famous people, we are."

"Speak for yourself," said Sahwah. "It isn't we who are the attraction, though-it's Sandhelo. I rode him through the streets and sold nearly fifty tickets to the children that followed us. They're all attracted by the promise of a free ride after the show."

"It'll probably take all evening to give them the ride, and we'll never get to that jubilation spread we're going to have after the show, but we have to make our word good," said Nyoda.

"Put them on four at once and we'll get done somehow," said Sahwah.

Hinpoha laid down her sewing and stretched her arms above her head. "I never knew circuses were such a pile of work," she sighed.

"'Wohelo means work,'

So dig like a Turk,"

chanted Sahwah.

"I move we all go to the 'movies' tonight and see 'If I Were King,'" continued Hinpoha.

"Can't," said Nyoda briefly, checking up on her fingers the things she still had to do. "I still have to evolve a tail for the Salmonkey and a frontispiece for the Camelk, make four banners, rehearse the living statuary, make a bonnet for the Better Baby, teach the Crabbit how to hop and crawl at the same time and make a costume for the bareback rider."

"I'd come and help you," said Sahwah, "but we're going to have a test in Latin tomorrow and I have to cram tonight. I'll just have time to practice with the band."

"A test in time saves nine," murmured Hinpoha. "What are the Sandwiches doing now?"

"Erecting the flying trapeze," answered Sahwah, looking out of the window. "Captain is hanging by his eyebrow to the top of a pole and Bottomless Pitt is standing below, waiting to catch him when he falls."

The Captain caught her eye, as she leaned over the sill and shouted:

"All right below,

O Wohelo,

Now please go mix some pancake dough!"

"All right," called Sahwah cheerily. "You'll soon smell something doughing!"

Nyoda and Gladys went home on an errand, and Hinpoha, worn out with her arduous labors with the needle, stretched out on the bearskin bed and fell sound asleep in the warmth of the fire. Sahwah puttered about collecting the ingredients for flapjacks to make a treat for the boys, who had worked like Trojans ever since school was out. The wood in the fireplace had burned down to lovely glowing embers, and she laid the toaster on top of them to act as a rest for the frying-pan. The Captain, tying ropes into the branches of the big tree just outside of the window, looked in and admired the scene. Hinpoha, with her marvellous red curls falling around her face in the light of the fire, looked like a sleeping princess in a fairy tale, and Sahwah, holding her dish of batter in one hand and skilfully putting grease into the pan with the other, was a cheery little housewife indeed. Through the half-open window he could hear her singing "A Warrior Bold."

A moment he looked in, filled with whole-souled admiration for these many-sided girls who were his new friends, and then without warning something happened inside. The panful of sizzling fat suddenly burst into a sheet of flame that left the confines of the fireplace and seemed to leap all around Sahwah. A burning spark shot out and fell into a pile of cheesecloth lying on the floor at the far side of the room, and it blazed up instantly, the flames enveloping the sleeping Hinpoha. It took less than a moment for the Captain to spring down from the tree, run into the barn and up the ladder. But it was too late for him to do anything. In the twinkling of an eye Sahwah had seized the burning cheesecloth and flung it into the fireplace, thrown a bearskin rug over Hinpoha and now stood calmly pouring sand from a bucket on top of the burning fat in the pan. And all the while she was doing it she had never stopped singing! The Captain stood still in his amazement and listened idly to the words:

"So what care I, though death be nigh?

I'll live for love or die--"

A hoarse sound made her turn around and she saw the Captain standing beside her with face pale as ashes. The dreadful sight he had seen from the tree when the room seemed filled with flame was still in his mind.

"How did you manage to keep so cool and do everything so quickly?" he asked in amazement.

Sahwah laughed at his expression of astonishment. "That's not the first fire I've put out," she said calmly. "We always keep both water and sand on hand whenever we have an open fire, to prevent serious accidents. Having the cheesecloth go up at the same time rather complicated matters, but I got it into the fireplace without any trouble. I don't know what made the fat in the pan take fire; it's never done that before up here. But don't worry; I'll get your flapjacks made, all right."

The Captain looked at her with more admiration than ever. "Most girls would have been in a faint by that time, and have had to be doused with smelling salts," he told the Sandwiches later, "instead of coolly promising you your flapjacks anyway and apologizing for the delay!"

"Your hands are burned!" he exclaimed in concern, as he saw Sahwah looking ruefully at her blackened fingers. "Let me do something for them."

"Nothing serious," said Sahwah, turning them down so he could not see the blistered palms.

"They are, too!" persisted the Captain. "Have you any oil handy?"

"In the First Aid box over there," said Sahwah. "It's in that bottle labeled A Burned Child Dreads the Fire."

The Captain returned with cotton and gauze and the oil and proceeded to bandage the scorched hands that had been so quick to avert disaster.

"Won't Hinpoha be furious when she wakes up and finds her costume that she worked so hard on all burned up?" she said, as he wound the bandages under her direction. "I hated to throw it into the fire, but it had to be done."

"She'd better not be furious," returned the Captain. "She's got you to thank that she didn't burn up herself. She had a close call that time, and if you hadn't snatched that burning rag off her and covered her with a rug I'd hate to think what would have happened. I tell you it's great to be able to do the right thing at the right time. A lot of people talk about what they would do in an emergency, but very few of them ever do it."

"Well," returned Sahwah coolly, holding up her hands and inspecting the bandages with a critical eye, "there is an emergency before us right now. Suppose you stop talking and get busy and fry those pancakes for the boys. They're dying of starvation outside."

The Captain started, blushed and looked at her keenly to see if she were making fun of him, and then fell to work without a word finishing Sahwah's interrupted labor.