WAITING TO ENTER THE BIG SHOW.
Not so many years ago, one of the feminine trapeze performers of a western circus was crossing the lot to her evening meal in the cookhouse, when suddenly she turned with the knowledge of something trailing at her heels. A moment more and she had halted, to survey in pitying fashion a small, woolly, half-starved mongrel, which, with whining and excessive wagging of tail, was seeking to inveigle her into a capture. But dogs, as pets, are not welcomed on a circus. The trapeze performer shook her head.
“Run along, pups!” she commanded, “I can’t take you!”
To which the mongrel paid no attention whatever. He had determined that here was surcease from hunger and privations, and he persisted in his appeals. The circus woman shrugged her shoulders.
“Well,” came finally, “I guess I can get you a square meal anyway.”
Whereupon she gathered him in her arms, hid him under the loose dressing-room cape which she was wearing, smuggled him into the cookhouse and surreptitiously fed him.
By that time, the pup had won his battle. Once out of the cookhouse, the performer hurried to the dog wagon. But the “dog boy” shook his head. In the first place, the circus didn’t need any more dogs, and besides that, every compartment in the wagon—a regular circus vehicle fitted with thirty or more small, square boxes which, bedded with straw, form a resting place for the show canines at night—was filled. The performer turned toward the menagerie and its superintendent. There a different welcome was waiting.
“Gosh!” said the menagerie boss, “just what I’ve been looking for. First day this season there haven’t been a dozen dogs hanging around, waiting to be picked up. Always happens, just when you need ’em worst. I’ve got to have a companion for that Pat kangaroo. Lucy, his mate, died this morning.”
So a bargain was made that the new dog should be the companion of Pat, the kangaroo, from evening until after parade time in the mornings, when it was to go into the keeping, for the afternoon hours, of the performer who had rescued it from starvation. Into the kangaroo cage went the little woolly mongrel, to bark in excited fashion for a few moments, then to edge forward in gingerly survey of the timid, grieving thing, which, by this time, had retreated to the farthest part of its cage. There was an exchange of dog and kangaroo courtesies, and evidently a few greetings in the universal language of animaldom. Late that night, when the superintendent inspected the boarding up of the various dens, there lay Pat and Dingy as he had been christened, fast asleep. Friendship had been effected, and the life of a kangaroo saved. For a time, at least. But tragedy was in the offing.
The next day the performer came for her dog, to take it to the dressing tent, there to pet and feed it, while in the menagerie a kangaroo watched in timid, excited fashion for its return. Night came, and the dog was restored to the den, to hurry to its strange cage-mate and frolic about it, while the kangaroo gave a greeting equally effusive. It was the beginning of a routine which progressed to such an extent that there came the time when the performer had only to release the dog from its chain in the dressing tent and turn to her work of packing, safe in the knowledge that Dingy would take a straight line for the menagerie and the kangaroo cage, there to stand and bark until some attendant opened the door and lifted him within. Then came tragedy.