There was a slight jolt. Instantly he knew that something was wrong. The audience, too, instinctively felt that the act was not ending as it should.
Phil was falling. He was plunging straight toward the ring, head first. He struck heavily, crumpling up in a little heap, then straightening out, while half a dozen attendants ran to the lad, hastily picking him up and hurrying to the dressing tent with the limp, unconscious form.
CHAPTER XVII.
LEFT BEHIND
“Is he hurt much?”
“Don’t know. Maybe he’s broken his neck.”
This brief dialogue ensued between two painted clowns hurrying to their stations.
In the meantime the band struck up a lively air, the clowns launched into a merry medley of song and jest and in a few moments the spectators forgot the scene they had just witnessed, in the noise, the dash and the color. It would come back to them later like some long-past dream.
Mr. Kennedy, with grim, set face, uttered a stern command to Emperor, who for a brief instant had stood irresolute, as if pondering as to whether he should turn and plunge for the red silk curtains behind which his little friend had disappeared in the arms of the attendants.
The trainer’s voice won, and Emperor trumpeting loudly, took his way to his quarters without further protest.
In the dressing tent another scene was being enacted. On two drawn-up trunks, over which had been thrown a couple of horse blankets, they had laid the slender, red-clad figure of Phil Forrest.