“Me either; only I’m not going to think ’em out for ’em and then make ’em. I told ’em I’d make ’em if they’d tell me what they wanted, but they haven’t got brains enough to do that. They make me tired!” and the property man went on with his work of patching up a big sea serpent that one of the clowns used in an act. “I’ll make that platform higher for you to-morrow,” he said to Jack; “only you want to be careful how you jump off from such a height.”
“I will,” said the young clown, and then he went into the tent to rest until the evening performance, for he was rather tired, as he had responded to several encores that afternoon.
The platform, made ten feet higher, was ready for him the next day, when they opened in a good-sized city in Indiana. He got his flying machine in readiness, and it was carted out by a couple of the ring hands, for since Jack had made such a success he was given more attention by the manager, who detailed two men to help the lad, since the apparatus was now quite bulky to move about, though it was very light. Jack had made one or two changes in it, and had rigged up some United States flags on the top of the umbrella, the emblems being suddenly displayed by the pulling of a string as he began to sail downward.
“Now, Jack,” said Sam Kyle, as the clowns ran out of the dressing-tent, in response to the trumpet signal, “let’s see how your improvement works. I expect you’ll sail all about the tent now.”
“Hardly; but I can give a better exhibition, I think.”
He climbed up to the top of the slender platform. Then, after his usual song and dance, he prepared to take his place on the seat of the flying machine. First, however, as was his custom, he carefully examined the umbrella, for it was on this he relied to save him from the effects of his high jump, the big Japanese affair acting as does a parachute when a man leaps from a balloon.
Something about some of the ribs attracted the boy’s attention. He looked more carefully. To his horror, he saw that nearly all of them had been cut through so that when he jumped the umbrella would collapse, and let him fall to the ground with such a suddenness that he would be seriously hurt, if not killed. For a moment the terror of his discovery of the treacherous act deprived him of the ability to move or speak.
“Some one did this so I’d get hurt,” he whispered. “I wonder who it could have been?”
Yet he at once thought of Ted Chester and his crony, the ringmaster.
“What shall I do?” thought Jack. “I can’t go on with the act with this umbrella.”