At last a circus came to the town twelve miles from the ranch, and Campbell offered to take me to see it. He was in one of his placative moods just then, and thought he would please me by this. But I declined the invitation. I did that because I meant to run away and join that circus, and I wanted him to think I cared nothing about a circus, so that he shouldn’t look for me among the show people. I still had the horse he had bought from the Indians and given to me, so that I could take that without being accused of horse-stealing. The horse was a tough, wiry fellow, who liked nothing so much as to run with all his might. I think he could have travelled at half-speed for twenty or thirty miles without growing tired.
One night, while the circus was in the town, I mounted my horse just after dark and set off for a ride. As I often rode for half the night, I knew Campbell would think nothing of my doing this. As soon as I was well away from the house, I turned into the road that led to the town, and put my horse—Little Chief—at a rapid gallop. Within less than two hours, I reached the town. Just before getting there, I turned Little Chief loose, set his head toward the ranch, and bade him “scamper.” I had taught him always to go to his stable as quickly as possible when I said that word “scamper” to him. This time I had removed the blanket from his back and the bridle from his head. I knew, therefore, he would be found in his stall next morning with nothing on him to show that he had been ridden.
As soon as Little Chief had started on his scamper, I turned and walked into the town. The circus performance was not quite over, so I went to the door of the big tent and told the man there that I wanted to see the proprietor of the show on important business. I hadn’t a cent of money, so I didn’t expect to go in. But the man at the door politely invited me to enter and see the end of the show. For a moment I thought of accepting his invitation, but then I remembered that all the ranch-men for twenty miles round would be there, and that they all knew me by sight as “that wild gal of Campbell’s.” I didn’t want any of them to see me at the circus, lest they should tell of it when the search for me began. So I told the man that I would not go in, and asked him where and how I could see the owner of the show after the performance. He called a man and told him to take me to “the Lady Superior, in the dressing-tent.” I found out presently that all the people in the circus called the manager’s wife by that name, and the manager they called “the Grand Panjandrum.” In fact, they had a nickname of some sort for every one in authority.
The Lady Superior received me as a queen might. She had just been riding around the ring in a red and gold chariot drawn by six white horses, and playing Cleopatra in what they called “the magnificent and gorgeous historical panorama of human splendour.” As Cleopatra, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, George Washington, Genghis Khan, Julius Cæsar, and a great many others took part in the spectacle, the people in the audience must have got their notions of history considerably mixed up, but at any rate the Lady Superior always seemed to enjoy her part, and particularly her gorgeous raiment. I had a hard time trying not to laugh in her face when I was first presented to her on that night. She was still dressed in her robe of flaming, high-coloured silk, trimmed with ermine and spangles, with her crown still on her head, and she was almost greedily eating a dish of beef à la mode with roast onions. But in spite of her gorgeous apparel and her defective grammar, she proved to be a good-natured creature, and she received me very kindly.
I told her what I could do as a bareback rider, and she took me to her hotel in her carriage as soon as she had put on some plain clothes. I told her that I didn’t want anybody in that town to see me, so she drove up to a back door of the little tavern and smuggled me into her room. I remember that the tavern was a little two-story, wooden building, with the inside partition walls made of rough boards set on end so loosely that one could see through the cracks into the next room. But it was called the Transcontinental Hotel, and the painter had found some difficulty in getting the big name into one line across the narrow front of the building.
In her room the Lady Superior gave me some supper, she eating with me as heartily as if she had not had a dish of beef à la mode with roast onions less than half an hour before. She explained to me that the circus people never take their supper till after the performance.
“It makes ’em lazy and not up to their work,” she said.
When her husband, the Grand Panjandrum, came in, she introduced me to him and told him about my accomplishments.
He slapped his thigh with his palm and exclaimed:—