Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

The man who hired Pa in Washington to go abroad and buy airships for the government told Pa to use his own money for a month or two and then draw on the secretary of the treasury for all he needed, so before Pa went to the hospital he drew on his government for ten thousand dollars, and when he came back there was a letter for him from the American consul in Paris telling him to call at the office, so Pa went there and they arrested him on the charge of skull dugging. They said he had no right to draw for any money on the government at Washington. Pa showed his papers with the big seal on, and the consul laughed in Pa’s face, and Pa was hot under the collar and wanted to fight, but they showed him that the papers he had were no good, and that he had been buncoed by some fakir in Washington, who got five hundred dollars from Pa for securing him a job as government agent, and all his papers authorized him to do was to travel at his own expense and to buy all the airships he wanted to with his own money, and Pa had a fit. All the money he had spent was a dead loss, and all he had to show for it was a punctured airship, which he was afraid to ride in.

Pa swore at the government, at the consul and at the man who buncoed him, and they released him from arrest when he promised that he would not pose any more as a government agent, and we went back to the hotel.

“Well, this is a fine scrape you have got me in,” says Pa, as we went to our room. “What in thunder did I have to do about it?” says I, just like that. “I wasn’t with you when you framed up this job and let a man in Washington skin you out of your money by giving you a soft snap which has exploded in your hands. Gee, Pa, what you need is a maid or a valet or something that will hold on to your wad.” Pa said he didn’t need anybody to act as a guardian to him, cause he had all the money he needed in his letter of credit to the American Express Company in Paris, and he knew how to spend his money freely, but he did hate to be buncoed and made the laughing stock of two continents.

So Pa and I went down to the express office, and Pa gave the man in charge a paper, and the grand hailing sign of distress, and he handed out bags of gold and bales of bills, and Pa hid a lot in his leather belt and put some in his pockets, and said: “Come on, Henry, and we will see this town and buy it if we like it.”

Well, we went out after dark and took in the concert halls and things, and Pa drank wine and I drank nothing but ginger ale, and women who waited on us sat in Pa’s lap and patted his bald head and tried to feel in his pockets, but Pa held on to their wrists and told them to keep away, and he took one across his knee and slapped her across the pajamas with a silver tray, and I thought Pa was real saucy.

A head waiter whispered to me and wanted to know what ailed the old sport, and I told him Pa was bitten by a wolf in our circus last year and we feared he was going to have hydrophobia, and always when these spells come on the only thing to do was to throw him into a tank of water, and I should be obliged to them if they would take Pa and duck him in the fountain in the center of the cafe and save his life.

Pa was making up with the girl he had paddled with the silver tray, buying champagne for her and drinking some of it himself out of her slipper, when the head waiter called half a dozen Frenchmen who were doing police duty and told them to duck Pa in the fountain, and they grabbed him by the collar and the pants and made him walk turkey towards the fountain, and he held on to the girl, and the Frenchmen threw Pa and the girl into the brink with a flock of ducks, and they went under water, and Pa came up first yelling murder, and then the girl came up hanging to Pa’s neck, and she gave a French yell of agony, and Pa gave the grand hailing sign of distress and yelled to know if there was not an American present that would protect an American citizen from the hands of a Paris mob. The crowd gathered around the circular fountain basin, and one drunken fellow jumped in the water and was going to hold Pa’s head under water while the girl found his money, when Pa yelled “Hey, Rube,” the way they do in a circus when there is a fight, and by ginger it wasn’t a second before half a dozen old circus men that used to belong to the circus when Pa was manager in the States made a rush for the fountain, knocked the Frenchmen gally west and pulled Pa out of the water and let him drain off, and they said, “Hello, old man, how did you happen to let them drown you?” and Pa saw who the boys were and he hugged them and invited them to all take something and then go to his hotel.

When Pa paid the check for the drinks they charged in two ducks they said Pa killed in the tank by falling on them. But Pa paid it and was so tickled to meet the old circus boys that he gave the girl he went in swimming with a twenty franc note, and after staying until along towards morning we all got into and on top of a hack and went to the hotel and sat up till daylight talking things over.

We found the Circus boys were on the way to Germany to go with the Hagenbach outfit to South Africa to capture Wild Animals for circuses, and when Pa told the boss, who was one of Hagenbach’s managers, about his airship and what a dandy thing it would be to sail around where the lions and tigers live in the Jungle, and lasso them from up in the air, out of danger, he engaged Pa and me to go along, and I guess we will know all about Africa pretty soon.

The next day we went out to the club where Pa keeps his airship, with the boss of Hagenbach’s outfit and a cowboy that used to be with Pa’s circus, to practice lassoing things. They got out the machine and Pa steered it, and the boss and I were passengers, and the cowboy was on the railing in front with his lariat rope, and we sailed along about fifty feet high over the farms, until we saw a big goat. The cowboy motioned for Pa to steer towards the goat, and when we got near enough the cowboy threw the rope over the goat’s horns and tightened it up, and Mr. Goat came right along with us, bleating and fighting. We led the goat about half a mile over some fences, and finally came down to the ground to examine our catch, and we landed all right, and Hagenbach’s boss said it was the greatest scheme that ever was for catching wild animals, and he doubled Pa’s salary and said we would pack up the next day and go to the Hagenbach farm in Germany and take a steamer for South Africa in a week.