O my, O my! I hope I may live to see another such a circus some day, but I guess not, for if Pa does not kill me the niggers will, if they ever come back. Those nigger chasers started the stampede. You know how nigger chasers such as boys use in America, rush around in every direction spitting fire, and acting like crazy snakes. Well, they went into that crowd like pizen, run up the legs of the men, and chased the women, and there was a stampede for fair. Men and women fell over each other, clawed hair and got on their knees and said their “now I lay me,” dodged the nigger chasers, and when they got away from one chaser another one would meet them and run up their frames and jump off and go for another and there was the scardest bunch of negroes that ever danced a war dance, and when the balls from the Roman candles began to strike all around Pa and the old king, and the pinwheel began to revolve, and spatter out different colored lights, and the cowboy’s Winchester boomed, and the wounded jackals howled, and a lion that got pretty near the camp let out a roar that shook the earth the whole crowd made for the woods and I touched off a rocket and let it go into the crowd there was a breaking of brush and a yelling in the negro dialect, and all that was left around the campfire was Pa and the cowboy and your little Hennery.
Pa knew what was the trouble. He knew it was his little boy that created the disturbance. “They’re off” says I, walking up to Pa, and putting my arm around him. “That scarce pays me for all I have suffered since I came to Africa on this fool expedition,” said the cowboy, as he picked up a piece of roast pig and began to gnaw it. “Hennery,” says Pa, picking up a club, “You have stampeded the noblest army in Africa, and broken up a tribe that were my subjects, and left me a white king with nothing to king it over; you have broken up the whole show and I must proceed to kill you.”
I dodged and gave Pa the laugh, and told him his tribe would be back in the morning, and he could make up a story that the Great Spirit had become offended at the tribe, and turned loose the elements on them, and Pa said, “Good idea, Hennery,” and we climbed trees to sleep while the hyenas came into camp and ate up the remains of the banquet. Pa said, “Hennery, you always raise hades on your watch, but I fear you have overdone it this time,” and I said to Pa, “You wait till daylight and the whole bunch will be back here worshipping you because they think you are a baldheaded God, see?” and Pa said, “Mebby, boy, mebby so.”
CHAPTER XX.
The Boy Goes Home from Church with a Girl—The Boy Meets the Girl’s Pa at a Barbecue—Pa Fills the Gas Bag and They Get Ready to Sail the Airship—Pa, the Boy and the King Take a Ride up in the Clouds—Pa Meets a New Tribe and They Take Him for Mr. Roosevelt.
I have spent a good many terrible nights in my time, but I never spent such a night as I did up the tree, the night I fired the nigger chasers into the barbecue crowd in Africa, with hyenas and jackals sitting on their haunches and looking up at us, licking their chops, and yapping for us to come down and be chewed.
Once when I was quite a bit younger, a party of us boys went to rob a melon patch, and the farmer shot us in the pants with rock salt, and chased us up a tree, while the dogs stood at the foot of the tree all night and barked, and the salt in our wounds was making us smart awful, but it was not so dangerous as this hyena stunt.
Once I went home from church with a girl, and on the way back home the father of the girl came out with a ghost sheet over him, with phosphorus eyes, and scared me into a hen coop, and as I was praying to die, a negro with a dark lantern came to steal the chickens, and when he saw me in the coop he gave me some chickens he had stolen from another coop, and he run one way and I run the other, and I guess he went around the world one way and I the other, and we met last night at the barbecue, sure, and he started back around the world the other way when my fireworks went off.
But I was not as scared in the hen coop, with the ghost and the frightened negro, as I was up the tree, looking down the throats of the hyenas, with the lions howling around sniffing at the remains of the barbecue, and a few tigers waving their tails from side to side, waiting for us to drop off the limbs.