It is the signal for the climax: the arrival of the sacred cow, the camels, the ponies, the pony chariots safely concealed with cloths, as if the sight of the fairyland beauties of these were to be withheld for a time at least from profaning eyes. The temptation to touch the pony chariots and run alongside the waddling little animals lasts but a moment. The elephants are coming! There is not a herd as the pictures promised, but only two. Every boy forgets tents and animal dens. It is no time now for comment. The big, silently-gliding animals, lunging forward and recovering, their bony heads swaying right and left, keep time with the swinging steps that seem always about to break into a run but never do. And then, by the side of the foremost, the “elephant keeper.”
Can he and the tinseled man who will later sit calmly in the open “den” of lions with naught between him and death but a little whip, be of common clay? But, just now, the lion tamer is forgotten. All eyes are on the “elephant keeper.”
At a respectful distance the boys of the town trot forward with the fast-paced monsters. A sinuous trunk leaps in the air. The foremost elephant emits a piercing cry, sharp and shrill like the car wheels of the heavy evening express when the air brakes lock them fast with a shower of sparks. The elephant keeper has sunk his prod into the big animal. Why? No boy ever knew.
“It’s to show ’em he ain’t afraid,” suggested one lad under his breath as he clasps a companion’s hand.
“Mebbe the elfunt was goin’ to do somepin’,” says another. “You got to watch ’em awful close.”
Then it is day. The big, muddy, patched tents are up. To the last minute the boys crowd forward to see the “old elfunt” push the animal cages into the menagerie tent, its head lowered and its long trunk trailing on the already wagon-rutted grounds. And then, sorrowing for each lost moment, they rush home for breakfast and explanations.
But on this particular day, Art Trevor did not rush home. He had caught sight of what was to him a greater wonder even than the elephants, and more fascinating than the shrouded pony chariots—a long, light car freighted with an aeroplane in two sections. It looked very shabby and very frail. Among those round about he searched for a boy: “Master Willie Bonner.” But he saw no boy. Then he stole closer to touch the magical craft—the first he had ever seen.
It was a twenty-six foot machine, with two propellers in the style of the Wright biplane. These and the tail frame and rudders had been removed for convenience in transportation. An oil-saturated cloth covered the engine. While Art gingerly approached the wagon on which the flying machine was loaded, together with a tool box, some cans of gasoline and oil and a number of extra bits of wooden truss uprights, a rough voice exclaimed:
“Want to get a front seat to see the flyin’ machine go up, kid?”
The speaker was a bleary-eyed, unshaven and partly dressed canvasman.