On they went again then, the clown, who was Natale’s stepfather, walking at the horses’ heads, and cracking his long whip, and chirruping to them while the other men strode behind the wagon, pushing upon it with all their might at the steep places in the road.
The women and children, meanwhile, left the road to climb the short cuts upward, leading directly from terrace to terrace,—mere paths paved with rough stones, here and there loosened and displaced by rushing rain-torrents of the past. The little ones bore the heat and the roughness of the way without murmuring, being allowed to straggle along as they pleased, now stopping to gather a red poppy from the edge of the wheat, now dropping on the ground to search for a briar afflicting some tired foot. Natale was not the last in the procession now, for he was anxious to get to the top and see what the tall wheat and the green slopes were hiding from his eyes.
At last they reached the wide turn in the road where the wagon must finally stop, at the edge of the town field. The wagon also came toiling upward, and now the good horses might rest. So these were unhitched from the wagon, and while one or two of the men led them up the steep, paved street into the village to find food and shelter for them, the others attended to the house-wagon, drawn close against the low stone wall inclosing the field, placing great stones against the wheels to steady it in its place. Now was Natale’s hour and the dogs’, and they understood this as well as he! Over the low wall they scampered and down on the soft, hot grass they lay, rolling over and over down the gentle slope of the field until, suddenly, Natale found himself landing directly upon his feet, with a whirring in his head, and the sound of distressed barking in his ears.
The dogs had had the wit to stop on the very edge of a sharp descent which Natale had not noticed, and now they stood on the bank, half-a-dozen feet above him, their forefeet firmly planted on the brink of the grassy precipice, and their tufty tails high in the air, begging with all their might to know whether their dear little comrade were hurt. Natale was not hurt, but the jar of the descent gave him a queer feeling under the waistband of his trousers, and he sat down directly where he stood, on the lower terrace, turning his back upon the dogs.
A fringe of bushes threw a narrow band of shade about him from above, and he made up his mind to stay there till something should be made ready for dinner. He hoped he would not be wanted to fetch anything from the village,—he was always fetching something for somebody. He had heard his mother calling to her husband to bring a little meal for the polenta,[2] when he should finish stabling the horses, and he knew there was wine left in the flask in the wagon.
From where Natale sat he could look directly down upon the roof of a house far down by the stone bridge and could faintly hear the rushing of the little river Lima over the rocks. Presently he eased himself out on the grass at full length, with his arms crossed beneath his head. As he dropped off to sleep, he was thinking how well it was that there could be no performance in the tent that evening. He was sure that Arduina would laugh more than ever at his stiff little feats on the circus carpet if he should have to turn somersaults after the long tramp.
Then Natale slept, with the great green mountains closing around him, and Bianco the black dog and Niero the white keeping watch above his head from where they had stretched themselves on the edge of the terrace in the sun.
CHAPTER II
NONNA
Natale, as will have been discovered by this time, was an Italian circus boy, a cheerful, happy little soul, who loved his “profession”, and whose ambition reached to the giddy height of some day rivaling even Antonio Bisbini in his wonderful trapeze performances. He loved everything connected with the life he led,—the long slow journeyings through his beautiful Italy, the camping out at night along the quiet roads, the open-air loungings in some village through the sunny days, until the evening should come and the oil lamps be lighted in the tent, and the people come crowding in to see Arduina dance the tight rope, and little Olga do her wonderful turns and twists on the carpet, and to applaud Antonio and the clown and the horses, and—yes, and himself too, little Natale, stiff as his short thin legs always were and hopeless, as Arduina declared, in his bows and scrapes.
Besides the three musicians, there were two families in the strolling company. Giovanni Marzuchetti was the clown, also the stepfather of Paulo, Arduina, Pietro, Natale and little Maria, and husband of Elvira, the black-haired mother of the five children. This man had no children of his own but was kind in his rough, clownish way to Natale and the rest.