The boys of the town were wild with excitement, and all day long a crowd gathered about the round-top, which had been repaired and hoisted. These circus men are able to meet sudden emergencies. They know what it is to grapple with difficulties that come unannounced; and it is all in a day's work with them.
Some mended torn canvas; others looked after the animals, while fresh lots continued to scour the adjacent country, searching for such animals as had not been accounted for in the collection found in the Jucklin back yard.
It was the biggest advertisement the show could possibly have had, and the enterprising owner saw his opportunity to get out fresh bills, telling about the havoc of the storm, and announcing that these beasts of prey that had been at liberty were now all safely secured again—which Toby and his chums knew was a barefaced lie, for the men were still hunting along all the roads and the woods within ten miles of town—and "could be seen in the wonderful menagerie that formed a part of the grand aggregation," and so the announcement ran on, after the customary flamboyant manner of circus posters in general.
Toby had a little streak of business about him, and some time during the day he managed to interview Mr. Jenks, informing him that he was the boy who had been the means of sending information in first about the missing animals, and that it was his amateur menagerie in the back yard that had baited them.
So what did Mr. Jenks do but place fifty dollars in his hand, and thank him in the bargain. Toby was quite satisfied, but he could not help wondering what the Chief got out of it; though he never knew.
Of course he was also told that he could attend both performances, and fetch a dozen friends along with him in the bargain, a privilege Toby was pretty certain he would avail himself of, for he was a real boy, and as we know, loved animals far beyond the average of his class.
There was a tremendous outpouring of people on the following day and evening; for never had a show been better advertised than that of Mr. Jenks. Some people even hinted that the escape of the wild beasts had really been a shrewd dodge whereby a novel feature could be introduced into advertising practices; but others scoffed the idea, and pointed to the fact that even through Monday squads of the trainers and canvasmen continued to patrol the highways and byways around Carson as though all of the wild beasts could not have been recovered in that raid on the Jucklins' back yard.