I slept that morning in the hay beyond the horse stalls.
It was afternoon before I wakened. I had gotten into the town just as the circus was unloading, and, as it happened, the road upon which I approached came first to the switch on which the horse cars were standing.
The one thing about which I had any knowledge, in the whole circus, was horses.
I stopped at the car and helped the man get the horses out. It was doubtless a fortunate coincidence, because I fell in as a sort of assistant to the man who had charge of the horse car, and it gave me a kind of connection with the circus. I helped him get the animals over to the field and under the horse tent, and when they had been cared for I went to sleep.
I had now some money in my pocket and I sauntered about on that afternoon, pleased with everything.
The experience of robbing my first train did not seem to affect me. It was a sort of adventure whose elements of danger I had escaped, and it was now ended. I seemed not to realize that there was any further peril about it.
I saw Mooney in the afternoon in his canvas chair. He paid no attention to me. White I saw a little later. It was at the evening performance. I was helping to take away the horses that appeared in the ring. I was not in the main circus tent but in an attached tent in which the performers mounted.
I was bringing out a horse for one of these riders when White came up.
There were two persons standing near the horse: a young girl dressed like a fairy—dainty and lovely, I thought, in her gauze skirts and gilded butterfly wings—and a little woman. This woman was small and dark haired with narrow eyes and flat ears set close to her head. She turned viciously on White when he came up.
“Don’t go near her!” she cried. “Don’t even look at her!”