I helped with the horses. My disappearance caused no comment in the organization where my status was practically that of a roustabout. I continued to adore the girl who rode the white horse, and whenever I had an opportunity I talked to her. I could not have been very skillful in dissimulation for my admiration was apparent to everybody. Maggie did not say anything to me; she never even mentioned White or Mooney, but I found her often regarding me as though I were something she did not precisely comprehend, or as though she were considering me in some plan about which she was very much concerned.
They were careless and happy days.
Strange as it may appear, I never anticipated any after affect to these adventures. I did not realize that I was in danger from the law, or that what had happened to White might on any day happen to me.
About two weeks later Maggie disappeared from the circus.
I learned the fact next morning from the girl who had been placed under the chaperonage of one of the clowns’ wives, a morose wizened old woman, whose husband, the life of the circus when the performance was under way, was at all other times the most melancholy person one could imagine, and whose withered wife seemed never to escape from this depression. I learned also that the girl was not related to Maggie, as Mooney had once intimated. She had been adopted by this curious, capable woman, probably out of a hospital.
I learned afterwards what this disappearance of Maggie meant. She had received a telegram from Mooney who was involved in his last adventure.
This woman was not in any sense an accomplice of Mooney.
I think he had never seen her until he joined this circus. I am sure there was no understanding of any character between them. In his extremity, Mooney merely turned toward her as perhaps the only person he could think of.
He had been overtaken by an unforeseen misfortune.
After the bank notes had all been signed and made ready for circulation, he left White in the south. He was convinced the plan which White proposed to follow would bring him to misfortune. He pointed out very clearly what would happen, and he was right. He had no faith in White’s assurance and he had no intention to submit himself to the possibility of any such disaster.