The gang looked at the Candy Butcher consolingly, but no one spoke.
“The las’ I hears from her,” she said, “she had gone back to waitin’.” She’s slingin’ hash in a Brooklyn Caf’, but I loves her just as hard.
THE BOSS CANVASMAN’S YARN.
The Boss Canvasman was always sad. He never talked—he just chewed his tobacco and worked. Like the Candy Butcher, he never wore a coat, but he cut the pink underwear the Lemonade Boy flashed when he had his sleeves rolled up at the tub. Of course, the Boss had a coat, one that had run through a dozen seasons, but he always kept it strapped down under the driver’s cushion on the pole wagon. Whenever he did use it, the coat was doing duty for a pillow when the last section was late pulling out, and he was sleeping on a gondola with the wall poles for a mat.
The Boss Canvasman’s pants were ancient history, and his vest was always open. He wore one of those motorman watches, with a shoestring for a chain. He never looked at the watch except at night, for when it was daytime he could pull off the hour on the second by the slant of the shadows across the big “top.” The Boss never wore a collar. On Sunday he would put a gold button in the shirt band, lean disconsolately against the tongue of the pole wagon, and feel uncomfortable because he was dressed up.
There was no coin and jewel flash about the Boss Canvasman. But he did wear a rusty button in the lapel of his vest—one of those G. A. R. things. Across his face there was a long red scar, and sometimes when he had been drinking he talked about the first Ohio Cavalry—Gettysburg was the answer. He feared nobody nor anything. He had no friends, except probably the Stock Boss, and there was a tie there, because the two had done the wagon show long years back before three rings were dreamed of and farmers were living on their own hog meat and were happy. If he ever did talk, it was when something went wrong, and then his line of words were unfit for publication—even in a Chicago weekly.
It looked like a squall just as the matinee was breaking, and the boys at the cages were hurrying the people along to get the tent clear before the water fell. The Boss Canvasman was hard at it getting the guys tight and throwing in cinders around the big poles, where the dirt was soft. He was taking no chances on a blow. He had been mixed up in several of those wind things down in Texas, where a cyclone struck the lot, and all that was left when the sun got back was the ticket wagon and the elephants that were chained to earth. He knew his game.
After the usual beef stew and the splash of beans had been put away with a cup of black in the meal tent, the gang gathered about the rink bank for a little rest. The Sawdust Spreader and the Gasoline Man were talking scandal, as usual. This time it was the Snake Charmer, who mixed it too strong with the bottles on the last stand, lost the keys to her snake-box and two boas and a black boy starved to death before the feeders could get the rabbits under the fangs.