A promise made to him in good faith by a crook had never been broken, he used to say. I remember an interesting demonstration I witnessed of his confidence in the word of a man to whom no crime was unfamiliar. He had been discovered loitering about the grounds, and had been ordered off with a threat of immediate arrest. He resembled much a country gentleman of ample means and genial nature.
“Well, you got me quick,” was his ready remark, “but seeing as I came all the way from Pittsburg and can’t catch a train back until night, won’t you let me see the show? I pledge you I won’t do any ‘business,’ no matter how tempted.”
His ingenuous request was granted with a feeling of security in his word by the detective, which the day showed was not misplaced.
The work of the circus detective, which calls for all his shrewdness and courage is in dealing with the dangerous, determined characters who disregard the warning to part company with the show at once, and who rejoin the organization as soon as released from a preceding day behind bars; men of plausible manners and engaging address who are ready for any desperate chance. Upon these recalcitrants swift retribution is visited. Formidable machinery which exercises a vague and terrible power is put in motion. And thus it is that the moon, rising over a country district, sometimes shines on the circus train speeding on its journey, and its clear rays stream over a deserted lot, casting strange shadows from a figure which lies as it has fallen, huddled in an ungainly heap upon the wet grass. Dawn brings animation to the form and to a hardened criminal a feeling of thanksgiving that he is still alive, and a deep conviction that hereafter his world of “graft” will be far removed from the circus and its primitive punishment.
The personality of circus men has changed materially for the better in recent years. Time was when they invariably wore high silk hats and clothes of many checks and hues. To be without diamonds on fingers and in shirt and necktie was a standing reproach to the profession. Nowadays the circus man affects little jewelry, and that unobtrusive, or none, and in his attire and speech he differs none from the man of ordinary commercial pursuits. He has established a reputation for honesty and sobriety and is an element of order and decency. He surrounds himself with associates of good character and business integrity, and cherishes highly his good standing in the community.
The increased police vigilance and protection accorded has helped to bring about this happy condition of affairs. In the past it was often necessary to save life and property by meeting the attacks of roughs and rowdies with equal violence and disorder. Circuses expected and received little or no help from supine or frightened police, and learned to fight their own battles. It has never been charged that any circus was not fully capable of meeting force with force, and the lawless affrays of the circus lot would form a bloody narrative. No show in the old days dared venture forth without a squad of picked fighters, and if the occasion demanded the whole encampment was eager and ready for the fray. The war cry “Hey Rube!” had forceful significance then. The circus man’s favorite weapon was the guy stake, a shaft of wood used to support chains and ropes. An iron ring circled one end, the other was pointed enough to penetrate the hardest ground. Wielded by brawny workmen, experienced in its manipulation and skilled by long practice in the art of rough combat, the instrument mowed down the ranks of the enemy with deadly execution. Fists, knives and pistols availed nothing against the onslaught. Fear and mercy were unknown in those lawless times.
Years ago if murder was done the guilt was not always fixed upon the circus employee. The hasty concealment of a body in the hay behind the cages in the menagerie tent temporarily hid evidence of the crime. In the darkness of the departure, there was a surreptitious burial. The lifeless form was hastily conveyed under ground where had been the circus ring and where the chances of discovery and disinterment were remote. Many a victim of savage circus warfare rests in these unmarked graves, and pick and shovel would solve the mystery investing scores of circus day disappearances. Particularly in the Southern States, soon after the war, were these sanguinary battles waged and with fatal results. In justice to the circus men, let it be said that their consciences gave no reproof and they felt no sense of moral guilt for the reason that they were never the instigators of riot, that they strove to quell trouble in its incipient stages and that they fought for their lives and their employer’s property. They knew, too, that public prejudice would prevent a fair legal trial and saw to it, if human ingenuity could prevail, that no serious charge could be laid against them, much less that of homicide.