Chums of the Camp Fire Part 3

He even figured out just where he would keep Nicodemus fastened, and what kind of a cage he would have to construct for him; because he had never fully liked the one now being used as a place of shelter for the cub, Bandy-legs not being much of a carpenter, to tell the truth.

It was with his mind filled with future triumphs in this line of collecting wild animals that Toby sat him down to supper that evening.

He was unusually quiet, because he was thinking, and planning, and seeing visions of great things to come to pa.s.s in the distant future.

When his father asked him how the frog hunt had come out he did manage to arouse himself sufficiently to narrate some of the particulars, especially Steve's getting such a monster hermit frog, his falling into the pond, their making a fire to dry his clothes, and finally how he stopped the runaway horse under a misunderstanding and never got even so much as a word of thanks from the pretty inmate of the buggy.

Now at home, when he knew his folks were taking note of his manner of speech, it was singular how free from stuttering Toby's language could be. He just gripped himself, and was careful to speak slowly and distinctly, p.r.o.nouncing every word as though he were a foreigner trying to pick up English.

And after all that is the only true way for a stammering boy to cure himself; if Toby had been as careful when among his chums as he was at home, he would have undoubtedly thrown the habit away long ago. But then there were plenty of causes for excitement in a warm baseball game, or when indulging in a swimming match, which he did not encounter at home; and this excitement was the main cause for his failure to speak distinctly.

He sat reading until it was bedtime, for he happened to have an interesting book, taken from the public library, and all about the different animals seen by a traveler in the heart of the African forest.

It was highly embellished with colored pictures, supposed to be produced from photographs which this daring explorer had taken while concealed near some waterhole, where the animals of the forest were in the habit of coming to drink nights, and a flashlight camera helped catch them true to nature.

All of this is told with an object in view. It would serve to explain why Toby must have dreamed that he too was a bold traveler in this foreign wilderness, and reveling in the wonderful sights to be met with there.

Once during the night he was awakened by the rush of the wind, as the storm that Max had told them would come along during the night, swooped down upon Carson to blow a few trees over, and hit the tall steeple of the Methodist church again, possibly wrecking it for the fourth time in as many years.

As Toby crawled sleepily out of bed, to close the shutters belonging to the two windows in his room that looked out on the back yard where his pets were snugly housed, he wondered whether the circus had arrived safely, and if the storm would keep them from erecting the big round-top. Fortunately they had all of Sunday to prepare for the next performance; and that would count for considerable, if repairs were necessary.

Just then, during a temporary lull in the gale, he distinctly heard the clock in the town hall tower strike three. This told him that the time fixed for the coming of the circus train had long since pa.s.sed, and that they would undoubtedly be caught unprepared by the storm.

"But then they're used to roughing it," Toby thought, without stammering either, "because circus canvas hands have to rub up against hard things wherever they go. Haven't I had one boy tell me he never knew when he was going to get his next meal, and how for a month he didn't have regular sleep, and then it was on a hard board floor mebbe. Which makes me feel thankful for such a nice soft bed, though I c'n stand it sleepin' on the bare ground, when I have to in camp."

Yawning as he told himself this, Toby stood there by the open window for a minute trying to ascertain whether he could hear a lion roar or an elephant trumpet, for that would have made his ambitious blood leap through his veins. But the noise of the storm prevented him from hearing anything else, as the rain was beating down on a tin roof near by, while the wind howled through the trees as though pursued by a legion of demons.

So presently, when Toby found himself beginning to s.h.i.+ver, he crawled back again between the sheets, and snuggled down, glad that he had such a comfortable nook in which to lie while things were so unpleasant without.

Once Toby managed to get to sleep and he minded nothing else that occurred. Had that furious gale whipped the roof off the house he might have aroused sufficiently to ask if the danger were very great, and upon being rea.s.sured would have again dropped off on his voyage to slumberland.

It was daylight when Toby sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes.

"Gee!" he was saying to himself, "that was a corker of a dream, all right. Why, seemed like I could see everything the animals were adoing at that same waterhole where that man took his flashlight pictures; and it was so much like the real thing I could even hear 'em carryin' on when the flash scared the bunch."

Just then he started, and sat upright, staring hard toward the nearer window, through which it seemed a queer sound had come.

Toby could not ever remember having heard such a sound in all his life; it was different from everything he had ever come across, and seemed fraught with the most alarming potentialities.

Could one of his pets be choking to death, and was that cry meant for a signal to summon him to the rescue? The thought flashed into his excited mind, causing Toby to spring from his bed like a flash, and rush over to where the closed shutters prevented a view of the back yard.

If Toby did have an impediment in his speech there was certainly nothing of that kind connected with his movements. He was known to be one of the smartest players on the high school nine; though tongue-tied, he could equal the swiftest player on the football eleven, and had more than once claimed a share in carrying victory to the colors of Carson High.

He reached the window, and with trembling fingers fumbled at the catch, intending to throw the shutters wide open. As he was doing so he became aware of the fact that a confused jumble of mysterious sounds seemed to come floating up to him.

Toby gave his head a shake, as he again took himself to task.

"It's the old dream ahangin' on to me," he thought. "Chances are now that's only a door aswingin' in the breeze, and groanin' to beat the band; yet I'm so filled chuck full of things, because of that book, and my dream, that I'm silly enough to think I'm ahearin' wild animals asnortin' and agruntin'. Bah! get your eyes wide open, Toby Jucklin, and let up with this nonsense."

He flung open the shutters as he came to this part of hauling himself over the coals. Then he crouched there as though transfixed, hardly even drawing in a single breath. All Toby could do was to remain as though changed into a statue, and take it out in staring; though he did want to rub his eyes the worst kind, and see if the magical vision would vanish.

Indeed, there was enough reason for him to stare as though his eyes would pop out of his head. What he gazed upon might make the most sensible person believe he had been taken with a very bad case of nightmare, and was seeing things that could exist only in dreams.

There, right in the same back yard where he had his own private little menagerie Toby was looking down upon the most remarkable collection of wild animals any boy could imagine would drop down from the clouds of a stormy night--two big elephants, and a cunning baby one in the bargain; three dromedaries, with their double humps all in place; an ostrich; a striped zebra, and last but far from least, a cowering tawny form with a s.h.a.ggy mane in which Toby could recognize the king of the African forest, a male lion!

Who could blame Toby for believing that he was still dreaming as he stared out of the window of his own little second story room, and saw this wonderful array of wild beasts camped in the back yard, where up to then the fiercest captive had been his snarling wildcat, and undersized at that?

CHAPTER IV

A PROFITABLE BACK YARD

"Oh, my s-s-stars!"

That was the extent of Toby's utterance for the moment, as he remained crouched under the window, and watched that wonderful thing that had come to pa.s.s in a single night, just as though he might be living in the times of the "Arabian Nights," when magic was in vogue.

"W-w-where am I at?" he presently breathed. "W-w-what does it all m-m-mean? Has the w-w-world really turned upside d-d-down? Am I in Africa, or is this s-s-still p-p-plain old Carson, and I'm j-j-just seein' things?"

Just then the swinging trunk of the largest elephant was curled over the rim of the trough where running water pa.s.sed day and night, coming through a long pipe from a distant spring; there was a strange sucking sound, then the trunk was turned upward, and a spray of water went sizzling over the great broad back of the animal.

Toby stirred himself. He could see that the camels were chewing their cud, and the ostrich pluming its ruffled feathers, while the baby elephant nosed around as though in search of breakfast. Then even the skulking tawny figure that was partly hidden under the cage containing his wildcat moved; and he could make out the hitherto defiant inmate trying to cower against the back of the refuge as though frightened by the nearness of the king of the African jungle, the lion.

"By jinks! mebbe the circus was busted in the storm, and all the wild animals got loose!"

Why, Toby was so startled by this sudden thought, that he even neglected his customary stutter. Bandy-legs would have been quick to draw attention to this remarkable fact, had he been present to notice it, as he invariably did.

The more Toby allowed this idea to sink into his brain the stronger grew his conviction that he had really hit upon the truth. What tickled Toby most of all was the fact that the escaped animals should select _his_ back yard above all other places of refuge in the good old town of Carson.

Perhaps it had happened that the gate blew open in the storm, having been insecurely fastened; and that somehow the first animal may have been attracted by the very odor of which his mother was beginning to complain, and which is always present where wild animals are kept, such as his wildcat, 'c.o.o.n and fox.

Toby, however, always insisted that it must have been some instinct that caused elephants, dromedaries, ostrich, zebra and even the toothless old performing lion, Nero, to camp in his back yard in preference to any other harbor of refuge.

"Sure they knew a friend when they wanted to get in out of the wet, didn't they?" he would argue, with many a twist and turn to his speech; "animals are wise to the fact that a _few_ people care for them, and I'm one of that select bunch. And you can believe that I'll always take it as one of the greatest compliments ever paid to me that they picked out the Jucklin yard to camp in!"

But Toby was not saying anything like this just at present. He knew that some energetic action must be taken in order to notify the owners of the wrecked circus where they could find a big part of their stray stock.

He tore downstairs in a great hurry, though very careful at the same time to close the shutters of his window again; for it gave him a cold chill to imagine that great yellow-maned lion scrambling up the grape-arbor near by, and finding entrance to his sleeping apartment.

Toby liked wild animals all right, but he was not hankering after having them quite as close as that.

It was a quiet Sunday morning. Later on the church bells would begin to jangle and ring, but at that early hour not a sound seemed to make itself heard.

Straight to the telephone rushed Toby, and as soon as he could get Central he begged to be connected with the office of the Chief of Police.

Now Toby hardly expected that the brave defenders of Carson would march up to the Jucklin domicile, and arrest those elephants, dromedaries, zebra, ostrich and last but not least the terrible king of the dark African jungle, as Nero was described on the posters that decorated all the bill boards in town. But when citizens were in any sort of trouble it was only right they should put it up to the police. What were those men paid for, but to shoulder all the burdens that might arise, and find a solution to mysteries? Why, they would not earn their salt unless people found something for them to do once in a while; because Carson most of the time was as sleepy and peaceable as any town could be.

"h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo!" said a voice over the wire.

"That you, C-c-chief?"