Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus

low Fever Scare--The

ts--Pa Takes a Musta

al Me

quarantine that lasted one night, so nobody could sleep on our train, a riot at Evansville 'cause we took on a couple of female trapeze wo

t to us Saturday afternoon, and some official telegraphed to the mayor that two yellow fever refugees had struck his town to join the circus, and he ordered the chief of police to hunt them out, and put them in a pest house. The Hondura

ing performances, and the crowd could not keep away from our cage, until pa got hot and unbuttoned his shirt and, before we knew it, everybody saw pa's white skin below where his face and n

y by making a speech, at the evening performance, to the effect that we were all yellow fever refugees from New Orleans and the mob li

corpse, and in four hours you are liable to be a sure enough corpse, he shook the yellow girls, and asked an old sailor what a man ought to do who has been exposed to yellow fever, and the old sailor, who has had yellow fever lots of times, told pa to strip off his c

hind a wagon and began to take the cure the sailor had prescribed. I don't know as it was right to do it, but about the time pa had got to the red pepper course and was sprinkling it on his skin pretty thick, and he was beginning to get pretty hot, and was y

, he could tell by the smell, and then pa turned pale and yellow from fright, and they wrapped him up in a piece of canva

tor Sai

ble Case of

bulance drove away, while pa shook one fist at the sailor and one at me, and his skin began t

o the cowboys out west. Sunday morning the tough fellows in the show said they wouldn't do a thing to the preacher when he came on to do his stunt. Their idea was to wait until he got well on his sermon and then begin to interrupt hi

with the circus business, because the fellows could get all the religion they needed in the winter, when the show was laid up and he would

seats, I told him the boys were going to raise a rumpus and drive him out of the tent with the bulldog hanging to his coat tails. He put his hand on his pistol pocket and pulled a long, blue gun about

snickering, and sat down on the reserved seats in front of the little pulpit, improvised from the barrels the elephants stand

oys made, except to set his jaws together and moisten his lips. Finally they were all seated, and he got up to open the serv

me is going to be opened with this hand, seven of a kind, all 45 caliber, dum-dum bullets, and unless you sit down quick I will send a mess of bullets into your carcass right where your

kled to have the bully's bluff called, that they cheered the preacher. Then he said, "We will now open this jack

have heard

and the preacher took hold of the handle of the blue gun and Big Ike walked down through the rows of seats, and as the melodeon began to squawk, Ike got down in front of the audience, and some of the boys said: "Bully for you, Ike," and after scratching his head a minute Ike turned and walked towards the preacher, at the ed

ching His H

Walked Toward

it through again, and the face of the preacher beamed with joy, and I saw

n, having been discharged from the hospital as cured of yel

at when it was all over and he said he wanted to shake hands with every man in the bunch, Ike marshaled them all up to the ring and intro

al and he would probably be in the same town with the show several times duri

a man once, but he was a Portuguese sailor, and he had the drop on me, the same as you did on Big Ike at the opening of these proceedings, and I had to kill him. And I begs the pardon of this old gentleman for lying

ook down the tents and put them on the train that Sunday afternoon, singing decent songs as they pulled up the stakes and rolled up the can