David Lannarck, Midget | Page 3

yacht, or a case of smallpox. I've tried turning them loose, but they won't go. Knowing that the show was to be here today, I brought them down in the trailer, hoping some one wanted two healthy cubs to fit into an act or exhibition."
"Bears, bears," mused the midget. "Truth is, Mr. Welborn, I'm not posted on the bear market. Offhand, I would say that they were not worth much to a show that was losing money by the bale. You see, this good old year of '32 is a bust. A depression hits a circus first and hardest. Just now, we are cutting the season and have planned a straightaway back to winter quarters. Instead of going down through Fort Collins, Greeley, Denver, Pueblo, with a swing through Texas, we have canceled everything. We play this Union Pacific right through to Omaha and thence back home by direct rails. So a pair of bear cubs wouldn't be much of an asset right now."
"Anyhow, let's look 'em over while I think up a plan." The midget recovered Alfred's knife from the dust and walked over to the trailer that he noted had a wooden coop of slats aboard. He climbed up on the wheel where he could see two black, wooly objects, scarcely a foot high, and nearly that size in length and breadth.
"They do look fat and in good fur," he commented, "and from the way they are working on the slat on yon side, you won't have them long. They would be out of the pen in another half-hour."
"That's the point to the whole matter. You just can't keep 'em penned in, and you can't keep 'em barred out. They have reached the pest stage and are incorrigible. Now I didn't expect to get much out of them anyhow," continued Welborn. "If I could find a home for them, where they would earn their keep, I would be willing to give them to such a party. Oh, I know it sounds sort of mushy," he hastened to explain as he noted the questioning look on David's countenance, "but I killed their mother for raiding our truckpatch and hogpen and I found these little fellows up near the den, starving and unable to fend for themselves. I took them home, fed them milk and bread and sugar and brought them up to where they are. But they have reached the stage where something must be done. As you see, they are hard to pen up and it's worse to turn them loose. Life to them is one continuous round of wrestling, scrapping, knocking over anything that's loose, and tearing up anything in reach. Whipping them does no good. They cry and beg until you are sorry and then it's to do all over again. I just couldn't kill them; it would be like killing a pet dog. So I just thought that if I could find someone to take them and care for them, it would be good riddance and give me time to go back to my work."
"Well, that solves the problem," said the midget, gleefully. "I've got your party. He's old Fisheye Gleason right here with the show. We can deal with that old buzzard as freely and as profitably as if we were in a cutthroat pawnshop. Hey, you fellows," he called to some passing laborers, "have any of you seen old Fisheye in the last hour?"
"Fisheye is linin' up the wagons in the menag," said one of the men.
"Er he may be up at the marquee tellin' the boss where to route the show," said another. "Maybe he's got Beatty cornered, tellin' him a new plan fer workin' the cats this afternoon," leered another. The leader pointed to the far end of the big animal tent.
"I've got him located," said David. "Now you fix that slat so the bears won't leave for the next hour and we'll work on Fisheye. He has been with this plant ever since Uncle Ben took it out as a wagon show. Hear him tell it, he set Barnum up in business and loaned the Ringling boys their first money. Fisheye is a romancer, unhampered by facts. But he's a wise old man at that.
"Fisheye Gleason still has his first dollar. He wears the same corduroy pants that Uncle Ben gave him on his twenty-first birthday. If we had the time he would tell us his personal experiences with every celebrity in the circus world. We haven't the time, and we've got to work fast and cautious.
"Now Fisheye would balk and walk away on us if we offered him these bears for nothing; he just wouldn't understand it. He dickers in animals a little; trains 'em and has 'em doing things right away. He likes 'em and they like old