Kitabı oku: «Sundry Accounts», sayfa 6

Under his tutelage Red Hoss proved a reasonably apt pupil. At the end of an apprenticeship covering a fortnight he matriculated into a regular driver, with a badge and a cap to prove it and a place on the night shift. Red Hoss felt impressive, and bore himself accordingly. He began taking sharp turns on two wheels. He took one such turn too many. On Friday night of his first week as a graduate chauffeur he steered his car headlong into a smash-up from which she emerged with a dished front wheel and a permanent marcel wave in one fender. As he nursed the cripple back to the garage Red Hoss exercised an imagination which never yet had failed him, and fabricated an explanation so plausibly shaped and phrased as to absolve him of all blameful responsibility for the mishap.

Mr. Farrell listened to and accepted this account of the accident with no more than a passing exhibition of natural irritation; but next morning when Attorney Sublette called, accompanied by an irate client with a claim for damages sustained to a market wagon, and bringing with him also the testimony of at least two disinterested eye-witnesses to prove upon whose shoulders the fault must rest, Mr. Farrell somewhat lost his customary air of sustained calm. Cursing softly under his breath, he settled on the spot with a cash compromise; and then calling the offender to his presence, he used strong and bitter words.

"Look here, boy," he proclaimed, "I've let you off this time with a cussing, but next time anything happens to a car that you are driving you've got to come clean with me. It ain't to be expected that a lot of crazy darkies can go sky-hooting round this town driving pot-metal omnibuses for me without one of them getting in a smash-up about every so often, and I'm carrying accident insurance and liability insurance to cover my risks; but next time you get into a jam I want you to come through with the absolute facts in the case, so's I'll know where I stand and how to protect myself in court or out of it. I don't care two bits whose fault it is – your fault or some other lunatic's fault. The truth is what I want – the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God. And He'll need to help you if I catch you lying again! Get me?"

"Boss," said Red Hoss fervently, "I gits you."

Two nights later the greater disaster befell. It was a thick, drizzly, muggy night, when the foreground of one's perspective was blurred by the murk and when there just naturally was not any background at all. Down by the Richland House a strange white man wearing a hand-colored mustache and a tiger-claw watch charm hailed Red Hoss. This person desired to be carried entirely out of town, to the south yards of the P. T. & A. Railroad, where Powers Brothers' Carnival Company was detraining from its cars with intent to pitch camp in the suburb of Mechanicsville hard by and furnish the chief attractions for a three days' street fair to be given under the auspices of the Mechanicsville lodge of Knights of Damon.

After they had quit the paved streets, Red Hoss drove a bumpy course diagonally across many switch spurs, and obeying instructions from his fare brought safely up alongside a red-painted sleeping car which formed the head end of the show train where it stood on a siding. But starting back he decided to skirt alongside the track, where he hoped the going might be easier. As he backed round and started off, directly in front of him he made out through the encompassing mists the dim flare of a gasoline torch, and he heard a voice uplifted in pleading:

"Come on, Lena! Come on, Baby Doll! Come on out of that, you Queenie!"

Seemingly an unseen white man was urging certain of his lady friends to quit some mysterious inner retreat and join him where he stood; all of which, as Red Hoss figured it, was none of his affair. Had he known more he might have moved more slowly; indeed might have stopped moving altogether. But – I ask you – how was Red Hoss to know that the chief bull handler for Powers Brothers was engaged in superintending the unloading of his large living charges from their traveling accommodations in the bull car?

There were three of these bulls, all of them being of the gentler sex. Perhaps it might be well to explain here that the word "bull," in the language of the white tops, means elephant. To a showman all cow elephants are bulls just as in a mid-Victorian day, more refined than this one, all authentic bulls were, to cultured people, cows.

Obeying the insistent request of their master, forth now and down a wooden runway filed the members of Powers Brothers' World Famous Troupe of Ponderous Pachydermic Performers. First came Lena, then Baby Doll and last of all the mighty Queenie; and in this order they lumberingly proceeded, upon huge but silent feet, to follow him alongside the cindered right of way, feeling their way through the fog.

Now it is a fact well established in natural history – and in this instance was to prove a lamentable one – that elephants, unlike lightning bugs, carry no tail lamps. Of a sudden Red Hoss was aware of a vast, indefinite, mouse-colored bulk looming directly in the path before him. He braked hard and tried to swing out, but he was too close upon the obstacle to avoid a collision.

With a loud metallic smack the bow of the swerving taxicab, coming up from the rear, treacherously smote the mastodonic Queenie right where her wrinkles were thickest. Her knees bent forward, and involuntarily she squatted. She squatted, as one might say, on all points south. Simultaneously there was an agonized squeal from Queenie and a crunching sound from behind and somewhat under her, and the tragic deed was done. The radiator of Red Hoss' car looked something like a concertina which had seen hard usage and something like a folded-in crush hat, but very little, if any, like a radiator.

At seven o'clock next morning, when Mr. Farrell arrived at his establishment, his stricken gaze fastened upon a new car of his which had become to all intents and purposes practically two-thirds of a car. The remnant stood at the curbing, where his service car, having towed it in, had left it as though the night foreman had been unwilling to give so complete a ruin storage space within the garage. Alongside the wreckage was Red Hoss, endeavoring more or less unsuccessfully to make himself small and inconspicuous. Upon him menacingly advanced his employer.

"The second time in forty-eight hours for you, eh?" said Mr. Farrell. "Well, boy, you do work fast! Come on now, and give me the cold facts. How did the whole front end of this car come to get mashed off?"

Tone and mien alike were threatening. Red Hoss realized there was no time for extended preliminary remarks. From him the truth came trippingly on the tongue.

"Boss, man, I ain't aimin' to tell you no lies dis time. I comes clean."

"Come clean and come fast."

"A elephint set down on it."

"What!"

"I sez, suh, a elephint set down on it."

In moments of stress, when tempted beyond his powers of self-control, Mr. Farrell was accustomed to punctuate physically, as it were, the spoken word. What he said – all he said – before emotion choked him was: "Why – you – you – " What he did was this: His right arm crooked upward like a question mark; it straightened downward like an exclamation point; his fist made a period, or, as the term goes, a full stop on the point of Red Hoss Shackleford's jaw. What Red Hoss saw resembled this:

* * * * * * *

Only they were all printed flashingly in bright primary colors, reds and greens predominating.

As the last gay asterisk faded from before his blinking eyes Red Hoss found himself sitting down on a hard concrete sidewalk. Coincidentally other discoveries made themselves manifest to his understanding. One was that the truth which often is stranger than fiction may also on occasion be a more dangerous commodity to handle. Another was that abruptly he had severed all business connections with Mr. Lee Farrell's industry. His resignation had been accepted on the spot, and the spot was the bulge of his left jaw.

Somewhat dazed, filled with an inarticulate but none the less sincere conviction that there was neither right nor justice left in a misshapen world, Red Hoss got up and went away from there. He deemed it the part of prudence to go utterly and swiftly away from there. It seemed probable that at any moment Mr. Farrell might emerge from his inner office, whither, as might be noted through an open window, he had retired to pour cold water on his bruised knuckles, and get violent again. The language he was using so indicated.

Presently Red Hoss, with one side of his face slightly swollen and a curious taste in his mouth, might have been seen boarding a Locust Street car southbound. He was on his way to Mechanicsville. In the back part of his brain lurked vaguely a project to seek out the man who owned those elephants and plead for some fashion of redress for painful injuries innocently sustained. Perhaps the show gentleman might incline a charitable ear upon hearing Red Hoss' story. Just how the sufferer would go about the formality of presenting himself to the consideration of the visiting dignitary he did not yet know. It was all nebulous and cloudy; a contingency to be shaped by circumstances as they might develop. Really sympathy was the balm Red Hoss craved most.

He quit the car when the car quit him – at the end of the line where the iron bridge across Island Creek marked the boundary between the municipality and its principal suburb. Even at this hour Mechanicsville's broadest highway abounded in fascinating sights and alluring zoölogical aromas. The carnival formally would not open till the afternoon, but by Powers Brothers' crews things already had been prepared against the coming of that time. In all available open spaces, such as vacant lots abutting upon the sidewalks and the junctions of cross streets, booths and tents and canvas-walled arenas had been set up. Boys of assorted sizes and colors hung in expectant clumps about marquees and show fronts. Also a numerous assemblage of adults of the resident leisure class, a majority of these being members of Red Hoss' own race, moved back and forth through the line of fairings, inspired by the prospect of seeing something interesting without having to pay for it.

Red Hoss forgot temporarily the more-or-less indefinite purpose which had brought him hither. He joined a cluster of watchful persons who hopefully had collected before the scrolled and ornamented wooden entrance of a tarpaulin structure larger than any of the rest. From beneath the red-and-gold portico of this edifice there issued a blocky man in a checkered suit, with a hard hat draped precariously over one ear and with a magnificent jewel gleaming out of the bosom of a collarless shirt. All things about this man stamped him as one having authority over the housed mysteries roundabout. Visibly he rayed that aura of proprietorship common to some monarchs and to practically all owners of traveling caravansaries. Seeing him, Red Hoss promptly detached himself from the group he had just joined, and advanced, having it in mind to seek speech with this superior-appearing personage. The white man beat him to it.

"Say, boy, that's right, keep a-coming," he called. His experienced eye appraised Red Hoss' muscular proportions. "Do you want a job?"

"Whut kinder job, boss?"

"Best job you ever had in your life," declared the white man. "You get fourteen a week and cakes. Get me? Fourteen dollars just as regular as Saturday night comes, and your scoffing free – all the chow you can eat thrown in. Then you hear the band play absolutely free of charge, and you see the big show six times a day without having to pay for it, and you travel round and see the country. Don't that sound good to you? Oh, yes, there's one thing else!" He dangled a yet more alluring temptation. "And you wear a red coat with brass buttons on it and a cap with a plume in it."

"Sho' does sound good," said Red Hoss, warming. "Whut else I got to do, cunnel?"

"Oh, just odd jobs round this pitch here – this animal show."

"Hole on, please, boss! I don't have no truck wid elephints, does I?"

"Nope. The elephants are down the line in a separate outfit of their own. You work with this show – clean out the cages and little things like that. Don't get worried," he added quickly, interpreting aright a look of sudden concern upon Red Hoss' face. "You don't have to go inside the cages to clean 'em out. You stay outside and do it with a long-handled tool. I had a good man on this job, but he quit on me unexpectedly night before last."

The speaker failed to explain that the recent incumbent had quit thus abruptly as a result of having a forearm clawed by a lady leopard named Violet.

"'Bout how long is dis yere job liable to last?" inquired Red Hoss. "You see, cunnel, Ise 'spectin' to have some right important private business in dis town 'fore so very long."

"Then this is the very job you want. After we leave here to-morrow night we strike down across the state line and play three more stands, and then we wind up with a week in Memphis. We close up the season there and go into winter quarters, and you come on back home. What's your name?"

"My full entitled name is Roscoe Conklin' Shackleford, but 'count of my havin' a kinder brightish complexion dey mos' gin'rally calls me Red Hoss. I reckin mebbe dey's Injun blood flowin' in me."

"All right, Red Hoss, let it flow. You just come on with me and I'll show you what you'll have to do. My name is Powers – Captain Powers."

Proudly sensing that already he was an envied figure in the eyes of the group behind him, Red Hoss followed the commanding Powers back through a canvas-sided marquee into a circular two-poled tent. There were no seats. The middle spaces were empty. Against the side walls were ranged four cages. One housed a pair of black bears of a rather weather-beaten and travel-worn aspect. Next to the bears, the lady leopard, Violet, through the bars contemplated space, meanwhile wearing that air of intense boredom peculiar to most caged animals. A painted inscription above the front of the third cage identified its occupant as none other than The Educated Ostrich; the Bird That Thinks.

Red Hoss' conductor indicated these possessions with a lordly wave of his arm, then led the way to the fourth cage. It was the largest cage of all; it was painted a bright and passionate red. It had gilded scrollings on it. Upon the ornamented façade which crossed its front from side to side a lettered legend ran. Red Hoss spelled out the pronouncement:

Chieftain, King of Feline Acrobats! The Largest Black-maned Nubian Lion in Captivity! Danger!

The face of the cage was boarded halfway up, but above the top line of the planked cross panel Red Hoss could make out in the foreground of the dimmed interior a great tawny shape, and at the back, in one corner, an orderly clutter of objects painted a uniform circus blue. There was a barrel or two, an enormous wooden ball, a collapsible fold-up seesaw and other impedimenta of a trained-animal act. Red Hoss had heard that the lion was a noble brute – in short, was the king of beasts. He now was prepared to swear it had a noble smell. Beneath the cage a white man in overalls slumbered audibly upon a tarpaulin folded into a pallet.

"There's the man you take your orders from if you join us," explained Powers, flirting a thumb toward the sleeper. "Name of Riley, he is. But you draw your pay from me." With his arm he described a circle. "And here's the stock you help take care of. The only one you need to be careful about is that leopard over yonder. She gets a little peevish once in a while. Well, I would sort of keep an eye on the ostrich here alongside you too. The old bird's liable to cut loose when you ain't looking and kick the taste out of your mouth. You give them both their distances. But those bears behind you is just the same as a pair of puppies, and old Chieftain here – well, he looks pretty fierce and he acts sort of fierce too when he's called on for it, but it's just acting with him; he's trained to it. Off watch, he's just as gentle as an overgrown kitten. Riley handles him and works him, and all you've got to do when Riley is putting him through his stunts is to stand outside here and hand him things he wants in through the bars. Well, is it a go? Going to take the job?"

"Boss," said Red Hoss, "you speaks late – I done already tooken it."

"Good!" said Powers. "That's the way I love to do business – short and sweet. You hang round for an hour or two and sort of get acquainted with things until Riley has his nap out. When he wakes up, if I ain't back by that time, you tell him you're the new helper, and he'll wise you up."

"Yas suh," said Red Hoss. "But say, boss, 'scuse me, but did I understand you to mention dat eatin' was in de contract?"

"Sure! Hungry already?"

"Well, suh, you see I mos' gin'rally starts de day off wid breakfust, an' to tell you de truth I ain't had nary grain of breakfust yit!"

"Got the breakfast habit, eh? Well, come on with me to the cook house and I'll see if there ain't something left over."

Despite the nature of his calling as a tamer of ferocious denizens of the tropic jungle, Mr. Riley, upon wakening, proved to be a person of a fairly amiable disposition. He made it snappy but not unduly burdensome as he initiated Red Hoss into the rudimentary phases of the new employment. As the forenoon wore on the conviction became fixed in Red Hoss' mind that for an overlord he had a white man who would be apt to listen to reason touching on any proposition promising personal profits with no personal risks.

Sharp upon this diagnosis of his new master's character, a magnificent idea, descending without warning like a bolt from the blue, struck Red Hoss on top of his head and bored in through his skull and took prompt root in his entranced and dazzled brain. It was a gorgeous conception; one which promised opulent returns for comparatively minor exertions. To carry it out, though, required coöperation, and in Riley he saw with a divining glance – or thought he saw – the hope of that coöperation.

In paving the way for confidential relations he put to Riley certain leading questions artfully disguised, and at the beginning seemingly artlessly presented. By the very nature of Riley's answers he was further assured of the safety of the ground on which he trod, whereupon Red Hoss cautiously broached the project, going on to amplify it in glowing colors the while Riley hearkened attentively.

It was a sheer pleasure to outline a proposition to a white gentleman who received it so agreeably. Fifteen minutes after the first tentative overtures had been thrown out feeler-wise, Red Hoss found that he and Riley were in complete accord on all salient points. Indeed they already were as partners jointly committed to a joint undertaking.

After the third and last afternoon performance, in which Red Hoss, wearing a proud mien and a somewhat spotty uniform coat, had acquitted himself in all regards creditably, Riley gave him a leave of absence of two hours, ostensibly for the purpose of quitting his boarding house and collecting his traveling wardrobe. As a matter of fact, these details really required but a few minutes, and it had been privily agreed between them that the rest of the time should be devoted by Red Hoss to setting in motion the actual preliminaries of their scheme.

This involved a personal call upon Mr. Moe Rosen, who conducted a hide, pelt, rag, junk, empty-bottle and old-iron emporium on lower Court Street, just off the Market Square. September's hurried twilight had descended upon the town when the scouting conspirator tapped for admission at the alley entrance to the back room of Mr. Rosen's establishment, where the owner sat amid a variegated assortment of choicer specimens culled from his collected wares. Mr. Rosen needed no sign above his door to inform the passing public of the nature of his business. When the wind was right you could stand two blocks away and know it without being told. Here at Mr. Rosen's side door Red Hoss smacked his nostrils appreciatively. Even to one newly come from a wild-animal show, and even when smelled through a brick wall, Mr. Rosen's place had a graphic and striking atmosphere which was all its own.

As one well acquainted with the undercurrents of community life, Red Hoss shared, with many others, the knowledge that Mr. Rosen, while ostensibly engaged in one industry, carried on another as a sort of clandestine by-product. Now this side line, though surreptitiously conducted and perilous in certain of its aspects, was believed by the initiated to be really more lucrative than his legitimatized and avowed calling. Mr. Rosen was by way of being – by a roundabout way of being – what technically is known as a bootlegger. He bootlegged upon a larger scale than do most of those pursuing this precarious avocation.

It was stated in an earlier paragraph that national prohibition had not yet come to pass. But already local option held the adjoining commonwealth of Tennessee in a firm and arid grasp; wherefore Mr. Rosen's private dealings largely had to do with discreet clients thirstily residing below the state line. It was common rumor in certain quarters that lately this traffic had suffered a most disastrous interruption. Tennessee revenue agents suddenly had evinced an unfriendly curiosity touching on vehicular movements from the Kentucky side.

A considerable chunk of Mr. Rosen's profits for the current year had been irretrievably swallowed up when a squad of these suspicious excisemen laid their detaining hands upon a sizable order of case stuff which – disguised and broadly labeled as crated household goods – was traveling southward by nightfall in a truck, heading toward a destination in a district which that truck was destined never to reach.

Bottle by bottle the aromatic contents of the packages had been poured into the wayside ditch to be sucked up by an unappreciative if porous soil. The truck itself had been confiscated. Its driver barely had escaped, to return homeward afoot across country bearing dire tidings to his employer, who was reported, upon hearing the lamentable news, literally to have scrambled the air with disconsolate flappings of his hands, meanwhile uttering shrill cries of grief.

Moreover, as though to top this stroke of ill luck, further activities in the direction of his most profitable market practically had been brought to a standstill by reason of enhanced vigilance on the part of the Tennessee authorities along the main highroads running north and south. Between supply and demand, or perhaps one should say between purveyor and consumer, the boundary mark dividing the sister commonwealths stretched its dead line like a narrow river of despair. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the sorely pestered Mr. Rosen should be at this time a prey to care so carking as to border on forthright melancholia. Never a particularly cheerful person, at Red Hoss' soft knock upon his outer door he raised a countenance completely clothed in moroseness where not clothed in whiskers and grunted briefly – a sound which might or might not be taken as an invitation to enter. Nor was his greeting, following upon the caller's soft-footed entrance, calculated to promote cordial intercourse.

"What you want, nigger?" he demanded, breaking in on Red Hoss' politely phrased greeting. Then without waiting for a reply, "Well, whatever it is, you don't get it. Get out!"

Nevertheless, Red Hoss came right on in. Carefully he closed the door behind him, shutting himself in with Mr. Rosen and privacy and a symposium of strong, rich smells.

"'Scuse me, Mist' Rosen," he said, "fur bre'kin' in on you lak dis, but I got a little sumpin' to say to you in mos' strictes' confidence. Seems lak to me I heard tell lately dat you'd had a little trouble wid some white folkses down de line. Co'se dat ain't none o' my business. I jes' mentioned it so's you'd understan' whut it is I wants to talk wid you about."

He drew up an elbow length away from Mr. Rosen and sank his voice to an intimate half whisper.

"Mist' Rosen, le's you an' me do a little s'posin'. Le's s'posen' you has a bar'l of vinegar or molasses or sumpin' which you wants delivered to a frien' in Memphis, Tennessee. Seems lak I has heared somewhars dat you already is got a frien' or two in Memphis, Tennessee? All right den! S'posin', den, dat you wrote to your frien' dat dis yere bar'l would be comin' along to him inside of a week or ten days f'um now wid me in de full charge of it. S'posin', den, on top o' dat I could guarantee you to deliver dat bar'l to your frien' widout nobody botherin' dat bar'l on de way, and widout nobody 'spectin' whut wuz in dat bar'l, an' widout nobody axin' no hard questions about dat bar'l. S'posin' all dem things, ef you please, suh, an' den I axes you dis question: How much would dat favor be wuth to you in cash money?"

As a careful business man, Mr. Rosen very properly pressed for further particulars before in any way committing himself in the matter of the amount of remuneration to be paid for the accommodation proposed. At this evidence of interest on the other's part Red Hoss grinned in happy optimism.

"Mist' Rosen, 'twon't hardly be no trouble a-tall," he stated. "In de fust place, you teks a pot o' blue paint an' you paints dat bar'l blue f'um head to foot. De bluer dat bar'l is de more safer she'll be. An' to mek sure dat de color will be right yere's a sample fur you to go by."

With that, Red Hoss produced from a hip pocket a sliver of plank painted on both sides in the cerulean hue universally favored by circus folk for covering seat boards, tent poles and such paraphernalia of a portable caravansary as is subject to rough treatment and frequent handling. At this the shock of surprise was such as almost to lift Mr. Rosen up on top of the cluttered desk which separated him from his visitor. It did lift him halfway out of his chair.

"Nigger," he declared incredulously, "you talk foolishness! A mile away those dam Tennessee constables would be able to see a plain barrel which ain't got no paint on it at all, and now you tell me I should paint a barrel so blue as the sky, and yet it should get through from here to Memphis. Are you crazy in the head or something, or do you maybe think I am?"

"Nummine dat," went on Red Hoss. "You do lak I tells you, an' you paints de bar'l right away so de paint'll git good an' dry twixt now an' We'n'sday night. Come We'n'sday night, you loads dat blue bar'l in a waggin an' covers it up an' you fetches it to me at de back do' of de main wild animal tent of dat carnival show which is now gwine on up yere in Mechanicsville. Don't go to de tent whar de elephints is. Go to de tent whar de educated ostrich is. Dar you'll fin' me. I done tuk a job as de fust chief 'sistant wild-animal trainer, an' right dar I'll be waitin'. So den you turns de bar'l over to me an' you goes on back home an' you furgits all 'bout it. Den in 'bout two weeks mo' when I gits back yere I brings you a piece o' writin' f'um de gen'elman in Memphis sayin' dat de bar'l has been delivered to him in good awder, an' den you pays me de rest o' de money dat's comin' to me." He had a canny second thought. "Mebbe," he added, "mebbe it would be better for all concern' ef you wrote to yore frien' in Memphis to hand me over de rest of de money when I delivers de bar'l. Yassuh, I reckins dat would be de best."

"The rest of what money?" demanded Mr. Rosen sharply. "I ain't said nothing about giving no money to nobody. What do you mean – money?"

"I mean de rest of de money which'll be comin' to me ez my share," explained Red Hoss patiently. "De white man dat's goin' to he'p me wid dis yere job, he 'sists p'intedly dat he must have his share paid down cash in advance 'count of him not bein' able to come back yere an' collek it fur hisse'f, an' likewise 'count of him not keerin' to have no truck wid de gen'elman at de other end of de line. De way he put it, he wants all of his'n 'fore he starts. But me, Ise willin' to wait fur de bes' part of mine anyhow. So dat's how it stands, Mist' Rosen, an' 'scusin' you an' me an' dis yere white man an' your frien' in Memphis, dey ain't nary pusson gwine know nothin' 'bout it a-tall, 'ceptin' mebbe hit's de lion. An' ez fur dat, w'y de lion don't count noways, 'count of him not talkin' no language 'ceptin' 'tis his own language."

"The lion?" echoed Mr. Rosen blankly. "What lion? First you tell me blue barrel and then you tell me lion."

"I means Chieftain – de larges' black-mangy Nubbin lion in captivation," stated Red Hoss grandly, quoting from memory his own recollection of an inscription he but lately had read for the first time. "Mist' Rosen, twixt you an' me, I reckins dey ain't no revenue officer in de whole state of Tennessee which is gwine go projeckin' round a lion cage lookin' fur evidence."

Disclosing the crux of his plot, his voice took on a jubilant tone. "Mist' Rosen, please, suh, lissen to me whut Ise revealin' to you. Dat blue bar'l of yourn is gwine ride f'um yere plum' to Memphis, Tennessee, in a cage wid a lion ez big ez ary two lions got ary right to be! An' now den, Mist' Rosen, le's you an' me talk 'bout de money part of it; 'cause when all is said an' done, dat's de principalest part, ain't it?"

The town of Wyattsville was, as the saying goes, all agog. Indeed, as the editor of the Wyattsville Tri-Weekly Statesman most aptly phrased it in the introductory sentence of a first-page, full-column article in his latest issue: "This week all roads run to Wyattsville."

The occasion for all this pleasurable excitement wast the annual fair and races of the Forked Deer County Jockey Club, and superimposed upon that the street carnival conducted under the patronage and for the benefit of Wyattsville Herd Number 1002 of the Beneficent and Patriotic Order of American Bison. Each day would be a gala day replete with thrills and abounding in incident; in the forenoons grand free exhibitions upon the streets, also judgings and awards of prizes in various classes, such as farm products, livestock, poultry, needlework, pickles, preserves and art objects; in the afternoons, on the half-mile track out at the fair grounds, trotting, pacing and running events; in the evenings the carnival spirit running high and free, with opportunities for innocent mirth, merriment and entertainment afforded upon every hand.