Joe Strong the Boy Fire-Eater | Page 6

a
man to stand on, was a trapeze with long ropes, capable of being swung
from one resting place to the other. It was, in reality, a "big swing."
Joe's act, which he had often done, but which of late had been
performed by a man billed as "Wogand," was to stand on one platform,
have the long trapeze started in a long, pendulumlike swing by an
attendant, and then to leap down, catch hold of the bar with his hands,
and swing up to the other platform. If he missed catching the bar it
meant a dangerous fall; a fall into a net, it is true, but dangerous none
the less. Its danger can be judged when it is said that Wogand had died
as an indirect result of a fall into the net. He missed the trapeze, toppled
into the net, and, by some chance, did not land properly. His back was
injured, his spine became affected, and he died.
When circus performers on the high trapezes fall or jump into the
safety nets, they do not usually do it haphazardly. If they did many
would be killed. There is a certain knack and trick of landing in a net.
Joe Strong, ever having the interest of the circus at heart, had decided
to do this dangerous swing. He was an acrobat, as well as a stage
magician, and he had decided to take up some of his earlier acts which

had been so successful.
"But I wish he wouldn't," said Helen to herself. "I have a premonition
that something will happen." Helen was very superstitious in certain
ways.
But to all she said, Joe only laughed.
"I'm going to do the big swing," he replied simply.
CHAPTER III
TOO MANY PEOPLE
Hundreds of men toiling and sweating over stiff canvas and stiffer
ropes. The thud of big wooden sledge hammers driving in the tent
stakes. The rumble of heavy wagons, and a cloud of dust where they
were being shoved into place by the busy elephants.
On one edge of the big, vacant lot were wisps of smoke from the fires
in the stove wagons, and from these same wagons came appetizing
odors.
Here and there men and women darted, carrying portions of their
costumes in their hands. Clowns, partly made up, looked from their
dressing tents to smile or shout at some acquaintance who chanced to
be passing by.
All this was the Sampson Brothers' Circus in preparation for a day's
performance.
Joe Strong, having had a good breakfast, without which no circus man
or woman starts the day, strolled over to where Helen Morton was just
finishing her morning meal.
"Feeling all right?" he asked her.
"Well, yes, pretty well," she answered.

"What's the matter?" asked Joe quickly, as he detected an under note of
anxiety in the girl's voice. "Is your star horse, Rosebud, lame or off his
feed?"
"Oh, no," she answered. "It's just--Oh, here comes Mother Watson, and
I promised to help her mend a skirt," said Helen quickly, as she turned
to greet the veteran clown's wife. "See you later, Joe!" she called to him
over her shoulder as she started away.
The young magician moved away toward his own private quarters.
"I wonder what's the matter with Helen," he said. "She doesn't act
naturally. If that Bill Carfax has been around again, annoying her, I'll
put him out of business for all time. But if he had been around I'd have
heard of it. I don't believe it can be that."
Nor was it. Helen's anxiety had to do with something other than Bill
Carfax, the unprincipled circus man who had so annoyed her before Joe
discharged him. And, as Joe had said, the man had not been seen
publicly since the fiasco of his attempt to expose Joe's mystery box
trick.
"Well, I suppose she won't tell me what it is until she gets good and
ready," mused Joe. "Now I'll go in and have a little practice at the big
swing before the parade."
Joe did not take part in the street pageant, though Helen did, riding her
beautiful horse to the admiration, not only of the small boys and their
sisters, but the grown-up throng in the highways as well. Helen made a
striking picture on her spirited, but gentle, steed.
It was not that Joe Strong felt above appearing in the parade. That was
not his reason for not taking part. He had done so on more than one
occasion, and with his Wings of Steel had created more than one
sensation.
But now that he did a trapeze act, as well as working the
sleight-of-hand mysteries, his time was pretty well occupied. He had

not, as yet, done the big swing in public since that act was abandoned