CHAPTER X.
Pa Had the Hardest Time of His Life in Paris—Pa Drinks Some Goat Milk Which Gives Him Ptomaine Poison in His Inside Works—Pa Attends the Airship Club in the Country—Pa Draws on American Government for $10,000.
Pa has had the hardest time of his life in Paris, and if I ever pitied a man it was Pa.
You see that last fly in the airship pretty near caused him to cash in his chips and go over the long road to the hereafter, cause he got blood poison from the thorns that run into him where he landed in the top limbs of the thorn apple tree, and he sprained his arm and one hind leg while being taken down with a derrick, and then before we left the country town for Paris he drank some goat’s milk, which gave him ptomainepoison in his inside works, and a peasant woman who sewed up his pants where they were torn on the tree pricked him with a needle, and he swelled up so he was unable to sit in a car seat, and his face was scratched by the thorns of the tree, and there were blotches all over him, so when we got to Paris the health officers thought he had smallpox and sent him to a pest house, and they wouldn’t let me in, but vaccinated me and turned me loose, and I went to the hotel and told about where Pa was and all about it, and they put our baggage in a sort of oven filled with sulphur and disinfected it and stole some of it, and they made me sleep in a dog kennel, and for weeks I had to keep out of sight, until Pa was discharged from the hospital, and the friends of Pa out at the airship club in the country got Pa’s airship that he bought for a government out of the tree and took it to the club and presented a bill for two hundred dollars, and Ionly had seven dollars, so they held it for ransom.
Gee, but I worried about Pa!
Well, one day Pa showed up at the hotel looking like he had been in a railroad wreck, and he was so thin his clothes had to be pinned up with safety pins, and he had spent all his money and was bursted.
The man who hired Pa in Washington to go abroad and buy airships for the government told Pa to use his own money for a month or two and then draw on the secretary of the treasury for all he needed, so before Pa went to the hospital he drew on his government for ten thousand dollars, and when he came back there was a letter for him from the American consul in Paris telling him to call at the office, so Pa went there and they arrested him on the charge of skull dugging. They said he had no right to draw for any money on the government at Washington. Pa showed his papers with the big seal on, and the consul laughed in Pa’s face,and Pa was hot under the collar and wanted to fight, but they showed him that the papers he had were no good, and that he had been buncoed by some fakir in Washington, who got five hundred dollars from Pa for securing him a job as government agent, and all his papers authorized him to do was to travel at his own expense and to buy all the airships he wanted to with his own money, and Pa had a fit. All the money he had spent was a dead loss, and all he had to show for it was a punctured airship, which he was afraid to ride in.
Pa swore at the government, at the consul and at the man who buncoed him, and they released him from arrest when he promised that he would not pose any more as a government agent, and we went back to the hotel.
“Well, this is a fine scrape you have got me in,” says Pa, as we went to our room. “What in thunder did I have to do about it?” says I, just like that. “I wasn’t withyou when you framed up this job and let a man in Washington skin you out of your money by giving you a soft snap which has exploded in your hands. Gee, Pa, what you need is a maid or a valet or something that will hold on to your wad.” Pa said he didn’t need anybody to act as a guardian to him, cause he had all the money he needed in his letter of credit to the American Express Company in Paris, and he knew how to spend his money freely, but he did hate to be buncoed and made the laughing stock of two continents.
So Pa and I went down to the express office, and Pa gave the man in charge a paper, and the grand hailing sign of distress, and he handed out bags of gold and bales of bills, and Pa hid a lot in his leather belt and put some in his pockets, and said: “Come on, Henry, and we will see this town and buy it if we like it.”
Well, we went out after dark and took in the concert halls and things, and Pa drankwine and I drank nothing but ginger ale, and women who waited on us sat in Pa’s lap and patted his bald head and tried to feel in his pockets, but Pa held on to their wrists and told them to keep away, and he took one across his knee and slapped her across the pajamas with a silver tray, and I thought Pa was real saucy.
A head waiter whispered to me and wanted to know what ailed the old sport, and I told him Pa was bitten by a wolf in our circus last year and we feared he was going to have hydrophobia, and always when these spells come on the only thing to do was to throw him into a tank of water, and I should be obliged to them if they would take Pa and duck him in the fountain in the center of the cafe and save his life.
Pa was making up with the girl he had paddled with the silver tray, buying champagne for her and drinking some of it himself out of her slipper, when the head waiter called half a dozen Frenchmen who were doingpolice duty and told them to duck Pa in the fountain, and they grabbed him by the collar and the pants and made him walk turkey towards the fountain, and he held on to the girl, and the Frenchmen threw Pa and the girl into the brink with a flock of ducks, and they went under water, and Pa came up first yelling murder, and then the girl came up hanging to Pa’s neck, and she gave a French yell of agony, and Pa gave the grand hailing sign of distress and yelled to know if there was not an American present that would protect an American citizen from the hands of a Paris mob. The crowd gathered around the circular fountain basin, and one drunken fellow jumped in the water and was going to hold Pa’s head under water while the girl found his money, when Pa yelled “Hey, Rube,” the way they do in a circus when there is a fight, and by ginger it wasn’t a second before half a dozen old circus men that used to belong to the circus when Pa was manager in the States made a rush forthe fountain, knocked the Frenchmen gally west and pulled Pa out of the water and let him drain off, and they said, “Hello, old man, how did you happen to let them drown you?” and Pa saw who the boys were and he hugged them and invited them to all take something and then go to his hotel.
When Pa paid the check for the drinks they charged in two ducks they said Pa killed in the tank by falling on them. But Pa paid it and was so tickled to meet the old circus boys that he gave the girl he went in swimming with a twenty franc note, and after staying until along towards morning we all got into and on top of a hack and went to the hotel and sat up till daylight talking things over.
We found the Circus boys were on the way to Germany to go with the Hagenbach outfit to South Africa to capture Wild Animals for circuses, and when Pa told the boss, who was one of Hagenbach’s managers, about his airship and what a dandy thingit would be to sail around where the lions and tigers live in the Jungle, and lasso them from up in the air, out of danger, he engaged Pa and me to go along, and I guess we will know all about Africa pretty soon.
The next day we went out to the club where Pa keeps his airship, with the boss of Hagenbach’s outfit and a cowboy that used to be with Pa’s circus, to practice lassoing things. They got out the machine and Pa steered it, and the boss and I were passengers, and the cowboy was on the railing in front with his lariat rope, and we sailed along about fifty feet high over the farms, until we saw a big goat. The cowboy motioned for Pa to steer towards the goat, and when we got near enough the cowboy threw the rope over the goat’s horns and tightened it up, and Mr. Goat came right along with us, bleating and fighting. We led the goat about half a mile over some fences, and finally came down to the ground to examine our catch, and we landed allright, and Hagenbach’s boss said it was the greatest scheme that ever was for catching wild animals, and he doubled Pa’s salary and said we would pack up the next day and go to the Hagenbach farm in Germany and take a steamer for South Africa in a week.
They were talking it over and the cowboy had released the goat, when that animal made a charge with his head on our party. He struck Pa below the belt, butted the boss in the trousers until he laid down and begged for mercy, stabbed the cowboy with his horns and then made a hop, skip and jump for the gas bag, burst a hole in it, and when the gas began to escape the goat’s horns got caught in the gas bag and the goat died from the effects of the gas, and we were all glad until about fifty peasant women came across the fields with agricultural implements and were going to kill us all.
Pa said, “Well, what do you know about that,” but the women were fierce and wanted our blood. The boss could talk French, andhe offered to give them the goat to settle it, but they said it was their goat any way, and they wanted blood or damages.
Pa said it was easier to give damages than blood, and just as they were going to cut up the gas bag the boss settled with them for about twenty dollars, and hired them to haul the airship to the nearest station, and we shipped it to Berlin and got ready to follow the next day.
Pa says we will have a high old time in Africa. He says he wants to ride up to a lion’s den in his airship and dare the fiercest lion to come out and fight, and that he wouldn’t like any better fun than to ride over a royal bengal tiger in the jungle and reach down and grab his tail and make him synawl like a tom cat on a fence in the alley.
He talks about riding down a herd of elephants and picking out the biggest ones and roping them; and the way Pa is going to scare rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses and make them bleat like calves is a wonder.
I think Pa is the bravest man I ever saw, when he tells it, but I noticed when we had that goat by the horns and he was caught in a barbed wire fence, so the airship had to slow down until he came loose, Pa turned as pale as a sheet, and when the goat bucked him in the stomach Pa’s lips moved as though in praying. Well, anyway, this trip to Africa to catch wild animals is going to show what kind of sand there is in all of us.