CHAPTER XIV.
Pa Was Blackmailed and Scared Out of Lots of Money—Pa Teaching the Natives to Speak English—Pa Said the Natives Acted Like Human Beings—Pa Buys Some Animals in the Jungle.
We thought when we came to Africa we would be near to nature, where the natives were simple and honest, but Pa has found that the almost naked negroes can give white men cards and spades and little casino and then beat them at the game.
Pa has been blackmailed and scared out of his boots and a lot of money, by an injured husband, as natural as he could have been flimflammed in New York.
We noticed that Pa was quite interested in a likely negro woman, one of twenty wives of a heathen, to the extent of having her wash his shirts, and he would linger atthe tent of the husband and teach the woman some words of English, such as, “You bet your life” and “Not on your life,” and a few cuss words, which she seemed to enjoy repeating.
She was a real nice looking nigger, and smiled on Pa to beat the band, but that was all; of course she enjoyed having Pa call on her, and evidently showed her interest in him, but that seemed only natural, as Pa is a nice, clean white man with clothes on and she looked upon him as a sort of king, until the other wives became jealous, and they filled the husband up with stories about Pa and the young negress, but Pa was as innocent as could be. Where Pa made the mistake was in taking hold of her hand and looking at the lines in her palm, to read her future by the lines in her hand, and as Pa is some near sighted he had to bend over her hand, and then she stroked Pa’s bald head with the other hand, and the other wives went off and left Pa and the youngwife alone, and they called the husband to put a stop to it.
Well I never saw a giant negro so mad as that husband was when he came into the tent and saw Pa, and Pa was scared and turned pale, and the woman had a fit when she saw her husband with a base ball club with spikes on it. He took his wife by the neck and threw her out of the tent, and then closed the tent and he and Pa were alone, and for an hour no one knew what happened, but when Pa came back to our camp, wobbly in the legs, and with no clothes on except a pair of drawers, we knew the worst had happened.
Pa told Mr. Hagenbach that the negro acted like a human being. He cried and told Pa he had broken into his family circle and picked the fairest flower, broken his heart and left him an irresponsible and broken man, the laughing stock of his friends, and nothing but his life or his money couldsettle it.
“Dad started to run for the fence.”
“Dad started to run for the fence.”
“Dad started to run for the fence.”
Pa offered to give up his life, but the injured husband had rather have the money, and after an hour Pa compromised by giving him sixteen dollars and his coat, pants and shirt, and Pa is to have the wife in the bargain. Pa didn’t want to take the wife, but the husband insisted on it, and Mr. Hagenbach says we can take her to America and put her into the show as an untamed Zulu, or a missing link, but he insists that Pa shall be careful hereafter, with his fatal beauty and winning ways, or we shall have more negro women to bring back than animals in cages.
Talk about your innocent negroes, they will cheat you out of your boots.
Pa went off in the jungle to buy some animals of a negro king or some kind of a nine spot, and he found the king had in a corral half a dozen green zebras, the usual yellow stripes being the most beautiful green you ever saw. The king told Pa it was a rare species, only procured in amountain fastness hundreds of miles away, and Pa bought the whole bunch at a fabulous price, and brought them to camp. Mr. Hagenbach was tickled to death at the rare animals, and praised Pa, and said there was a fortune in the green and black striped zebras. I thought there was something wrong when I heard one of those zebras bray like a mule when he was eating hay, but it wasn’t my put in, and I didn’t say anything.
That night there was the greatest rain we have had since we came here, and in the morning the green and black striped zebras hadn’t a stripe on them, and they proved to be nothing but wild asses and assessess, white and dirty, and all around the corral the water standing on the ground was colored green and black.
Mr. Hagenbach took Pa out to the corral and pointed to the wild white mules and said, “What do you think of your green zebras now?” Pa looked them over andsaid, “Say, that negro king is nothing but a Pullman porter, and he painted those mules and sawed them onto me,” so we had to kill Pa’s green zebras and feed them to the negroes and the animals. Mr. Hagenbach told Pa plainly that he couldn’t stand for such conduct. He said he was willing to give Pa carte blanche, whatever that is, in his love affairs in South Africa, but he drew the line at being bunkoed on painted animals. He believed in encouraging art, and all that, but animals that wouldn’t wash were not up to the Hagenbach standard.
Pa went off and sulked all day, but he made good the next day.
Our intention was to let elephants alone until we were about to return home, as they are so plenty we can find them any day, and after you have once captured your elephants you have got to cut hay to feed them, but Pa gets some particular animal bug in his head, and the managements has to let him have his way, so the other day was his elephantday, and he started off through the jungle with only a few men, and the negro wife that he hornswoggled the husband out of. Pa said he was going to use her for a pointer to point elephants, the same as they use dogs to point chickens, and when we got about a mile into the jungle he told her to “Hie on,” and find an elephant. Well, sir, she has got the best elephant nose I ever saw on a woman. She ranged ahead and beat the ground thoroughly, and pretty soon she began to sniff and sneak up on the game, and all of a sudden she came to a point and held up one foot, and her eyes stuck out, and Pa said the game was near, and he told her to “charge down,” and we went on to surround the elephant. Pa was ahead and he saw a baby elephant not bigger than a Shetland pony, looking scared, and Pa made a lunge and fell on top of the little elephant, which began to make a noise like a baby that wants a bottle of milk, and we captured the little thing and started for camp withit, but before we got in sight of camp all the elephants in Africa were after us, crashing through the timber and trumpeting like a menagerie.
Pa Made a Lunge and Fell on Top of the Little Elephant Which Began to Make a Noise Like a Baby.
Pa Made a Lunge and Fell on Top of the Little Elephant Which Began to Make a Noise Like a Baby.
Pa Made a Lunge and Fell on Top of the Little Elephant Which Began to Make a Noise Like a Baby.
Pa and a cowboy and some negroes lifted the little elephant up into a tree, and the whole herd surrounded us, and were going to tear down the tree, when the camp was alarmed and Hagenbach came out with all the men and the negroes on horseback, and they drove the herd into a canyon, and built a fence across the entrance, and there we had about fifty elephants in the strongest kind of a corral, and we climbed down from the tree with the baby elephant and took it to camp, and put it in a big bag that Pa’s airship was shipped in, and we are feeding the little animal on condensed milk and dried apples.
We have got a tame elephant that was bought to use on the wild elephants, to teach them to be good, and the next day,after we cut hay for the elephants, Pa was ordered to ride the tame elephant into thecorral, to get the wild animals used to society.
Pa didn’t want to go, but he had bragged so much about the way he handled elephants with the circus in the States that he couldn’t back out, and so they opened the bars and let Pa and his tame elephant in, and closed the bars.
I think the manager thought that would be the end of Pa, and the men all went back to camp figuring on whether there would be enough left of Pa to bury or send home by express, or whether the elephants would walk on Pa until he was a part of the soil. In about an hour we saw a white spot on a rock above the canyon, waving a piece of shirt, and we watched it with glasses, and soon we saw a fat man climbing down on the outside, and after a while Pa came sauntering into camp, across the veldt, with his coat on his arm, and his sleeves rolled up like a canvasman in a show, singing, “ACharge to Keep I Have.” Pa came up to the mess tent and asked if lunch was not ready, and he was surrounded by the men, and asked how he got out alive. Pa said, “Well, there is not much to tell, only when I got into the corral the whole bunch made a rush for me and my tame elephant. I stood on my elephant and told them to lie down, and they got down on their knees, and then I made them walk turkey for a while, and march around, and then they struck on doing tricks and began to shove my elephant and get saucy, so I stood up on my elephant’s head and looked the wild elephants in the eyes, and made them form a pyramid until I could reach a tree that grew over the bank of the canyon, and I climbed out and slid down, as you saw me. There was nothing to it but nerve,” and Pa began to eat corned zebra and bread as though he was at a restaurant.
“Well, I think that old man is a wonder,” said the cowboy, as he threw his lariat overone of the wives of the chief negro and drew her across the cactus. “I think he is the condemdest liar I ever run up against in all my show experience,” said Mr. Hagenbach.
“Now,” says Pa, as he picked his teeth with a thorn off a tree, “tomorrow we got to capture a mess of wild African lions, right in their dens, ’cause the gasoline has come by freight, and the airship is mended, and you can look out for a strenuous session, for I found a canyon where the lions are thicker than prairie dogs in Arizona,” and Pa laid down for a little sleeping sickness, so I guess we will have the time of our lives tomorrow, and Pa has promised me a baby lion for a pet.