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Bertram Wrestles at the Circus

Mr. Boomschmidt and his partner, Mr. Hack-enmeyer, didn’t believe that animals should be shut up in cages. And so their circus was quite different from most circuses. The lions and tigers and bears and elephants and camels and all the other animals walked around among the people and chatted with them and cracked jokes and gave little boys rides, and often after the show started they would sit with friends in the audience until their act came on. It was all very friendly and nice. Of course people who had never been to this show before were sometimes scared, and you can’t really blame them, for it is a little terrifying to walk into the circus grounds and come face to face with a Bengal tiger, or to be tapped on the shoulder and turn around to have a boa constrictor say: “May I show you to a seat?” But Adoniram thought it was wonderful.

The animals from the Bean farm had come in a body, led by the phaeton, in which sat Mr. and Mrs. Bean and Uncle Ben and Adoniram and Bertram. After they had walked around for a while and renewed old friendships, and visited some of the side shows, they filed into the big tent to take the two rows of seats which had been reserved for them opposite the band. There was a burst of applause as they sat down, for they were quite famous in Centerboro. And then there was a roar of laughter. For Mr. Bean had risen to take a bow, and when he took off his old felt hat everybody saw that under it he still had on his white nightcap with the red tassel. He had been so excited about going to the circus that he had forgotten to take it off when he got up.

Mrs. Bean’s face turned red and she jumped up and snatched off the nightcap, and Mr. Bean looked puzzled for a minute and then laughed and waved his hand. And everybody clapped. And then the show began.

I’m not going to tell you about the show. Maybe you’ll go some day and see it for yourself, and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as Adoniram did. Mr. Bean bought peanuts and popcorn for all the animals, and they sat and munched and watched and applauded. Bertram didn’t applaud, because Ronald found that he couldn’t see everything that was going on through the little window in the clockwork boy’s chest, so he left the control room and came outside. He went back in once, though. That was when twenty-five roosters came out dressed up in red uniforms and did some fancy marching. Ronald scrambled back into the control room and made Bertram clap his hands until the splinters flew from them.

Adoniram saw a lot of the audience looking at the handbills offering a reward for Byram, which had been handed them as they bought their tickets. And a good many of them kept looking at him, too, and then whispering to their neighbors. And just before the show was over, quite a number got up and went out. Adoniram didn’t think anything about it then, but when the band played the final number and everybody started to go, he heard a commotion outside, and as he came out through the tent door, a big shout went up. “There he is!—I claim the reward!—That’s the boy!”

The rush of the crowd toward him shoved him back inside the tent. As he and the animals were pushed back, he saw Mr. Boomschmidt standing up in the little ticket-seller’s pulpit at the entrance, waving his arms and shouting over and over: “Ladies and gentlemen! Ladies and gentlemen!” But nobody listened to him.

Adoniram saw right away what had happened. The people had seen his picture on the handbill and had naturally jumped to the conclusion that he was Byram. For the bill had said: “Have you seen Byram R. Jones? This is what he looks like.” It hadn’t said that the picture was a picture of Adoniram.

As the boy was wondering what to do, Leo appeared from somewhere. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll get out the back way. If you go out there now, they’ll all try to grab you and claim the reward, and they’ll get to fighting over you and tear you to pieces. The chief’ll calm ’em down as soon as they’ll let him speak. He’ll explain about that handbill.”

“Maybe I could speak to them,” said Bertram. “I could make them hear.” And Ronald turned up the microphone and shouted: “Ladies and Gentlemen!” in Bertram’s loudest voice.

“Well, dye my hair!” exclaimed Leo looking at him admiringly. “A natural baritone with all the power of a steamboat whistle! Sure, go out and explain.”

So Bertram went out and got up beside Mr. Boomschmidt, and when that big voice rolled out across the crowd there was instant silence. So Bertram explained that the picture on the bill was not a picture of the missing boy, but of a boy who looked like him and who was thought to be his brother.

There was a good deal of grumbling, and one man shouted: “Well, who are you, then? You look just like him, too.”

So Bertram explained who he was, and why he had been painted to look like Adoniram, and then he showed some of the things he could do. Nearly everybody was satisfied with that, and they laughed and applauded when he did his tricks. But the man who had spoken before said: “Yah! You’re no more clockwork than my boy here. There’s some trickery, folks. I believe this is the missing boy, and I claim the reward.”

And the man’s son, who was bigger than Bertram, came up close to the ticket booth and made a face and said: “Yah! Want to fight?”

“No,” said Bertram, “I don’t want to fight. I just want to tell you—”

“Yah!” said the boy again. “Don’t want to fight, hey? Want to rassle?”

“No,” said Bertram, “I don’t want to rassle. I just want to—”

“Yah, yah, yah!” said the boy, making still worse faces. “Scaredy-cat!”

“That’s the stuff, Benjy,” said the man. “If we can’t get the reward, let’s have some fun. Rassle him—Hey, what’s this?” he shouted. For something like a thick rope had snapped around his waist, and he turned to look up into the calm eyes of old Hannibal, the elephant. And at the same moment, Louise, a smaller elephant, had grabbed the boy. Mr. Boomschmidt had slipped away and brought them back.

“My goodness,” said Mr. Boomschmidt, “I don’t want to put you off the grounds, but this is a circus, not a battlefield. If you want to rassle, why, rassle these elephants.”

“You put me down,” roared the boy. “You big coward,” he shouted to Bertram.

Adoniram had come out, and now he said to Mr. Boomschmidt: “We can’t let him call Bertram names in front of everybody. But we can’t let him wrestle Bertram, either. He wouldn’t have a show. Let me wrestle him.”

“You’re smaller than he is,” said Mr. Boomschmidt doubtfully.

“Yes, but Bertram and I have wrestled a lot together, and Peter, the bear, has taught me a lot about wrestling, too.”

But the boy didn’t want to wrestle with Adoniram. “I’m not going to fight with anybody who’s been taught by a bear,” he said. “Anyway, it’s that one I dared to rassle.” And he pointed to Bertram. “If he dassent, let him say so.”

“All right,” said Bertram at last. “Put him down, Louise. I’ll rassle him.”

So the people formed a ring about them, and Louise put Benjy down. Benjy took off his coat and crouched down as Bertram walked up to him with his arms spread wide apart. “Now I’ll show you something,” said Benjy, and he leaped at Bertram and threw his arms around Bertram’s neck and twisted.

Well, he might as well have tried to wrestle with a telephone pole. Bertram just stood and let him work for a while, then his arms came together around Benjy’s waist and he lifted him right off the ground. Benjy yelled and grabbed Bertram’s nose and tried to twist that, but Bertram didn’t pay any attention. He shifted his grip until he had the struggling boy under one arm, then he went over and sat down with his back against a tree. “Guess I’ll take a little nap,” he said. And his head nodded and his eyelids clicked shut and he began to snore gently.

Benjy wriggled and struck out, but the more he struggled, the tighter Bertram held him and the louder he snored. And everybody began to laugh. Everybody, that is, except Benjy’s father. He came forward and grabbed Bertram by the shoulder and said: “Hey, you; that isn’t wrestling. You don’t fight fair. Let the boy up.”

Bertram’s arm loosened and Benjy got free.

“He didn’t throw you,” said the man. “He didn’t get you down. Now go in and let’s see you put him on his back.”

“I will not,” said Benjy. “I’ve had enough. I ain’t going to fight with no piece of furniture.”

“Well, I will, then,” said the man. And he took off his hat and jumped on it, and he threw off his coat and dove at Bertram.

Bertram didn’t even bother to wake up. The man was big and strong, and he tugged and heaved and tried hold after hold, but Bertram had a good firm grip of a tent peg with one hand, and the man couldn’t even turn him over. The more people laughed, the madder the man got. And at last he got up and jumped on Bertram.

“Here, here,” said Mr. Boomschmidt, “that’s no way to rassle. Hannibal, pull him off.”

But Ronald didn’t like the jumping either, for he was afraid that something might get broken. And before Hannibal could reach them, he grabbed the man by the leg, pulled him down, and fell on him.

The man just went “Whoosh!” and didn’t move. Bertram wasn’t very big, but he must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds with all the machinery in him. He didn’t move either.

“Have you had enough?” he said.

The man growled and grumbled for a little, but he had no breath left, and at last he said crossly: “Yes.” So Bertram got up and helped him to his feet and brushed him off, and then held out his hand. But the man wouldn’t take it. He seized Benjy by the arm and dragged him off through the crowd. He was never seen around Centerboro again.

This wrestling match created a lot of talk around Centerboro and people came out to the farm to see the clockwork boy, and then the New York papers got hold of it and sent photographers to take Bertram’s picture and reporters to ask him how he liked the United States and what his favorite color was and things like that. Mr. Bean got pretty cross about people picnicking on his lawn, and knocking at the door at all hours of the day and night, and sneaking along behind fences and pointing cameras at him. So the animals got Peter, the bear, to patrol the barnyard, and they put Sniffy Wilson on the gate to scare away reporters and sightseers. They weren’t bothered much after that.

But one thing all the stories in the papers did—they brought the reward for Byram to the attention of every man, woman, and child in the country. And two weeks after the circus left Centerboro, a big package came by express for Freddy from Mr. Boomschmidt. It contained nearly three hundred letters from people in every state in the union, claiming that they knew where Byram was and asking for the reward.

Freddy took them to Adoniram. “I expect you and Georgie, as the people most concerned, ought to go through these,” he said. “Most of them are probably either fakes or cases of mistaken identity, but you can pick out those that look the best and I’ll investigate them.”

“Here’s one from Cuba,” said Adoniram. “It isn’t very likely that Byram would have got down there.”

“No,” said the pig. “I think we’d better investigate the near-by ones first.”

So they sorted the letters by states, and then Adoniram read the New York ones out loud to Georgie, who had never learned to read, and they picked out six and took them to Freddy.

Freddy looked thoughtful. “H’m,” he said. “One from Batavia, two from Binghamton—here, here’s one from Dutch Flats. That’s just down the river a way. Then—Lockport, Jordan, Rome. And Byram may not be in any of these places. Well, Adoniram, if we go through these, and then Ohio and Pennsylvania, Byram will be an old man with long gray whiskers before we find him. Still, there’s one thing that strikes me. Most of the New York towns are on the canal. Looks as if maybe some of these people really have seen him if he’s traveling along the canal.”

“Maybe he’s living on a canal boat,” said Georgie. “That’s where most of the letters say they saw him.”

“All except the one from Dutch Flats,” said Adoniram. “That says there’s a boy that looks like the picture in the big orphanage down there.”

“We’ll take that first,” said the pig. “Georgie and I will go down there this afternoon. Then if we don’t find him, I’ve got an idea how we can get to work on the other letters without too much trouble.”