# Dapples of the Circus/Chapter 7

ONE of the ever-present bugbears of the circus management is railroad wrecks. An assistant manager for Barnum and Bailey tells that he was in thirteen wrecks in twelve years, and he thought himself lucky to escape with his life. This is not strange, for the circus trains are ever on the move. But even this would not account for so many wrecks, were it not for the fact that the trains are always run as specials, being shoved in between others, and often held up on sidings while the regular trains thunder by, so it is not strange that they often come to grief.
Moreover, no company will insure a circus against either accidents or fire. So the owners are their own insurance company, ​and in a very bad wreck or fire small circuses often go bankrupt.
Freckles had heard little about train wrecks up to the time of the wreck at Cedar Bend. This will go down in history as the worst wreck in the annals of circus people. These people rarely speak of their dangers, but bluff them away with smiling faces. Many of the trapeze men and tumblers look death in the face each day, but they soon learn to cover up their fear and smile at danger.
Freckles had always felt as safe upon the train as he did off. He could sleep as well to the sound of rattling car-wheels and clicking rails, as he could to the night sounds in the country.
So the great wreck at Cedar Bend, to his boyish mind, came out of a clear sky. It might not have occurred, had not the American railroads been handling a very heavy consignment of United States troops.
It was during the first year that we were ​in the great war, and troop-trains had the right of way.
Cedar Bend is a smoky, noisy, manufacturing town in Indiana. It is also a railroad junction of no mean order, so it is a place where trouble is liable to occur.
The first section of the circus outfit had come into town and had been shunted upon a switch. The second section had been following it very closely, instead of half an hour behind, which is the usual way, so the second section was standing on the main track.
Investigation has never fully established how it happened, but a troop-train crashed into the rear end of it, and at the same time a local freight crashed into the front end. Then switch-men in the yards saw a sight that they had rarely seen before. The train buckled, and ten of the heavy cars reared in air. It looked for all the world like a huge serpent that had reared its back. This of course broke all the couplings, so the cars came down in a ​sorry heap and went tumbling and crashing this way and that. Three of the cars almost immediately burst into flames. This was the section that contained many of the best ring and trick horses, and also the large animals like the elephants and camels, It was also the section in which rode our two friends, Freckles and Dapples. Freckles himself was in the second sleeper from the locomotive, and Sir Wilton was about midway in the train.
The whistle on one of the wrecked locomotives, being turned on by the smash, set up a continuous shriek, while the other engine emitted a roaring stream of steam, that made more noise than the whistle.
If a combination to produce blood-curdling sounds had been planned, it could not have outdone the noise made by this medley of wild animals, many of them horribly mangled and some of them imprisoned in the burning cars.
There was the trumpeting and shrieking of elephants, the roaring of lions, the ​neighing of horses and camels, the braying and hehawing of zebras, and a chorus of cries from smaller animals that added to the infernal din.
Soldiers swarmed from the troop-train and hurried to the assistance of the circus people. If it had not been that so many capable men were at hand, the fatalities would have been much greater. As it was, in almost no time several hundred men were breaking windows and chopping holes in the sides of cars and releasing struggling horses and men. The animals which seemed to be hopelessly maimed were mercifully shot, as were those threatened by the flames. All of the elephants but one whose back had been broken, burst out of their cars and stampeded through the crowd. One of the lion cages was broken open and two scared lions fled through the crowd, also.
The first thing that Freckles noticed out of the ordinary was a sudden lifting of his berth. It seemed to be rising straight up ​with him, and bits of glass were pelting his hands and face. Then something struck his head, and he felt a queer, faint, sinking sensation and all was dark.
Five minutes later several brawny soldiers had broken their way into the half-telescoped sleeper, where eight of the circus people were dead, and lifted poor Freckles from his splintered berth and tenderly placed him in an ambulance. Two of his best friends were in the ambulance ahead of him.
Big Bill, the head canvas-man, was suf fering from two broken legs, while Mr. Williams had luckily escaped with a dislocated shoulder and a sprained ankle, and several cuts from flying glass.
As the ambulance moved away, Big Bill lifted himself up on his elbow and looked outside.
"My God, Williams!" he said. "Look here, and tell me what you think of this. If it doesn't beat anything I ever came across in the ten wrecks I have been ​through." Mr. Williams peeped through the window, and saw a dappled Shetland pony following the ambulance, his nose close to the side of the car, as though he feared it would get away from him, and he was running on three legs.
Big Bill brushed the tears from his eyes and swore softly under his breath, while Mr. Williams tried hard to cover his own feelings.
"Do you think that Sir Wilton knows the boy is inside?" asked the manager at length.
"Knows he is inside?" fairly snorted Bill. "Why, man alive, of course he does. Do you think he would be chasing the ambulance like that, on three legs, if he didn't? I tell you, Williams, I have seen some circus horses in my day. Ihave seen the best of them come and go, but I never in my blooming life saw a horse that loved his driver as Dapples does the kid."
"Well," returned Mr. Williams, "I guess that is so. I have seen some good ​drivers and horsemen in my day, and I never saw a driver small or big who loved a horse as Freckles does Sir Wilton."
"You're right, Williams," returned the big fellow gruffly.
At this point in the conversation Mr. Williams spoke to the driver of the ambulance, and bade him go slow, that Sir Wilton might keep up.
The first thing that Freckles remembered after the sensation that his berth in the sleeper was rising up with him, was that of being in a clean white bed in a long quiet room. There were many other beds in this room,—a long row of them,—and on the pillow of each bed was a head, and all were the heads of children. Just what they were doing there he could not imagine. His own thoughts were all in a jumble. His head ached terribly, and there was a queer bag on it. It seemed to be full of something very cold. When he moved his head and pressed it against the contents of the bag, it felt better.
​A pleasant young woman, whom he did not think he had ever seen before, came to him now and then and did something for him. In fact, this young woman was constantly going up and down the room. There was also a friendly man, who wore a large pair of glasses. He came to see him twice a day, but who he was, poor Freckles could not even imagine.
He tried and tried to think where he was, or who these people might be, but could not. When he asked the young woman, she explained it all to him, but even then he could not make it clear.
When she said something about a wreck and Bingham and Daily's circus, he thought he ought to understand, but he could not. So she finally told him not to bother his head about it, but that it would all come right soon.
The first thing that he did realize was the name of his friend, Sir Wilton.
He smiled up at the nurse.
"Yes," he said, "seems to me I did ​know him. He was a wonderful little horse. I used to ride him up in the pasture at the poor-farm."
"No," said the nurse. "It was in the circus. Bingham and Daily's big show. Don't you remember? You know it was wrecked last week."
"The circus was wrecked?" asked Freckles incredulously, showing interest for the first time. "Was that what made my berth rise up so quickly?"
Then a clutch of great fear seized the half-delirious boy.
"Oh, lady!" he cried. "What became of Dapples? My little horse! The one I used to ride! Was he killed?"
"Oh, no," replied the nurse quickly. "He is all right. The circus man had him brought to a stable right near the hospital, and when you are well, you can ride him."
But at this point poor Freckles's mind went cloudy again.
"Dapples was killed in the wreck," he moaned. "There was a wreck and he ​was killed in it. I sha'n't ever see him again."
Vainly the nurse tried to explain to him that Dapples was all right, and that he would see him soon, but she could not get out of the boy's head the idea that Sir Wilton had been killed.
As Freckles insisted on the following day that Sir Wilton had been killed, and seemed much worse, the steward at the hospital, without telling any one, after getting leave of the superintendent, tried a novel experiment. He had read once of how Archie Roosevelt had been sick, and Kermit, his brother, had conceived the idea that if he could see his favorite pony it would cure him. So Kermit had coaxed the pony into the elevator at the White House, and had conducted the small horse safely to his brother's room on the third floor. If that sort of thing could be done in the White House, it could be done in the hospital, especially as the children's ward was on the first floor.
​About three o'clock that afternoon the children in the ward saw the strangest sight ever beheld in the hospital. This was when the groom from the stable led Sir Wilton into the ward and down to the cot of his driver.
At first Freckles thought he was asleep, and that it was all a dream, but when Dapples's nose touched his hand he was convinced. The nurse would only let the pony stay a very few minutes, but this was enough to convince Freckles that his friend was alive and well.
This was the turning point in Freckles's sickness. It broke the delirium, and from that day on he mended rapidly. In a week's time he was placed in a wheel-chair and wheeled out on a large piazza, where the groom again brought Sir Wilton for a longer visit. Two weeks from that day Freckles again rode the small horse. He did not go alone, though, for the groom walked by his side and led the pony, and even held Freckles in the saddle, but ​it was a start. After that each day the groom came and they took a short ride.
Just a month after Freckles had been brought to the hospital he was able to go alone with Dapples, and they had a fine long ride in the country.
Freckles was all eagerness to be back with the circus, but Mr. Williams would not hear of it. He said the boy needed rest after such a shake-up as that. So he arranged to board both horse and rider at a small hotel on the outskirts of Cedar Bend, where they were to remain until the circus went into winter quarters in about a month.
So Freckles and Dapples spent a very happy month, taking long excursions into the country. But the boy was not content to be whally idle, so he taught Sir Wilton several new tricks with which to surprise Mr. Williams. The circus people had been so good to him that he wanted to repay them in some way.
​Freckles also took this time to write long letters to Pickles and Beany.
He painted the circus life in gay colors, but always wound up with the earnest assurance that they were much better off at home.
The circus wreck made thrilling reading for the two chums, and they showed Freckles's letters to all the other boys in the town.
Finally, on a chilly day in late November, both Sir Wilton and his driver started on the long trip to California, where the circus was to go into winter quarters. But they could not go together, much as Freckles wished they might, for Sir Wilton had to travel in a freight car, while his driver went on a passenger train.
Freckles knew that he would arrive in California several days ahead of his small companion, but he tried to be patient, for they would be together again for the winter, with leisure for long drives in the land of sunshine.