Merriwell"s nine began to feel their courage rise. It put life into them just to see Frank in the box. Stolen bases on the part of the Hartfords stopped. The swiftness with which Merriwell struck out three batters made the spectators gasp.
From that on Ready was steady, and he and Frank worked together like a battery team of long experience. Frank Merriwell won, in spite of his handicap! And so the Yale rooters, and especially Merriwell"s friends and admirers, who were a host in themselves, were roaring wild as they returned from the ball-ground. Merriwell joined Inza and Elsie, while Badger took a car with Winnie.
"I knew that everything was all right, as soon as you went into the box!" Inza declared. "But up to that minute I was nervous. I was wanting to shake you all the time for not taking Badger"s place sooner."
"I felt sorry for Badger," said Elsie. "And I felt sorry for Winnie. She got as red as a beet when Badger left the box, but I know she didn"t blame you, Frank. She saw just how it was, and she knew you ought to have gone in sooner, but of course she felt it."
"I was afraid Ready might begin to doubt his own abilities--though probably there is not any danger that he will ever do that! He was just what I expected of him, though, when I pitched. And if Badger and Bart were friends and could, or would, work together, they would make a good battery."
"You will have to coach Badger some," Inza suggested.
"Yes. The captain of the ball-team wants me to. He thinks there is good stuff in both of them, if it can only be properly developed."
The three got out at a transfer station, and waited for another car.
"Dere she comes!" yelled an excited youngster.
The "she" he referred to was not the expected car, but the head of a circus procession, which was parading the princ.i.p.al streets as an advertis.e.m.e.nt of the performances to be given in the big tents in the suburbs that afternoon and night.
Merriwell and the girls looked in the direction indicated. The crowd at the corner seemed to become thicker. People began to swarm out of the doorways and stream out into the middle of the street.
"And this is scholarly New Haven!" exclaimed Inza. "Wild over a circus parade!"
"We"re not in the scholarly part of New Haven!" laughed Frank. "I confess that I like to see a circus parade myself!"
Inza showed evidences that she liked the same thing, for she craned her handsome neck and stood on tiptoe to catch the first glimpse. The nodding plumes on the heads of the horses drawing the gilded band-wagon came into view, and at the same moment the band began to crash forth its resonant music. Children danced and capered, heads were popped out of second-story windows, and the pushing crowd grew denser.
The band-wagon came slowly down the street in the bright spring sunshine, followed by the performers, mounted on well-groomed horses, some of which were beautifully mottled. There were other horses, many of them--a few drawing chariots, driven by Amazons. Then came the funny clown, in his little cart, with his jokes and grimaces for the children.
There was another band-wagon, as gorgeous as the first, at the head of the procession of wild-beast cages. Its music was more deafening than that of the other. The street-cars seemed to have stopped running, owing to the packed crowds, and Frank and his girl friends remained on the corner curiously watching the scene.
Suddenly a fractious horse jerked away from the man who had been standing at its head holding it, and whirling short about, half-overturned the wagon to which it was. .h.i.tched and raced wildly down the street. People scattered in every direction, several being knocked down in the stampeding rush.
The horse climbed to the sidewalk, with wheels b.u.mping the curbing, trying to get out of the way of some men who were seeking to stop it.
Almost before they were aware of it, horse and wagon seemed fairly on top of Merriwell and the girls. Elsie gave a startled cry, and dashed across the street, where the people were falling back out of the way, with women pulling nervously and excitedly at their children.
A child fell headlong, and the horse seemed about to stamp it, when Frank, with a quick leap, picked it up from under the very feet of the runaway, and dropped it safely at its mother"s side. Then a tremendous roar ascended. Turning, Frank saw that Inza and Elsie had disappeared.
He did not at first know the cause of the roar.
The horse, veering again and wheeling sharply, had hurled the wagon against a cage in which was confined a full-grown tiger. This was an open cage--that is, the screening, wooden, outer sh.e.l.l had been removed, showing the big beast of the jungle, with its keeper in circus costume, seated in the center of the cage on a low stool.
Against the door of this cage the bounding wagon had struck heavily--so heavily that the lock was torn away or broken, and the cage door pulled open. The roar that went up was a roar of alarm and fright. And it increased in intensity when the striped beast, with nervously flicking tail, leaped past its keeper and into the street, where it crouched, not knowing what to do with its newly found freedom.
The street was in the wildest tumult. The horses drawing the cage had been brought to a stop by the driver. But another horse, frightened by the din and the runaway, broke loose just at that time, and came tearing along, with flaming eyes and distended nostrils, like a Malay running amuck.
Frank sprang toward the head of this horse, for the peril to the stampeding people seemed great. But the animal veered and pa.s.sed by, dragging Merry a few yards by the shafts and hurling him to the ground.
The sight he beheld as he scrambled up was enough to stop the beating of his heart. Inza and Elsie had tried to again cross the street. Inza had been knocked down by the horse, and lay unconscious, while Elsie had been swept on in the crowd. More than that, the keeper of the tiger, who had courageously leaped after the terrible beast with his spearlike iron goad, hoping to be able to prod and cow it into subjection, had been knocked flat also by the horse, his iron goad flying out of his hand and into the street.
Though Frank was some distance away, he started toward the tiger, which had crouched and seemed about to spring on Inza. But before he could take a step, he saw Elsie run from the crowd toward Inza and the tiger.
Her face was very white, but it was filled with the look of high courage which inspired her. She realized the peril of any attempt she could make to save Inza, and she boldly took the risk.
A hundred voices were screaming at the big brute, which crouched with undulating tail and open jaws; but not another person seemed to be moving toward Elsie to render her a.s.sistance, with the exception of Frank Merriwell.
He saw the girl pick up the iron goad. Then Elsie Bellwood leaped between the tiger and Inza. As she did so she lifted the goad. The tiger turned its attention from Inza to Elsie, and the latter struck at it, as if the goad were a spear.
Frank Merriwell heard the click of a revolver at his side. He saw a man shakily lifting it.
"Permit me!" he gasped, and plucked it from the man"s hand.
The revolver went up, flashing for a moment in the sunshine. A quick, sharp report rang out. The bullet, sent with true and steady aim, by the hand of Frank Merriwell, ploughed through the tiger"s brain, and the beast flattened out convulsively, and began to kick and writhe in its death agonies.
Hearing the report and seeing the animal fall, Elsie"s uplifted hand fell, she swayed like a wind-blown vine, and dropped heavily down across the form of Inza Burrage.
CHAPTER VII.
FRIENDS.
The crack of the revolver and the fall of the tiger seemed to break the spell that had held and made cowards of the throng. A dozen men leaped toward the girls. But Merriwell reached them first. He lifted Elsie, who had merely fallen in a faint, as he saw; and, pa.s.sing her to a student whom he recognized, he bent anxiously over Inza.
There was a bruise and a fleck of blood on the upper part of her face.
"Inza!" he said, lifting her tenderly and seeking to arouse her. "Are you much hurt, Inza?"
The words and tone seemed to call her back from the land of death. She moaned feebly, and tried to put up a hand. Half-lifting her in his arms, he looked around.
"Is there a surgeon here!" he called.
Elsie came back to consciousness with a shiver, and heard him call. Her face had been very white, but it became pale as death. The sight of Inza"s bruised face and limp form upheld by Merriwell seemed to blur her brain again. She caught at the arm of the student who was holding her, and by a great effort kept her senses.
"Is she dead, Frank?" she whispered.
"No!" he answered. "I don"t know how much she may be hurt, though."
The tiger had ceased to struggle, the crowds were writhing, a babel of sound that was confused and confusing filled the air. The circus procession had come to a halt, with the exception of the forward band, which was blaring away far down the street.
A doctor came out of the crowd. Other doctors proffered their services, for Inza was not the only one who had been knocked over by the rush of the horses. The injured tiger-keeper was picked up and bundled into an ambulance.
"Right across here!" said the doctor who had answered Merriwell"s call.
Then he led the way into an apothecary"s.
"Nothing serious!" he announced, a minute later, when he had made his examination. "The young lady will be all right in a day or two."
He spoke of Inza, and both Merry and Elsie sent up fervent sighs of relief.