The golden west boys, Injun and Whitey to the rescueHart, William S. (William Surrey)
General
The golden west boys, Injun and Whitey to the rescue
Hart, William S. (William Surrey)
Adventure stories; Teenage boys -- Juvenile fiction; Western stories
Creeping across the northern distance the boys saw two wagons. Evidently
they had come from Jimtown. Wagons are as interesting sights on a
prairie as they are uninteresting in a city, so the boys shifted their
course slightly that they might investigate. And these were the rarest
wagons that crawled across the plains, for they carried a show!
During the many months that Whitey had been in the West only one show
had come to the Junction, and that at a time when Injun and Whitey had
been hunting in the mountains. Lives there a boy with soul so dead that
he does not hunger for a show? I leave you to answer that, and to guess
how hungry Whitey was for one.
But if you have in your mind any big, gilded wagons, with pictures of
beautiful women on their sides, and drawn by many prancing white horses
with red plumes on their heads, get that vision right out of your mind.
These were "prairie schooners," covered with old, weather-beaten canvas,
creaking along on wheels on which mud had long taken the place of paint,
and drawn by mules!
And the only things to indicate their character were letters painted on
the old canvas sides, where they drooped between the wooden arches that
supported them; letters which read: "The Mildini Troupe. Pride of
the West." And that was enough. For everybody in that part of
Montana knew the Mildinis. They came once a year--if nothing happened to
prevent.
There were three in the company--Mr. Mildini, who was short and fat, and
had a twinkle in his eye, and had been born Murphy; Mrs. Mildini, who
was slim and sharp-featured, and whose eyes were bright, without any
twinkle in them; and Signor Antolini, who was of medium height and
rather thin, and had a nose like a hawk, and had been born on Mulberry
Street, in New York City. Two thirds of this troupe remained the same,
year after year, but sometimes Signor Antolini was Signor Somebody Else.
This doesn't seem to offer much chance for entertainment, does it? To
Injun it was a wonderful troupe. To Whitey, who had been to all sorts of
entertainments in the East, it was a novelty. Perhaps it would be bad
enough to be good. Anyway, it was a show. Thoughts of revenge against
Bill Jordan could be abandoned for the time being. They would have to
wait. Meanwhile, Injun and Whitey would follow the show.
Mr. Mildini, who drove the first wagon, was very friendly, and smoked a
pipe. Signor Antolini, who drove the second wagon, was also friendly,
and smoked cigarettes. Mrs. Mildini, who slept in the first wagon,
expressed no feelings at all. That wagon contained the trunks and
chattels of Mildini and wife, and in it they made their home. The other
wagon held the instruments and properties of the show, the cooking
utensils, and the bed of Signor Antolini. It was all very simple, and
very fascinating, when you thought of it, to be traveling around the
country in the sunshine, pausing at different places to entertain
admiring audiences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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