put in as
outside horse of the leading pair in the grand entry. He was decorated
with a white-braided cord bridle with silk rosettes and he wore between
his ears a feather pompon. All this was very fine and grand, but there
was so little of it.

After it was all over, when the crowds had gone, the top lowered and the
stakes pulled, he was hitched to the leaden-wheeled band-wagon to
strain and tug at the traces all through the last weary half of the
night. But when fame has started your way, be you horse or man, you
cannot escape. Just before the season closed Calico was put on the
sawdust. This was the way of it.

A ninety-foot top, you know, carries neither extra people nor spare
horses. The performers must double up their acts. No one is exempt save
the autocratic high-bar folk, who own their own apparatus and dictate
contracts. So with the horses. The teams that pull the pole-wagon, the
chariots and the other wheeled things which a circus needs, must also
figure in the grand entry and in the hippodrome races. Even the
ring-horses have their share of road-work in a wagon show.

To the dappled grays used by Mlle. Zaretti, who was a top-liner on the
bills, fell the lot of pulling the ticket-wagon, this being the
lightest work. It was Mlle. Zaretti's habit to ride one at the afternoon
show, the other in the evening. So when the nigh gray developed a
shoulder gall on the day that the off one went lame there arose an
emergency. Also there ensued trouble for the driver of the ticket-wagon.
First he was tongue lashed by Mademoiselle, then he was fined a week's
pay and threatened with discharge by the manager. But when the
increasing wrath of the Champion Lady Equestrienne of America led her to
demand his instant and painful annihilation the worm turned. The driver
profanely declared that he knew his business. He had travelled with Yank
Robinson, he had, and no female hair-grabber under canvas should call
him down more than once in the same day. There was more of this, added
merely for emphasis. Mlle. Zaretti saw the point. She had gone too far.
Whereupon she discreetly turned on her high French heels and meekly
asked the boss hostler for the most promising animal he had. The boss
picked out Calico.

No sooner was the top up that day than Calico's training began. Well it
was that he had learned obedience, for this was to be his one great
opportunity. Many a time had Calico circled around the banked ring's
outer circumfer