llying them
up to believe they would get their money when we got to Memphis the next
day, when he noticed the car had been sidetracked, and he knew that was
the way we were going to dispose of the creditors. He thought some one
would tell him when to get off, but he was sitting up with a landlady
from some place in Georgia that we owed a lot of money for feeding the
freaks, and she was threatening that if she didn't get her money she
would have the heart's blood of some one. So pa was afraid to leave for
fear she would stab him.
But when the car stopped on the siding, pa took off his coat and hat and
yawned, and said he guessed he would turn in, and she let him go to his
berth, and he got out on the platform, and just then the second section
of our train came along, and stopped for water, and pa crawled into an
animal car and laid down in the straw with the sacred cow. She bellowed
all night 'cause the sacred bull, her husband, had been attached for
debt at Vicksburg, but when pa got in the car in his shirt sleeves and
humped his shoulders up on account of the cold, the cow thought maybe
she had been unnecessarily alarmed, and maybe pa was her husband.
So she quit bellowing, and laid down and chewed her cud till daylight.
Then when she saw that pa was another person she got mad and chased him
up into the rafters of the car, and he had to ride there until the train
got to Memphis. The hands rescued pa, but he got away from the creditors
all right.
[Illustration: The Sacred Cow Chased Pa Up Into the Rafters of the Car.]
We made a new lot of creditors at Memphis, and they proposed to go along
with us, but we shook them off.
Gee, but we made a killing in Memphis, and don't you forget it. We had
handbills on all the wagons in the parade, telling the people that the
proceeds of the afternoon and evening performance would be given to
deserving persons, in charity, and the intention was to use the money to
pay off the hands. My, but how the people turned out. The tents were all
full, and we had more money than we have had in a month before, and
after the performance at night the mayor and some prominent citizens
waited on the management and asked when and where we were going to
distribute the money to the deserving persons.
The managers appointed pa to stand off the committee. Pa said he had
noticed, in walking about the city, a beautiful park in the center of
the town, and he told the committee that his idea was to
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