omething to
Tonzo in Spanish.

CHAPTER VIII

HELEN'S LETTER

"Now I wonder," mused Joe as he leaped out of the net, "what they said
to each other. I'm sure it was about me. Well, let it go. I did the
trick, and I guess he won't pull his legs away again. If he does he'll
have to pull 'em so far that it will be noticed all over, and he can't
say it was an accident. I'll take care to make a high jump."

Joe practised the trick again and again, until he felt he was perfect
in it. Tonzo seemed to have given up the idea of spoiling it, if that
had been his intention, and he and Joe worked at it until they could do
it smoothly.

"When are you going to put it on?" Jim Tracy inquired, when told there
was a new feature to the Lascalla Brothers' act.

"Oh, in a couple of nights now," Joe answered.

"You sure are making good, all right," the ring-master informed him.
"I didn't make any mistake booking you. I didn't know whom to turn to
in a hurry when Sim Dobley went back on me, and then I happened to
think of you. Got your route from one of the magazines, and sent you
the wire."

"I was mighty glad to come," confessed Joe.

The new act created more applause than ever for the Lascalla Brothers
when it was exhibited, but the louder applause seemed to come to Joe,
though he did not try to keep his fellow performers from their share.
And, as might be expected, there was not a little professional jealousy
on the part of some of the other performers.

If Sid and Tonzo were jealous of him they took pains to hide that fact
from Joe, but some of the others were not so careful. A few of the
other gymnasts openly declared that the Lascalla Brothers were getting
altogether too much public attention.

"They detract from me," declared Madame Bullriva, the "strong woman,"
whose star feat was to get beneath a board platform on which stood
twelve men, and raise it from the saw-horses across which it lay.
True, she only raised it a few inches, but the act was "billed big."

"I don't get half the applause I used to," she complained to Jim Tracy.
"You let those 'Spanish onions' have too much time in the ring, and
give that Joe Strong a ruffle of drums and the big boom every time he
makes the long jump."

"But it's worth it," said the ring-master. "It's a big drawing card."

"So's my act, but I don't get a single drum beat. Can't I have some
music with my act?"

"I'll see," promised the ring-master, but he had many