The Circus Boys on the Plains Part 13

The drive to the country in the fresh morning air was a most delightful one to Phil.

After leaving the town they soon came in sight of a deserted house. It evidently had been abandoned, for it was in a bad state of dilapidation.

"There's a dandy daub!" exclaimed Billy. "We'll plaster it with paper until the neighbors won't know it. When we get there, hop off and bring some pails of water, will you?"

"Sure," answered Phil. While he was doing this, the billposter was spreading his paper out on the ground, deciding on the layout that he would post.

A few minutes later and the gaudy bills were going up like magic on the road side of the house and the two ends, so that the pictures might be seen from every point of view from the highway.

The house had been transformed into a blaze of color.

"All right," sang out Billy. "Good job, too."

Phil had learned something. He had noted every movement of the billposter.

"How long does it take to learn to post, Billy?" he asked.

"Some fellows never learn. Others get fairly expert after a few weeks puttering around."

"May I try one today?"

"Sure thing. If the next one is easy I will give you a chance at it."

The next daub proved to be a small hay barn a little way back in a field.

"There's your chance, my boy," he said.

Phil jumped out before the wagon had come to a stop and, with paper and brush under his arms, ran across the field. With more skill than might have been expected with his limited experience he smeared the paper with paste, then sought to raise it up to the side of the building as he had seen Billy Conley do.

This was where Phil came to grief. A gust of wind doubled the paper up, the pasted side smearing the bright colors of the face of the picture, until the colors were one hopeless daub. To cap the climax the whole thing came down over Phil's head, wrapping him in its slimy folds.

"Hey, help!" he shouted. "I'm posting myself instead of the barn."

Billy sat down on the ground, laughing until the tears ran down his cheeks.

"If it hadn't been for that unexpected gust of wind I should have made it nicely," explained Phil with a sickly grin. "Oh, pshaw, I'm not as much of a billposters as I thought I was. I guess there is more to this game than I had any idea of."

"You will learn. You took a pretty big contract when you tried to put up that eight-sheet."

"We will let you try a one-sheet on the farther end of the barn.

A one-sheet is a small, twenty-eight inch piece of paper, you know."

Phil nodded.

"I'll try it," he said. "I guess a one-sheet is about as big a piece of paper as I am fit to handle just yet."

He managed the one-sheet without the least trouble, and did a very good job, so much so that Billy complimented him highly.

"You will make a billposter yet. One good thing about you is that you are willing to learn, and you are quick to admit that you do not know it all. Most fellows, when they start, have ideas of their own--at least they think they have."

After that Phil did the small work, thinned the paste and made himself generally useful.

"Oh, look at that!" he cried, pointing off ahead of them.

"What is it, Phil?"

"See that building standing up on that high piece of ground.

Wouldn't that be a dandy place on which to post some paper?"

The building he had indicated was a tall circular structure, painted a dark red, with a small cupola effect crowning its top.

"That is a silo. You wouldn't be able to get permission to post a bill on there, even if you could get up there to do it,"

said Conley.

"Why not?"

"Why not? Why that farmer, I'll wager, sets as much store by that building as he does his newly-painted house."

"I'll go ask him. You don't mind if I 'square' him, do you?"

questioned the lad with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Ask him, for sure. But we couldn't post up there. We have no ladders that would reach; in fact we have no ladders at all. I mean the farmer has no ladders long enough."

"Never mind; I'll figure out a way," replied the Circus Boy, whose active mind already had decided upon a method by which he thought he might accomplish the feat, providing the farmer was willing.

Reaching the farm, Phil jumped out and ran up to the house.

"Do you own this place, sir?" he asked of the farmer who answered his ring at the bell.

"I do."

"It's a beautiful place. I am representing the Sparling Circus, and we thought we would like to make a display on your silo."

The farmer gazed at him in amazement.

"Young man, you have a cast-iron nerve even to ask such a thing."

"I know the mere matter of tickets to the show will be no inducement to a man of your position. But I am going to make you a present of a box for six people at the circus. You will take your whole family and be my guest. I will not only give you an order for it, but will write a personal letter to the owner, who is my very good friend. He will show you all there is to be seen, and I will see to it that you take dinner with him in the circus tent. No; there is no obligation. All the farmers--all your neighbors will be envious. I want you to come. We won't speak of the silo. I don't expect you to let me post that; but, if you will permit me to put a three-sheet on your hog pen back there, I shall be greatly obliged."

Despite the farmer's protestations, Phil wrote out the order for the box, then scribbled a few lines to Mr. Sparling, which he enclosed in an envelope borrowed from the farmer.

"Thank you so much," beamed the Circus Boy, handing over the letter to the farmer, accompanied by the pa.s.s and order for the arena box at the circus. "It is a pleasure to meet a man like you. I come from a country town myself, and have worked some on my uncle's farm."

"You with the circus, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"Looks to me like you was a pretty young fellow to be a circus man."