“Roll up! Tumble up! Anyway to get up! If you can’t get up, roll your money up. For we’re here to-day and away to-morrow!”  
This curious bit of philosophy coming from the lips of Johnny Thompson, youthful world traveler and adventurer, even to himself seemed strange. Yet here he was barking his wares at the “Greatest of all Carnivals.”
 
12
He had learned those words at a county fair when a boy of seven. That they were as effective now as then was attested by the crowds of men and women that thronged about his booth. All were eager to place a dime on the square and win (if luck were with them) a basket of groceries at the turn of the wheel of fortune that spun so freely at Johnny’s touch.
 
“I don’t like this business,” Johnny had said to a friend only an hour before. “A few win. The rest go away empty handed.”
 
“I know,” his friend had agreed. “But then, after all, it’s only a dime for each one. And it’s part of the carnival. Look at those people. Do you ever think much about them? Look at their faces. Not much of a life they lead. The men work in factories putting bolts into places; same kind of bolt in the same kind of place all day long. Perhaps they lift a casting from one place and drop it down in another. The women stay at home and scrub and cook. Carnival comes but once a year. Let them have their fun.”
 
Johnny’s friend had cheered him up a bit so he went about his barking with a smile:
 
“We’re here to-day and away to-morrow.”
 
“For all that,” he assured himself, “I’ll flit as soon as some big thing breaks.”
 
13
Ah, yes, that was it, “some big thing.” Johnny was here for a purpose. The dimes that came, the baskets of groceries that passed over the counter, interested him very little. He was looking all the time for faces, certain faces, and thinking how he would mingle more and more with the men and women who were by profession followers of the Carnival. And all this for one high purpose.
 
So now with the bright lights dazzling his eyes and the incessant tumult of sounds, organs grinding, hawkers hawking, merry-makers screaming, he kept at his task of the moment, shouting:
 
“We’re here to-day and away to-morrow. Now! Round and round she goes. Where she stops, nobody knows!”
 
“Anyway,” he grumbled low to himself, “I give ’em something when they do win. No clock that won’t run, nor painted plaster-of-paris doll for me. Real basket of groceries: oatmeal, peas, canned fish and a picnic ham.
 
14
“There you are, lady!” he shouted as the wheel stopped on the lucky 15. “Take this home for your Sunday dinner.” The crowd laughed and applauded as a short, stout Italian woman stumped away with her prize.
 
At that moment, from opposite directions, two youths pressed into the throng, each to deposit a dime on a favorite square. One was rather tall and broad shouldered; the other thin and of medium height. The one of athletic build was dressed as a college youth, and looked the part; latest stiff hat, bright tie, natty brown suit and spats he wore. The other seemed a freckle-faced country youth. He wore a soft slouch hat. His clothes fitted him badly. He even walked with that curious stride that suggests the lifting of feet from soft earth.
 
Johnny moved each dime to the center of its square and twirled the wheel. As he did so the college youth winked, and the freckled one, talking from the side of his mouth, said distinctly:
 
“They’re all here. Greasy Thumb and his gang. Saw ’em just now. Greasy is running a wheel. Rest are cappers. Wonder why.”
 
15
The next moment, without waiting to discover the results of the wheel’s turn, both college boy and country youth disappeared into the milling throng.
 
Johnny smiled, frowned, then gave himself over to the business of tending a spindle wheel at the “Greatest of all Carnivals.”
 
* * * * * * * *
 
The shouts and screams of the merry-makers had subsided to a murmur. The raucous grind of the merry-go-round organ was still. Lights were low. The night’s work was done. Behind closed tents the concession holders counted their nickels and dimes. Fat wives quarreled with slim husbands and grumbled about hard times that dwarfed their earnings. Slender girls of doubtful age combed their peroxide-blonde hair and flirted with boys in tight fitting suits. From this tent came a gurgle of laughter, from that a shout of derision. For, after all, the Carnival King and his crowd are as carefree a lot of ne’er-do-wells as one is likely to find in many a day’s travel. There is more truth than poetry in the expression so often at the tips of their tongues: “We’re here to-day and away to-morrow.”
 
16
“This is the life,” Johnny murmured, as he sauntered over the well-worn path that led from booth to booth. “And then again, I wonder if it is. I—”
 
He broke short off to stare ahead, for in spite of the lateness of the hour he saw just before him, crowded about a dimly lighted booth, an interested and excited group of men.
 
“You’re lucky,” said a short dark man with a scar above his eyes, patting a slim man in an ill-fitting suit on the back as Johnny arrived. “You paid only half a dollar. Now see! You may win ten. Put down your dollar quick before he stops the game!”
 
Johnny recognized the swarthy individual behind the spindle wheel. His wheel carried cheap baubles while the lights were on. Now only numbers remained.
 
“Playing for money. Breaking the law,” the boy thought. “Big stakes if he can get them. Wonder if he could be Greasy Thumb?” He crowded closer.
 
17
“Say, Mister!” pleaded the man with the scar over his eye. “Let me have his chance!”
 
The man in the ill-fitting suit squared his shoulders. “I’ll take it myself.” He peeled a sticky dollar bill off a meagre roll.
 
He played.
 
Johnny was disgusted. The man with the scar was a capper, one of the gang of crooked gamblers. He would lead this dupe on and on, and finally take all his money and leave him flat.
 
Johnny listened. They were at it again.
 
“Two calls for twenty-five. Oh, what luck! You’ll win!”
 
The man in the ill-fitting suit plunged again, and yet again. Twenty-five, fifty, a hundred dollars lay on the board. But always it was just beyond his reach. He must always pay more to win. His roll grew slimmer. At last only one bill remained, a fairly large one. He hesitated, then plunged for the last time.
 
“Oh! Ho! Too bad!” The voice of the man with the scar had gone flat. “You lost again!” The face of the dupe showed his consternation. He had lost a summer’s savings.
 
18
But now a fresh voice broke into the game. A broad-shouldered man with a stubby beard thrust his face close to that of the spindle wheel man.
 
“That’s a crooked game,” he growled. “I know this man. He’s a truck farmer. Got five kids. He can’t afford to lose. You’ve robbed him. But you can’t get away with it!”
 
He put out a hand for the money still on the table. But his grasp fell a foot short. With a grunt and a groan he went down. From beneath the table, by a well-practiced trick, the crook had kicked him in the stomach.
 
The affair seemed over. It was not. Johnny was to be reckoned with. He was fast as lightning and hard as nails. “Strike first, and take the second,” was his motto. The gambler’s foot was not yet on the ground when he received a blow from Johnny’s good right hand that sent him hurtling into the dark. At the same instant, as if by magic, the money on the board vanished and the kerosene flare that lighted the wheel went out.
 
19
The next instant Johnny felt some one tugging at his arm and heard a voice whisper hoarsely:
 
“Snap out of it, can’t you? Want to spill the works? C’mon, let’s get out of here!”
 
Recognizing the voice as one of authority, Johnny obeyed.
 
Ten minutes of ducking and dodging found him at last in his own tent.
 
“Can you beat that?” he exclaimed in a whisper as he switched on the light and looked down at his right hand. “Got that money, all of it. Now I’ll have to find that truck farmer and give it back. Gee! I hope I find him. And I hope his five kids are cute.”
 
He spread the bills out in a neat pile on his knee. Then he made them into a compact roll and thrust them deep into his pocket. But this was not the end of that affair. It was only the beginning.
 
He snapped off the light. “Can’t be too careful,” he told himself.
 
For a moment his head was in a whirl. Then of a sudden he leaned forward in the posture of one who listens intently. A faint sound had come to his ears.
 
20
“Footsteps,” he whispered. “Measured footsteps as of a sentry on duty. I wonder—”
 
Now a fresh sound greeted his ears.
 
The steady drum of a powerful airplane motor, growing louder and ever louder until it filled the very air, passed directly above his head and then thundered on into the distance.
 
Once it had passed he forgot the plane. He might well have given it much thought, for the driver of that plane and its precious freight were to enter much into his life. It was the night Air Mail from New York. And on this particular night it bore curious and priceless freight.