“Yes, yes, we know all about that,” interrupted Scripps.  “You’re seasoned, right enough.  Don’t leave the rig to come home without a driver, though, and money letters aboard, as you did last week.  Here is a new hand.  Break him in to keep his time employed.”

Ripley viewed Andy with some disfavor.  Evidently he regarded him as a sort of guardian.

Andy, however, silently followed him outside.  Ripley soon reached a close vehicle, boarded up back of the seat and with two doors at the rear.

A big-boned mottled horse, once evidently a beauty, was between the shafts.  As Andy lifted himself to the seat beside Ripley, the latter made a peculiar, purring:  “Z-rr-rp, Lute!”

He did not even take up the reins.  The horse, with a neigh and a frisky dance movement of the forefeet, started up.

“Right, left, slow, Lute.  Turn—­now go”—­Ripley gave a dozen directions within the next five minutes.  He was showing off for Andy’s benefit.  The latter was, in fact, pleased.  The animal obeyed every direction with a precision and intelligence that fairly amazed the boy.

Finally getting to a clear course outside the circus tangle, Ripley took up the reins.

He set his lips and uttered two sharp whistles, ending in a kind of hiss.

Andy was very nearly jerked out of his seat He had to hold on to its side bar.  For about five hundred yards the horse took a sprint that knocked off his cap and fairly took his breath away.

“Say, he’s great!” Andy exclaimed irrepressibly, as Ripley slowed down again.

“I guess so,” nodded the latter, aroused out of his crustiness by Andy’s enthusiasm.  “That Lucille was famous, once.  Past her prime a little now, but when her old driver has the reins, she don’t forget, does she?”

Ripley took a turn into a side street and finally halted, giving Andy the reins.

“Got to order something,” he said.

Andy saw him enter a store, but only to leave it by a side door and cross an alley into a saloon.

Ripley tried to appear very business-like when he came back to the wagon, but Andy caught the taint of liquor in his breath.

Twice again the circus veteran made stops in the same manner.  He became quite chatty and confidential.

Ripley explained to Andy that he went regularly for the circus mail at each town where the show stopped.

“Postmasters kick, with five hundred strangers calling for their mail,” he explained, “so we always forward a list of the employees.  This mail, just before pay day, when the crowd is usually hard up, brings a good many money letters from friends.  That rubber stamp you saw the manager give me O.K.’s all the registered cards at the post office.  Once the wagon was robbed.  The looters made quite a haul.  Not when I was on duty, though.”

At a drug store Ripley got several packages and some more at a general merchandise store.  Finally they reached the post office, and Ripley drove around to a sort of hitching alley at its side.