Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/183

 All about him would be men similarly occupied. The flat-topped trunks sat in rows, and beside each trunk was a folding chair and two pails of cold water. As the lids of the trunks were raised they showed a make-up box and a mirror, and into the lids were fastened divers toilet articles, and sometimes a photograph or two.

Tom's, however, merely contained a sign he had picked up somewhere. "Keep Out. This means you."

The tent would be full of nude men, bathing. The odor of smoke, soap and moist earth would fill it. Tom, scrubbing vigorously, would take a new pride in his big clean body, so lithe, so answerable to every call he made upon it.

He had almost forgotten Kay; he never thought of Clare at all. The show was a world of its own. It drew into a city, unloaded, played a day or two, and moved on.

"Where are we now, anyhow? Ithaca?"

"Syracuse, isn't it? Hey, boy, what town's this?"

He was handsomer than ever. His lean face tanned, his jaw clean cut and determined. He moved with lithe easy motions; he had worked hard at his roping, and now when seven horses abreast came thundering past him and the big loop lay ready, he would shove back his big hat and almost casually throw his rope. Bull-dogging or roping, or on some leaping, twisting demon twice a day risking his neck to make holiday for the crowd, he was a fine figure of a man. And he knew it.

The show was essentially moral. The family tradition held; troupes of riders were family groups, father, mother, sons and daughters. In the married cars women sat in the mornings doing their mending, sewing on buttons, even washing and ironing. Almost always, in the train or outside the women's dressing tent, little lines were stretched and women in slop shoes and wrapped in kimonos would duck out from underneath the tent and pin up in the sun the family washing, socks and stockings side by side, and even small undergarments which at first reminded him uncomfortably of those Clare had showed him.

He was not without sentimental episodes, however. If the married women let him severely alone, the girls found