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CHAPTER XX
DISASTER BEFALLS THE FAT LADY
"Help, help! Oh, help!"
"Coming," shouted Teddy Tucker, leaping from the platform of the
sleeping car where he had been lounging in the morning sun.
The Fattest Woman on Earth was midway down the steep railroad
embankment with the treacherous cinders slowly giving way beneath
her feet, threatening every second to hurl her to the bottom of
the embankment and into the muddy waters of a swollen stream that
had topped its banks as the result of the storm that had
disturbed the circus so much.
The Sparling shows did not succeed in getting fully away from
the island until the middle of the day following the events
just narrated.
This made it necessary to skip the next stand, so the show ran
past that place, intent on making St. Charles, Louisiana,
sometime that night.
The train had been flagged on account of a washout some distance
ahead, and while it was lying on the main track many of the show
people took the opportunity to drop off and gather flowers out in
the fields near the tracks.
The Fat Woman was one of these. She had found it a comparatively
easy thing to slide down the bank further up the tracks, after
finding a spot where she could do so without danger of going
right on into the creek below.
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