Page:Episodes-before-thirty.djvu/118

Rh crouching below on the dead horse. He dropped. We heard the thud. We also heard the appalling roar that followed, the quick pistol shots, the shouts, the excited cries--then silence. The reporter at the trap-door called out to us what was happening.... That Strong Man was a hero.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, the big stable-doors swung open, and the cage, with the lion safely inside it, emerged on a high-wheeled truck into full view of the cheering crowd. On the top of the cage, sweeping his shiny top hat about, bowing, waving his free hand with modest dignity to the admiring thousands, the Strong Man sat enthroned, cross-legged, proud and smiling. The procession through the streets of the city was a triumphal progress that lasted most of the day. That night Bostock's Circus opened to the public.

I hurried back to the office, and had the joy of seeing the first edition hawked and cried about the streets, even before I got there. Big head-lines about a "Man-eating Lion," a "Two Thousand Dollar Trotting Horse," "Heroic Rescuer," and the rest, met my eye everywhere. Cooper, however, made no remark or comment, sending me on at once to report a murder trial at special sessions, and in half an hour the gruesome thrills of a horrible poison case made the lion and the strong man fade away.

"Read your morning paper?" Cooper asked, when I appeared next morning. I nodded. The lion story, I had noticed, filled only half a stick of print. "Read the advertisements?" he asked next. I saw a twinkle in his eye, and quickly scanned the circus advertisements about the man-eating lion that had killed a trotting horse, and a strong man whose courage had done this and that, saving numerous lives ... but I was still puzzled by Cooper's twinkling eye. He offered no word of explanation; I learned the truth from someone else later. The toothless, aged lion, gorged with food and doped as well, had been pushed into the stable overnight, the carcass of a horse, valued at $10, had been dragged in after it. Rh