Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/308

 'I guess, my child, I've a touch of the fever. Hum! and now I've got 'em. Walk in, ladies and gentlemen, walk in. One hour in the big animal tent before the first act in the triple sawdust arena. This is Gooseberry, the man-eating lion. See him—'

"‘Oh, quit,' I cried. 'Can't you see you're going daffy with swamp suggestions?' For my little seance with the oven heat and shivers of the disease had left me peevish.

"‘Just as you say, my child,' he replied, humbly. 'Maybe old Tib is cross-eyed mentally, but hang me if he doesn't look like a lion. A figment of the—'

"And great Scott, sir! I turned, and if there wasn't the bulky, befringed head of a big male leo in the narrow aperture of the tent!

"‘Tib!' I shrieked. 'It's real!'

And at that my patron pealed forth one resonant roar that caused the massive beast to snarl and spring back. 'Where's the keeper?' he cried, again going a bit flighty. 'The idea of letting him out to scare the women and—I forgot. It's real.' Then he put to rout his imagination for a moment and swayed to the opening and scowled as he fixed his attention on the present. 'We stand about as much of a chance as an old-fashioned safe in the hands of a gang of yeggmen,' he mumbled.

"The timid peep I stole over his shoulder, rein-