Page:The Black Cat v06no11 (1901-08).djvu/7





OING!" said the auctioneer, impressively, shifting his footing upon the chair, one leg of which was sinking in the soil of Kansas. He lifted his hammer in front of Gunga Din, who regarded him with mild interest, and for a moment waited.

Redfern's Colossal Three-Ringed Circus and Unparalleled Aggregation of Wild Beasts was indeed going. The season had been a disastrous one. The long stretches of russet prairie, of grain too short to cut, of sere cornstalks that, drooping, scarce reached the flanks of the cattle turned in to an early harvest, told the cause. At town after town the long tiers of blue benches had risen as if by magic into a great amphitheatre—to remain empty. The band, in faded uniforms, had played desperately on parade, at the tent entrance and inside—all to no purpose. The clown, in commemoration of the season, offered only what he called diy jokes. So, at the little town of Washita Falls, 'way out on the edge of prairie land, where the sun had gone down red all summer long behind a range of purple mountains, the circus came to a full stop. Not the African lion nor the