"'Mebbe he knows dat, mebbe you knows dat; but how does I know dat?' yells Fuzzy. 'Dat gun suttenly looks big to me.'
"About this time the other coon got wise and saw the five hundred vanishing, and the last I saw of Merritt he was trying to break a half-Nelson that the coon had got on him and dodge the rest of the crowd at the same time. I left St. Louis on a freight that night, wearing a few lumps where some stray brickbats landed, and the next time I saw Merritt was in Chicago, and he was on crutches and had his head covered with plaster."
No thunderbolt dropped from the blue dome over the Dreamland tower, and the Proprietor, with a childlike and bland smile on his face, motioned to the waiter to refill the glasses.
THE BITE OF A RATTLER
AND
THE SAD FATE OF BIG PETE
THE BITE OF A RATTLER
AND
THE SAD FATE OF BIG PETE
Like the pitcher which went to the well until it met the proverbial fate, the trainer entered the lion's den once too often, and what remained of him was placed in an ambulance and taken to the hospital. After the performance for the evening was over, Baltimore, the bad lion, who had suddenly developed a craving for human flesh, had been dealt with by the Proprietor of the menagerie in a manner which would spoil his appetite for many a day to come and make him remember that trainers cannot be mangled with impunity.