“Get in There, You Measly Cur Dog,” Said Pa, Kicking the Big Lion at Every Jump.
Pa was attaching a long rubber hose to the gas bag, and as he got it fastened and reeled about fifty feet of the hose down in the hole, Mr. Hagenbach said, “Say, old man, I don’t want to kick on any of your new inventions, but what are you going to do now?” and Pa said, as he turned a faucet in the gas bag and let the gas into the hose, “Didn’t you ever drown gophers out of a hole by pouring water in, until the gophers came to the top strangling, and you put them in a shot bag and let them chew your fingers? Well, I am going to drown out big gophers with gas, and in about fifteen minutes after we have had lunch, you will see the dammest procession of sneezing lions come up out of that hole that ever were in captivity, and I want all of you brave ducks to hold the bags over the hole, and when you get a lion in a bag tie the bag and roll the beast over the rock, see?”
Well, they got the gunny sacks ready, and after we had our lunch and the gas was filling the hole good and plenty, there was a lot of sneezing and roaring down the hole, and Pa said the medicine was working all right, and pretty soon Pa turned off the gas and unscrewed the hose, and loosened the ropes on the air ship so she sailed off across the veldt for a block or so, and then the trouble began.
First a big she lion came up with a mess of cubs, and they held the bag all right, but she went right through it like a bullet through cheese, and then there was an explosion away down in the bowels of the earth, from the toe nails of some unmanicured lion striking fire on a flint stone, and fire began to pour out of the hole, and about nine singed lions of all sizes came up out of the hole scared to death, and the smell of burned hair was awful.
The lions began to cuff the men and they stampeded down the rocks, leaving Pa and two or three of us alone. Pa and I seized a couple of the baby lions and started to run for camp, and the lions took after us and chased us awhile, until Pa got out of wind, when we climbed trees with the cubs, and the lions rolled in the grass to put out the fire, and then they took to the jungle, and Pa said when Roosevelt got to Africa and shot a few singed lions, he would think it was a new kind of beast.
We got back to camp with the two cubs, and called the roll to see who was missing, and we found the natives had packed up and moved away, claiming that the old man was a devil who had produced a burning mountain, and the whole country would be devastated.
We sent all our animals to the coast to be shipped to Berlin and moved our camp up to the jungle, about fifty miles, where there is a new tribe of natives, and where it is said the country is inhabited with gorillas.
Pa says he is going to move a cage into the gorilla country, and call the gorillas around him, learn their language, get their confidence, and eventually reform them and bring them to realize that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and teach them white man’s customs, and Pa will do it or die trying, but I don’t like the idea, as it seems dangerous to Pa. Say, those gorillas are bigger than John L. Sullivan, and they hug like bears. Gee, but I want to see gorillas hanging by their tails on trees, and Pa says I may go with him.