The papers were full of my deed. And I was not made fun of, but commended. And it was announced (for advertising purposes only, of course) that the management of the show had approached me with an offer to travel as a trainer of wild animals.
The second night I was rather blasé. I shook my finger playfully in the face of one of the seated lions ... to have a sensation of a thousand prickles running sharp through each pore, when the lion responded with an open, crimson-mouthed, yellow-fanged snarl; I smelt the carrion fetor of his breath. I stepped back rather quickly. All the animals grew restless and furtive. Little greenish-amber gleams lit and flickered in their eyes.
I pulled myself together. Deliberately I turned my back on them.
"—So you see plainly, ladies and gentlemen, that a lion is, after all, a much misrepresented, gentle beast."
The trainer was piqued when I walked out, that night.
"I don't want you to tell the people that my lions are harmless and gentle ... if you do that to-morrow night, I'll see to it that you get the medal, and not the money."
The afternoon of the following day, while the girl who trained the leopards was in the cage of the latter, they jumped on her, and tore her back with their claws. Dripping with blood, she whipped them back, inch by inch, into their living-cage, that led by a small door into the big one used for exhibitions. A shiver ran through me at the news of the girl's mishap. I was glad they had not taken me up as regards the leopards. And my being among the lions now also seemed less of a joke. At least, that last night, I felt it not to be, I delivered a constrained discourse and only breathed freely when outside their cage.
And in a few weeks my unique and single glory was snatched from me. The show had moved to Salina, and a barber in that town had shaved their keeper in the cage, while the lions sat around.