Bonaparte was still asleep on his pile of leaves. Jud would have called and wakened him, but Archie B. said: “Oh, the monkey will waken him quick enough—let him alone.”
In the laugh which followed, Jud yielded and Archie B. won the first blood in the battle of brains.
The crowd now stood silent and breathless in one corner of the lot. Only Ozzie B.'s sobs were heard. In the far corner lay Bonaparte.
The Italian stooped, and unlinking the chain of the monkey's collar, sat him on the ground and, pointing to the sleeping dog, whispered something in Italian into his pet's ear.
The crowd scarcely drew its breath as it saw the little animal slipping across the yard to its death.
Within three feet of the dog he stopped, then springing quickly on Bonaparte, with a screeching, bloodcurdling yell, grabbed his stump of a tail in both hands, and as the crowd rushed up, they heard its sharp teeth close on Bonaparte's most sensitive member with the deadly click of a steel trap.
The effect was instantaneous. A battery could not have brought the champion to his feet quicker. With him came the monkey—glued there—a continuation of the dog's tail.
Around and around went Bonaparte, snarling and howling and making maddening efforts to reach the monkey. But owing to the shortness of Bonaparte's tail, the monkey kept just out of reach, its hind legs braced against the dog, its teeth and nails glued to the two inches of tail.
Around and around whirled Bonaparte, trying to throw off the things which had dropped on him, seemingly, from the skies. His growls of defiance turned to barks, then to bowls of pain and finally, as he ran near to Archie B., he was heard to break into yelps of fright as he broke away dashing around the lot in a whirlwind of leaves and dust.
The champion dog was running!