Then he remembers that receipt and pulls it out. I could see something was queer by the way he screwed up his mouth. He tosses the paper over to me. Say! do you know what them two ulsteret guys had done? They'd given Pinckney a bill of sale, makin' over all rights, privileges and good-will entire.
"You're it," says I.
"So it seems," says Pinckney. "But I hardly know whether I've got Rajah or Rajah's got me."
"If I owned something I didn't want," says I, "seems to me I'd sell it. There must be other come-ons."
"We will sell him," says Pinckney.
Well, we tried. For three or four days we didn't do anything else; and say, when I think of them days they seem like a mince-pie dream. We did our handsomest to make those Nutmeggers believe that they needed Rajah in their business, that he would be handy to have around the place. But they couldn't see it. We argued with about fifty horny-handed plow-pushers, showin' 'em how Rajah could pull more'n a string of oxen a block long, and could be let out for stump-digging in summer, or as a snow-plough in winter. We tried liverymen, storekeepers, summer cottagers; but the nearest we came to making a sale was to a brewer who'd just built a new house with red and yellow fancy woodwork all over the front of it. He thought Rajah might do for a lawn ornament and make himself useful as a fountain during dry spells, but when he noticed that Rajah didn't have any tusks he said it was all off. He knew where he could buy a whole cast-iron menagerie, with all the frills thrown in, at half the price.
And we wa'n't holding Rajah at any swell figure. He was on the bargain counter when the sale began. Every day was a fifty-per-cent. clearance with us. We were closing out our line of elephants on account of retiring from business, and Rajah was a remnant.
But they wouldn't buy. Generally they threatened to set the dogs on us. It was worse than trying to sell a cargo of fur overcoats in Panama. In time it began to leak through into our heads that Rajah wa'n't negotiable. Didn't seem to trouble him any. He was just as glad to be with us as at first, followed us around like a pet poodle, and got away with his bale of hay as regular as a Rialto hamfatter raidin' the free lunch.
"Is it a life sentence, Pinckney?" says I. "Is this twin foster-brother act to a mislaid elephant to be a continuous performance? If it is we'd better hit the circuit regular and draw our dough on salary day. For me, I'm sick of havin' folks act like we was a quarantine station. Let's anchor Rajah to something solid and skiddoo."
But Pinckney couldn't stand it to think of Rajah being left to suffer. He was gettin' kind of sore on the business, just the same. Then he plucks a thought. We wires to a friend of his in Newport to run down to the big circus headquarters and jolly them into sending an elephant-trainer up to us.