“Barnum was right,” I whispers. “He sure was.”
“You danged know he was,” nods Magpie. “He knew.”
“One every minute, Magpie, and no stop-watches on earth.”
I don’t know nothing about circuses. My folks got all their money honestly, and I don’t know a blood-sweating Behemoth from a ant-eater, but it don’t need zoological wisdom to see that me and Magpie owns a lot of undesirables.
First on the list cometh Cleopatra. Magpie has a book which I read once, and it says that Cleopatra showed up on the Egyptian range about one hundred and seventeen years before Christ, but after I looks her over I comes to the conclusion she ain’t that young.
Cleopatra is a man-eating tiger, but from the looks of her ribs I’d say that she ain’t mixed with men folks for a long, long time. Her teeth look like she’d been trying to get sustenance from stones. She might pinch but I’ll be danged if she could bite.
Then comes Allah. He looks like a antique rug that the moths had been living in. They say a camel can go eight days without drinking, but I’m betting Allah can go longer than that without eating. He’s what I’d call a shipwreck of the desert.
Then comes Alcibiades. This critter might ’a’ been a elephant years ago, but right now he ain’t much but a mass of rubber wrinkles and a pair of mean little eyes. Alcibiades sure needed washing and ironing.
The pony end of the outfit consists of four little pinto ponies, and the dogs tally about six mongrels, one mixed breed and one just dog. There’s two monkeys which scratch like lumberjacks. There’s a dirty tent, two painted wagons, a bass drum, a bale of hay and a set of harness.
With these few words I have proclaimed what we own for five hundred dollars. Oh, I forgot to mention a water-bucket minus the bail. I’m looking over our loss when Magpie comes back, grinning like a fool.