“Then,” says Scenery, “you better hire somebody to haul it away and bury it.”
“Think you’re funny, don’t you?” asks Magpie. “Get this inside your barren skull, little one: This is a cross between a circus and a carnival and tomorrow she helps to entertain the old-timers. Sabe?”
“Smells like a cross between a pole-cat and ancient eggs,” says Scenery. “Remove it from our fair city to once!”
“Away from here? What do you mean, feller?”
“I’m running this celebration.” Scenery pats himself on the chest. “Me and Judge Steele inaugurates same and we has the say-so. Sabe? We adjudicates against anything that ain’t our own doings. In the first place, you ain’t got nothing that attracts us, and in the second place, as the sheriff, I rules against what you have got. You can’t show in the city of Piperock while——”
I saw Alcibiades working closer and closer to Scenery, but I didn’t think it was any business of mine to warn the law. It was nice team-work between Alcibiades and Cleopatra, if anybody asks you. The elephant just wrapped its trunk around Scenery, slammed him up against the cage and he don’t no more than hit the bars when a pair of paws come out and shucks the lower half of Scenery plumb to his birthday suit.
Then Alcibiades cracked the whip with the sheriff, and when he lit twenty feet away he still retains his boots, shirt and an idea of the general direction home.
“Good work!” applauds Bosco, sticking his head out from under the canvas. “Things like that never happen in a carnival.”
“You hang around here very long, Bosco, and you’ll see a lot of things what never happen any place else,” says Magpie.
We’ve just got one tent up when here comes Judge Steele. He hauls out a sheet of paper, balances his glasses on his nose and reads: