“Ike, I hope yuh ain’t lyin’ to me.”
“C. O. D.,” says I.
“That’s the joker,” says he kinda wailin’. “C. O. D., eh? How in — can yuh deliver a thing like these, I’d ask you? Half of Piperock is guardin’ this here stable. Over across the street is Pete Gonyer. Farther down the street is Mighty Jones, and up the other way is Olaf Hansen. One of them three has his eye on this place. They’re watchin’ to see that Paradise don’t come and take them things away.
“And at night they’re guardin’ this place with sawed-off shotguns. They heard that Paradise was goin’ to take away the menagerie; that’s what they heard.”
“It’s kinda easy to see why Paradise wants to shift the job to me and Dirty Shirt Jones,” says I. “Can’t yuh do as yuh want to with yore own animals?”
“I can’t,” wails Wick. “Magpie got me drunk, Judge Steele wrote out a option—and I signed it. I can’t sell until thirty days after Labor Day. By that time I’ll be in the poor house.”
“What do these here animals look like?” asks Dirty.
Wick leads up back in the stable and makes us used to the dangdest lookin’ trio of animals I ever seen. Cleopatra is in a cage on wheels, and if there ever was a meaner-lookin’ tiger I’ve never seen it. She’s jist skin and bones and a big mouth full of teeth.
The camel opens his mouth and grins at us, kinda asthmatic-like. His name is Sahara, and he looks like —. If it wasn’t for his humps he’d look like a moth-eaten burro.
“Here’s the e pluribus peritonitis,” says Wick, pointin’ at the next stall. “There stands Gunga Din. I tied the son of a gun up a while ago.”