led my two little girls came over from the hotel
with me one morning and went up there with the nurse to play with them
while I went into the carpenter shop next door to settle for the new
cage, which had just been delivered. Broncho, as soon as he struck his
native soil, had discovered a camp of other Indians on the Bowery and
spent most of his time in their encampment, leaving a Cockney Englishman
in charge of the lions and the horse. I intended to wait until he
arrived before shifting Wallace to the new cage, but the Englishman
thought he would show his cleverness and attempted to do it alone
without waiting for us. He threw a piece of meat into the new cage and
then rolled it up to the old one, and when the doors were opposite each
other he opened them. Of course Wallace made a spring for the meat in
the new cage, but he struck the edge of the door, and as the Cockney had
neglected to block the wheels the cage rolled away and the keeper gave a
yell and bolted for the stairs. There was a loose lion downstairs--and a
bad one at that--and the nurse and two children in the loft.

"The first I knew of it was from the nurse, who had grabbed the children
and stood with them in the door which had been used to pass the hay in,
yelling 'Fire!' and 'Murder!' but I knew that there was hell to pay as
soon as I reached the street, by the sound which came from the stable.
We got a ladder from the carpenter shop and hustled the nurse and
children down to the street, and then I went up to the loft, while the
nurse and the Cockney held the small door from the stable to the street,
which could not be fastened from the outside until the carpenter spiked
some plank over it.

"A look into the stable convinced me that I did not want to go down the
stairs, for with one blow Wallace had converted a thousand-dollar
trotting horse into two dollars' worth of lion meat, and he was crouched
on the body, which he had dragged from the stall, clawing at its throat
and drinking the blood. The place looked like a shambles, and the growls
which came from Wallace as the other lions threw themselves against the
bars of their cages in their efforts to get out and join in the feast
were redoubled when he caught sight of my head through the trap-door. I
slammed it down and drew the kangaroo cage on top of it and then went
down to the street to see that the windows and doors were securely
boarded up. A great crowd was gathering and I was afraid that the pol