nd now, ladies and gents, I call upon you to witness
that we are not responsible for the terrible end which awaits this
reckless man.'

"I had taken the precaution to button up the box office 'take' in my
inside pocket, and while Merritt was making a bluff at looking for the
key to the cage door I looked around to see that there was a free exit,
for the coon was standing there swelling out his chest and grinning as
if he had the five hundred already in his jeans, and I knew he couldn't
be bluffed out. Just then a typical antebellum Missourian, one of the
kind that has to be shown, steps up in front. He was tanked up until his
safety valve would have blown off if it hadn't been wired down, but he
was pretty steady on his pins when he held onto the railing in front of
the cage.

[Illustration: _"Five hundred dollars to any one who will enter the
cage."_]

"'Professah,' says he, 'did I undahstand yo' all correctly to say that
this yeah object in the cage has none of the attributes of the human
race?'

"'Correct!' says Merritt, glad of an excuse to delay things. 'He is
lower than the beasts of the field.'

"'Well, he suttenly aint much to look at,' says the Southerner, looking
him over carefully. 'He won't eat like folks--he can't talk--an' he
sleeps like a bat. I dunno why such a pusillanimous critter should
cumber the yearth,' and with that he puts his hand to his hip and pulls
out a forty-five from under the tails of his coat. Fuzzy takes one look
at it, and it didn't need any prodding to make him holler, and he tries
to tear off the false tusks.

"'Foh Gawd's sake, mistah, doan shoot!' he yells. 'Dat white mahn's been
tellin' a passel ob lies about me until ah's sartain suah somefing gwine
fer to git me. Ah can eat an' talk like any one, an' mos' ebery one
knows me about yeah wen ah ain't got dese yeah contraptions on.'

"'Shut up, you blame fool!' says Merritt. 'He won't shoot you.'

"'Mebbe he knows dat, mebbe you knows dat; but how does I know dat?'
yells Fuzzy. 'Dat gun suttenly looks big to me.'

"About this time the other coon got wise and saw the five hundred
vanishing, and the last I saw of Merritt he was trying to break a
half-Nelson that the coon had got on him and dodge the rest of the crowd
at the same time. I left St. Louis on a freight that night, wearing a
few lumps where some stray brickbats landed, and the next time I saw
Merritt was in Chicago, and he was on crutches and had his head covered