d "Load!" There was no time for that,
but Tudor, seeing that the trainer had one arm free, threw his own
pistol through the bars and it slid across the floor of the cage
straight as a die to the outstretched hand. It was a time when fractions
of a second count and Depew's hesitation robbed him of his revenge. The
opened jaws were within a foot of the trainer's throat when the muzzle
of the pistol went between them, and Depew, coughing and choking, drew
back, his throat scorched by the burning powder, his eyes momentarily
blinded by the stream from a fire extinguisher, while Miller struggled
to his feet.

"People who see the crowds at my show think that I must coin money,"
said the Proprietor as he joined the Press Agent and the Stranger after
the performance. "But that accident in the Arena to-night means a loss
of fifty thousand dollars to me."

"Isn't that a high figure, even if they all die?" asked the Stranger,
who had been doing a little mental arithmetic.

"For those eight, yes, although a trained tiger is worth all sorts of
money, but I have purchased twenty-eight in all for that group, and the
others have been killed one by one, fighting among themselves. They
average over a thousand apiece, for I bought only the best, and figure
up the cost of their keep, transportation and trainer's salaries for
three years and you will find that I am not far out. That is the
difficulty of the show business in America, the public demands so much.
It is a marvelous thing, when you come to think of it, to see one
educated tiger; but if he wore evening clothes and played the fiddle it
wouldn't impress the Americans; they would demand a full orchestra. I
can give an act an hour long in Paris with one high school horse, but
here they want fifty liberty horses in a bunch and only care to watch
them for ten minutes. I realized that from Bonavita's act with the
lions; no individual lion did very much, but the fact that there were
twenty-seven of them in the cage drew the crowds. That's what made me
start in with the tigers, and I intended to get a big group, but now I
am back where I started from. I don't believe a troupe of tigers can
ever be trained."

[Illustration: _"Depew, coughing and choking, drew back."_]

"Hagenbeck has them," ventured the Stranger. "They seem as tame as
kittens with his show."

"That's just the point," answered the Proprietor. "They are as tame as
kittens: undersized brutes which have been raised in c