e again.

Buck tipped forward with a clatter of his chair legs and trudged down
to the roadside. He walked around the outfit with an inquisitive
sniffing of his nose and a crinkling of eyebrows, and at last set
himself before the man of the chaise top, his knuckles on his hips.

"Who be I?" he demanded.

The stranger surveyed him for some time, huggling his head down in
cowering fashion, so it seemed in the dusk.

"You," he huskily ventured, "are Buck's Leviathan Circus and
Menagerie; Ivory Buck, Proprietor."

"And you," declared Buck, "are Brick Avery, inventor of the dancing
turkey and captor of the celebrated infant anaconda--side-show graft
with me for eight years."

He put up his hand, and the stranger took it for a solemn shake,
flinching at the same time.

"How long since?" pursued Buck.

"Thirty years for certain."

"Yes, all of that. Let's see! If I remember right, you threw up your
side-show privilege with me pretty sudden, didn't you?" His teeth were
set hard into his cigar.

The man on the van scratched a trembling forefinger through a cheek
tuft.

"I don't exactly recollect how the--the change came about," he
faltered.

"Well, _I_ do! You ducked out across country the night of the punkin
freshet, when I was mud bound and the elephant was afraid of the
bridges. You and your dancin' turkey and infant anaconda and a cage of
monkeys that wasn't yours and--_Her!_" He shouted the word. "What
become of Her, Brick Avery?"

He seized a spoke of the forewheel and shook the old vehicle angrily.
The spoke came away in his hand.

"Never mind it," quavered the man. "We're all coming to pieces, me and
the whole caboodle. Don't hit me with it, though!"

He was eying the spoke in Buck's clutch.

"What did you steal her for, Brick Avery?"

"There isn't anything sure about her going away with me," the other
protested.

Buck yanked away another spoke in his vehemence.

"Don't you lie to me," he bawled. "There wasn't telegraphs and
telephones and railroads handy in them days, so that I could stop you
or catch you, but I didn't need any telegraphs to tell me she had gone
away with handsome Mounseer Hercules, of the curly hair." He snorted
the sobriquet with bitter spite. "A girl I'd took off'n the streets
and made the champion lady rider of--and was going to marry, and
thought more of, damn yeh, than I did of all the rest of the world!
What did ye do with her?"

"Well, she wanted to go along, and so