An Unexpected Denouement.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIII, Issue XIX, 4 November 1899, Page 840

An Unexpected Denouement.

Our town was a done-up one. Several new towns had sprung up near by, another railroad had run through the country back of us, and these things stopped us bein’ the eattle and grain shippin' point we used to be. Business grew pretty poor; there was lots of vacant houses, there was a whole lot of empty sheds in the old abandoned stock-yards, and an old roller rink. Just the place for the winter quarters of the Pringle Circus Company, the manager said, and the ]>eople were tickled to death. The old stock-yards and its sheds was just the place for the horses, camels, elephants, sacred oxen and such like, while the caged animals could be kept in the roller rink. The. performers could live around town in the vacant houses. I said the

PEOPLE WAS TICKLED. Most of ’em was, but not all. Some said the circus men would be demoralisin' to the boys with their bad ways and stories of circus life. They would be ridin’ their horses around, would git to racin’ probably. while the camels and hippopotamuses were, coarselookin’ brutes that would spoil the artistic sense of the people that stared at 'em day after day. The peaceful quiet of the town would give way to a worldly riot, they said. The town certainly was quiet. There wasn’t scarcely a temptation in the place except to go to sleep when you ought to be work in’. The principal of the graded school. Professor Stebbins, was specially against it. He talked against it and wrote pieces that come out in the county paper; but that’s all the good it don e him. The circus meant money to the town year after year, and the people were bound to have it there.

“How much money did you ever bring to this town, Stebbins?” asked old Sam Anderson, proprietor of our leadin' store. “We’d rather have a little less culture and more money in this burg. You keep on teachin’ the kids and let us men of financial experience look out for the welfare of the town.”

Well, one day in November, the camels and horses come, but didn’t nobody come with ’em. They was consigned to old Sam Anderson and he put ’em in the. sheds. It seems the performers was goin’ to run a little museum for a few weeks in the city of Rockford, and the roustabouts that done all the work had gone on strike. So the manager was shippin' things along as he could, little by little, and askin' Anderson and other prominent citizens to look out for ’em for him.

Then the yaks and the elephants come and the lion, and the first went to the stock-yards and the lion’s cage was put in the rink. Next day come another cage and in it was the WILD MAN FROM BORNEO. Well, sir, he was a sure-enough wild man. one they had to keep caged. He wasn’t no Irishman tattooed, but the genuine savage article, six and a-half feet tall, with a big club. The manager wrote some directions about him. but the pen was so bad and the ink so pale that the letter couldn't all be made out. It said to put the cage in the rink and open the door so he could git out, but not to git within reach of him, and to have a barrel of water in there for him. and to “To what?” That was the question. Not another word could be read though all the prominent citizens took a try at it. The beginnin' of the letter said the manager would be along in four or five days, so our people thought things would be all right until he come. The inside of the rink had all been fixed up with sheet iron, the windows barred, the doors braced with iron bars; so there was no danger of th e wild man gittin’ out. There was a sort of a peek hole up in the door with a slide in it. We hauled the lion’s cage up so we could reach through this peek hole with a pole and drop meat into the cage. We put a tub of water in with him, and then we put the wild man's cage up so we could reach through this peek hole without trouble. Then we unlocked the door and ran like thunder.

Come supper time, Anderson climbed up to the peek hole and passed in a basket full of ham and eggs, mashed potato, and an apple pie. The wild man took off the cover of the basket where it was hangin’ on the end of the pole, looked in, sniffed, and then he hauled off with his club and SMASHED THE WHOLE THING INTO BITS.

“Well, if he don’t like that he don’t get nothin’ else to-night,” said old Sam Anderson, as he shut the peek hole and jumped off the box he had been standin’ on. Next mornin’ a chunk of beef was dropped in through the top of the lion’s cage, and the wild man came runnin’ up as if he was hungry enough to eat even that, and old Anderson thought he’d surely eat the fried potato, coffee, and doughnuts that was passed through in a second basket, but he smelled at it and smashed it all like he had done before. “Well, that'sallhe gits to-day,” said old Anderson. “If they ain’t good enough for him he ean go without.” But, just the same, he begun plannin’ what he’d give him next day. It wouldn’t do to have the critter git sick on our hands. “I’ll give him roast pork,” said Anderson. “No: come to think of it, tomorrow is Friday and all them wild tribes of Borneo is Catholics, ain’t they, and wouldn’t eat meat?” So he fixed up a baked pickerel and a. lot of fried perch. Next mornin’, the wild man eome up and acted like he was tryin’ to snake out some of the lion's meat when it was thrown in, but the lion had gobbled it all up before he got there. This made old Anderson sure that the wild man would be glad to get the nice fish, but he wasn’t. He smashed this basket up like he had done the others, and then he YELLED LIKE A STEAM ENGINE and ran around poundin’ the wall with his club until the whole town, pretty nearly, had collected outside the buildin’, wonderin’ what the matter was.

By and by the wild man quit his noise and looked calm, but sorter desperate, just the same. However, old Anderson had begun to hope the trouble was over, when what did the wild man do but walk right up to the lion’s cage, unfasten the door, and start to climb in. Anderson didn’t wait to see any more, and jumped and run. “Run!” he yelled to the crowd outside. “Run! run! the lion’s eating the wild man.”

We all did run. Some of us for the reason Anderson did, which was because we couldn’t bear to stand around and listen to the agony of a feller man bein’ et up by a wild beast; others because they was scared by Anderson’s wild and sudden outbreak and didn’t know what they was runnin’ for. Seems like we heard a single roar, but we wasn’t sure. Next mornin’ Anderson wouldn’t let nobody look in and he wouldn’t look in himself. He said he wouldn’t view or let anybody else view such an awful spectacle as would be seen there. That evening the manager eome. He was told all the circumstances from the arrival of the wild man and his goin’ crazy, to his committin’ suicide by havin’ the lion eat him. “Couldn’t shoot, himjself with his club, couldn’t beat himself to death with it. To have the lion eat him was the only way,” said Anderson. "Why didn’t you give him raw meatlike I said in my letter,” asked the manager. “Didn’t I tell you he positively wouldn’t eat nothin’ else?”

“I ouldn’t read your blamed letter,” said Anderson, kinder spunky. “Well if he’s committed suicide like you say he’s done, it’s because he went hungry four days account of gittin’ nothin' he could eat and was druv crazy in consequence.” We all went into the rink, the manager leadin’. Stebbins was standin* in the entry, lookin’ stern and reproachful. The manager peeked through the peek hole. “I opposed the cornin’ of this demoralizin’ circus,” said Stebbins in a loud voice. “It has come and it has not been here a week l>efore we have been called >i]>on to behold the most horrible death of a feller human bein’.”

The manager threw the big door wide open and walked through and we all looked in. The wild man had et the lion. —“Puck.”