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“Say, boy, that’s right, keep a-coming,” he called. His experienced eye appraised Red Hoss’ muscular proportions. “Do you want a job?”

“Whut kinder job, boss?”

“Best job you ever had in your life,” declared the white man. “You get fourteen a week and cakes. Get me? Fourteen dollars just as regular as Saturday night comes, and your scoffing free–all the chow you can eat thrown in. Then you hear the band play absolutely free of charge, and you see the big show six times a day without having to pay for it, and you travel round and see the country. Don’t that sound good to you? Oh, yes, there’s one thing else!” He dangled a yet more alluring temptation. “And you wear a red coat with brass buttons on it and a cap with a plume in it.”

“Sho’ does sound good,” said Red Hoss, warming. “Whut else I got to do, cunnel?”

“Oh, just odd jobs round this pitch here–this animal show.”

“Hole on, please, boss! I don’t have no truck wid elephints, does I?”

“Nope. The elephants are down the line in a separate outfit of their own. You work with this show–clean out the cages and little things like that. Don’t get worried,” he added quickly, interpreting aright a look of sudden concern upon Red Hoss’ face. “You don’t have to go inside the cages to clean ’em out. You stay outside and do it with a long-handled tool. I had a good man on this job, but he quit on me unexpectedly night before last.”

The speaker failed to explain that the recent incumbent had quit thus abruptly as a result of having a forearm clawed by a lady leopard named Violet.

“‘Bout how long is dis yere job liable to last?” inquired Red Hoss. “You see, cunnel, Ise ‘spectin’ to have some right important private business in dis town ‘fore so very long.”

“Then this is the very job you want. After we leave here to-morrow night we strike down across the state line and play three more stands, and then we wind up with a week in Memphis. We close up the season there and go into winter quarters, and you come on back home. What’s your name?”

“My full entitled name is Roscoe Conklin’ Shackleford, but ‘count of my havin’ a kinder brightish complexion dey mos’ gin’rally calls me Red Hoss. I reckin mebbe dey’s Injun blood flowin’ in me.”

“All right, Red Hoss, let it flow. You just come on with me and I’ll show you what you’ll have to do. My name is Powers–Captain Powers.”

Proudly sensing that already he was an envied figure in the eyes of the group behind him, Red Hoss followed the commanding Powers back through a canvas-sided marquee into a circular two-poled tent. There were no seats. The middle spaces were empty. Against the side walls were ranged four cages. One housed a pair of black bears of a rather weather-beaten and travel-worn aspect. Next to the bears, the lady leopard, Violet, through the bars contemplated space, meanwhile wearing that air of intense boredom peculiar to most caged animals. A painted inscription above the front of the third cage identified its occupant as none other than The Educated Ostrich; the Bird That Thinks.

Red Hoss’ conductor indicated these possessions with a lordly wave of his arm, then led the way to the fourth cage. It was the largest cage of all; it was painted a bright and passionate red. It had gilded scrollings on it. Upon the ornamented facade which crossed its front from side to side a lettered legend ran. Red Hoss spelled out the pronouncement:

Chieftain, King of Feline Acrobats! The Largest Black-maned Nubian Lion in Captivity! Danger!

The face of the cage was boarded halfway up, but above the top line of the planked cross panel Red Hoss could make out in the foreground of the dimmed interior a great tawny shape, and at the back, in one corner, an orderly clutter of objects painted a uniform circus blue. There was a barrel or two, an enormous wooden ball, a collapsible fold-up seesaw and other impedimenta of a trained-animal act. Red Hoss had heard that the lion was a noble brute–in short, was the king of beasts. He now was prepared to swear it had a noble smell. Beneath the cage a white man in overalls slumbered audibly upon a tarpaulin folded into a pallet.