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In subconscious obedience to his master’s voice, Chieftain slowly straightened himself, came to an about face, and with his massive head canted far to one side and all adroop as though its weight had become to him suddenly burdensome, and his legs spraddled widely apart to hold him upright, he benignantly contemplated the sea of expectant and eager faces that stretched before him. Slowly he lifted a broad forefoot and with its padded undersurface made a fumbling gesture which might have been interpreted as an attempt on his part to wipe his nose.

The effort proved too much for him. Lacking one important prop, he lost his balance, toppled over and fell heavily upon his side. The fall jolted his mouth widely ajar, and from the depths of his great throat was emitted an immense but unmistakable hiccup–a hiccup deep, sincere and sustained, having a high muzzle velocity and humidly freighted with an aroma as of a hundred hot mince pies.

From the spellbound crowd rose a concerted gasp of surprise. Chieftain heeded it not. With the indubitable air of just recalling a pleasant but novel experience, and filled with a newborn desire to renew the sensation, he groggily regained his feet and reeled back to the corner from whence he had come. Here, with the other properties of his act, a slickly painted blue barrel stood upended. Applying his nose to a spot at the base of it, he lapped greedily at a darkish aromatic liquid which, as the entranced watchers now were aware, oozed forth in a stream upon the cage floor through a cranny treacherously opened between two sprung staves. And all the while he tongued up the escaping runlet of fluid he purred and rumbled joyously and his tawny sides heaved and little tremors of pure ecstasy ran lengthwise through him to expire diminishingly in lesser wriggles at the tufted tip of his gently flapping tail.

Then all at once understanding descended upon the audience, and from them together rose a tremendous whoop. A joyous whoop it was, yet tinged with a feather edging of jealous regret on the part of certain adult whoopers there. They had paid their quarters, these worthy folk, to see a lion perform certain tricks and antics; and lo, they had been vouchsafed the infinitely more unique spectacle of a lion with a jag on! It was a boon such as comes but once in many lifetimes, this opportunity to behold majestic Leo, converted into a confirmed inebriate by his first indulgence in strong and forbidden waters, returning to his tippling.

To some perhaps in this land of ours the scene would have served to point a moral and provide a text–a lamentable picture of the evils of intemperance as exemplified in its effects upon a mere unreasoning dumb brute. But in this assemblage were few or none holding the higher view. Unthoughtedly they yelled their appreciation, yelling all the louder when Chieftain, having copiously refreshed himself, upreared upon his hind legs, with both his forepaws winnowing the perfumed air, and after executing several steps of a patently impromptu dance movement, tumbled with a happy, intoxicated gurgle flat upon his back and lapsed into a coma of total insensibility.

But there was one among them who did not cheer. This one was a square-jawed person who, shoving and scrooging, cleft a passage through the applauding multitude, and slipped deftly under the ropes and laid a detaining grasp upon the peltry-clad shoulder of the astonished Riley. With his free hand he flipped back the lapel of his coat to display a badge of authority pinned on the breast of his waistcoat.

“What’s the main idea?” His tone was rough. “Who’s the chief booze smuggler of this outfit? How’d that barrel yonder come to be traveling across country with a soused lion?”

“You can search me!” lied Riley glibly. “So help me, Mike, all I know is that that barrel was slipped over on me by a big nigger that joined out with us up here in Kentucky a week ago! I told him to get me a barrel, meaning to teach the lion a new trick, and he stuck that one in there. But I hadn’t never got round to using it yet, and I didn’t know it was loaded–I’ll swear to that!”