“Well, if that don't bluff the rube they take him round and give him a flash at Wallace. Wallace is old and feeble and he ain't really much more dangerous than a kitten, but he looks rough; and Dan sidles up 'longside the wagon and touches a button that's there to use during the ballyhoo, and then Wallace jumps up and down and roars a mile. D'ye make me there? Well, the floor of the cage is all iron strips, and when Dan touches that button it shoots about fifty volts of the real juice--electricity, you know--into Wallace's feet and he acts ontamable. So of course that stumps the rube, and Dan like as not gets away with it without ever settling. Oh, it's a foxy trick! And to think it was me myself that first put Silver on to it!” he added lamentingly, with a sidelong look at the sheriff to see how that official was taking the disclosure of these professional secrets. As well as one might judge by a glance the sheriff was taking it unmoved. He was cutting off a chew of tobacco from a black plug. Stowing the morsel in his jaw, he advanced an idea of his own:
“How about attachin' the receipts in the ticket wagon?”
“I don't know about that either,” said the sophisticated Stanton. “Dan Silver is one of the wisest guys in this business. He had to be a wise guy to slip one over on an old big-leaguer like yours truly, and that's no sidewalk banter either. You might attach the wagon and put a constable or somebody inside of it, and then like as not Dan'd find some way to flimflam him and make his getaway with the kale intact. You gotter give it to Dan Silver there. I guess he's a stupid guy--yes, stupid like a bear cat!” His tone of reluctant admiration indicated that this last was spoken satirically and that seriously he regarded a bear cat as probably the astutest hybrid of all species.
“Are all circuses conducted in this general fashion, suh?” inquired the old judge softly.
“No,” admitted Stanton, “they ain't--the big ones ain't anyway; but a lot of the small ones is. They gotter do it because a circus is always fair game for a sore rube. Once the tents come down a circus has got no friends.
“I tell you what,” he went on, struck amidships with a happy notion--“I tell you what you do. Lemme swear out an attachment against the band wagon and the band-wagon team, and you go serve it right away, sheriff. That'll fix him, I guess.”