EPHAS was his name. He was a pig. But he was, none the less, a paladin. A porcine St. George when fate at last sounded the call for his great adventure.
Byram owned him. Byram was the man who had mortgaged his up-State farm to buy a half share in the “Trip to Mars” concession at the Pan-Universal Exposition.
Most expositions, or world's fairs, are financial failures. But most of their side-show attractions make money. And—thanks to Cephas—the Trip to Mars was one of these money-makers. Through its gingerbread-gilt gateway on the Street of a Thousand Laughs trickled a goodly stream of sight-seers, and of dimes, throughout that long, hot summer.
Byram, exiled for the season from his beloved farm in order to make ten times as much money at the exposition, was acting as his own ballyhoo man to draw trade to the Trip to Mars. And on the third day of the season his raucous cries of “Greatest, most reefined, most side-splitting show of the century,” were suddenly punctuated by a squeal that split the looser volume of his clamor as a sword blade might cleave past-worthy melon.
And at that imperative insult to the eardrum, full a thousand hurrying, babbling people stopped and, for a flash of time, were silent. The sound had wafted Byram momentarily back to his farm. It carried the memory of many another listener to a similar starting point.
Byram sought to locate the cause, and at a glance he found it. Down the narrow Street of a Thousand Laughs rumbled a big market wagon, taking this short cut to the heart of the city. The wagon was loaded high with crated poultry, calves, and pigs.
An insecurely fastened crate at the very back of the pile had shaken loose, and had fallen to the ground, where, from the tumble, it promptly disintegrated. Its late occupant stood free, dazed, indignant, in the middle of the thronged street; giving forth squeal after squeal, that filled the whole walled space with a series of shrill and unlovely echoes.
The vocalist was a very small, very thin, very youthful pig. For scarce a month of time at most could he have been on earth. And during that brief month he had apparently cultivated his voice at the expense of his anatomy. For, seldom has so much leanness been seen in conjunction with so much youth. Indeed, only the most optimistic of farmers could have hoped to sell such a rawboned and stunted baby porker at any market.
The wagon vanished around a corner, leaving the baby pig stranded and deserted; a bit of noisy jetsam on the shores of the Street of a Thousand Laughs. Byram gazed. So did every one. And a Homeric guffaw arose. The Street was for once living up to its name. The piglet retorted with an ear-racking squeal.
A long-legged, rangy dog dashed from the crowd and charged the waif. The baby pig, no whit daunted, wheeled to meet the charge. Yes, to meet it half-way. His pink lips drawn back over tiny, white milk tusks, his scant spine hairs a-bristle, his vocal cords throbbing with a long-drawn squeal of glad challenge, the pig scampered toward his thrice-larger foe.
Whereat, the dog, which was of many breeds, checked its attack in mid-course, tucked a grubby tail between its flanks, and wheeled in flight; turning piggy's solo squeals into close harmony by the addition of a long, fear-stricken howl.
The baby paused, blinking his near-sighted little red-rimmed eyes in search of his flying foe. And at that moment Byram was mastered by one of the inspirations that had lifted him at thirty from farm hand to rising showman.
He strode forth and snatched up the valiant little porker. The latter seemed to know from the way he was handled that Byram was accustomed to pigs. So, unresisting, he allowed himself to be tucked under the man's arm and carried into the cubby-hole office of the Trip to Mars building:
A boy was sent on the run for a half-gallon can of buttermilk, and with further orders to hunt up the market man from whose wagon the pig had been jolted, and to pay him two dollars for the attenuated prize. Just then Byram's partner, Bud Crane, happened in,
“We aren't showing freaks,” was Bud's comment, at sight of the Little Stranger. “What good is a living skeleton to us?”
“But we're selling the dear public,” gently corrected Byram. “And I've just bought for two dollars the best barker on the Street. I'm going to tie this pig to a six-foot cord alongside of my ballyhoo bench outside there. His squeals will make every mother's son in earshot stop and listen to me.”
But Crane was dubious. Byram expounded his theory of the farm memory that lurks in the back of every one's brain. And he told how the crowd had waxed silent, and had turned, as one man, at piggy's unrehearsed recital.