the
table!

He jumped over the board seat and sat down right opposite me and took the
fur right off his Head, just as if he was scalping himself and laid it on
the ground. He looked more like a man then.

He looked across arid said to me, "Hello, old top, how are they treating
you?"

I said, "I'm feeling pretty well."

"Going into the parade, I hear," he said.

"That was quite a stunt you pulled. You'd never catch me like that if I
once broke loose. Think you could?"

I said, "Maybe I couldn't, but anyway, I guess you're human, all right."

Then he began to laugh and said to the thin man, "How goes it, Skinny; you
going to ride?"

I guess he meant the parade. The fat woman said, "I wouldn' do no ridin'
fer no proprietor, not me. The public has got to come to _me;_ I wouldn'
never go to _them."_'

Jib Jab said, "All in the game."

Judge Dot said, "It's different with you, Jib; you ain't human and you
can't say for yourself. You're in the menagerie class. You got to ride in
your cage. You ain't a regular freak. I never heard of no parade work in a
freak contract."

Madame Whopper said, "I wouldn' do parade work fer no proprietor, ride or
walk, I wouldn' not even Barnum hisself, I wouldn'."

Jib Jab said for me to pass him the butter and then he winked at me and he
said, "You're too particular, Ma. Parade work is all right. I like
parade work, except I can't smoke. How about it, Kid?"

I said I didn't mind being in a parade, but I wouldn't want to ride in a
cage like he had to do.

He laughed and said it was all in the game. He said if he ever broke out of
that cage, I'd never capture him until he came back for his money on
Saturday night.

I said "Sometimes boy scouts find people; sometimes they hunt for people
that are lost. In our magazine there's always a notice if a scout is lost
and all the scouts are on the look out for him."

"Yes, but those people are human," he said.

I said, "Gee whiz, I can't deny that."

"You never hunted for a _what-is-it,_ did you?" he asked, awful funny like.

I told him, "No, I never did, but once a troop of scouts found a girl that
was lost on a mountain, and there was another troop that found a fellow
just from seeing his name in the newspapers."

He said, "You're a wide awake bunch, you kids. They don't have any boy
scouts in the jungle where I was captured alive. If you ever get on my
trail, I'd give you a run all right."

I asked him where that jungle was w