he next place and shooed us
away. They'd heard that Rajah was a man-killer and they had brought
along a pound of arsenic to feed him. After they'd been coaxed from
behind their barricade, though, and had seen what a gentle, confidin'
beast Rajah really was, they compromised by letting us take a road that
led into the next county.

"This is gettin' sultry," says I as we goes on the side-track.

"I am enjoying it," says Pinckney. "Now let's have some road work."

Say, you ought to have seen that procession. First comes me and
Pinckney, in running gear; then Rajah, hoofing along at our heels, as
joyous as a chowder party; and after him Goggles, with the benzine
wagon. Seems to me I've heard yarns about how grateful dumb beasts could
be to folks that had done 'em a good turn, but Rajah's act made them
tales seem like sarsaparilla ads. He was chock full of gratitude. He was
nutty over it. Seemed like he couldn't think of anything else but that
wholesale toothache of his and how he'd got shut of it. He just adopted
us on the spot. Whenever we stopped he'd hang around and look us over,
kind of admirin', and we couldn't move a step but he was there, flappin'
his big ears and swingin' his trunk, just as though he was sayin':
"Whoope-e-e, me fellers! You're the real persimmons, you are."

We couldn't find a hotel where they'd take us in that night, so we had
to bribe a farmer to let us use his spare bed rooms. We tethered Rajah
to a big apple-tree just under our windows to keep him quiet, and let
him browse on a Rose of Sharon bush. He only ripped off the rain pipe
and trod a flower-bed as hard as a paved court.

At breakfast Pinckney remarks, sort of soothin':

"We might as well enjoy Rajah's society while we have it. I suppose
those circus men will be after him in a few days."

Then he remembers that receipt and pulls it out. I could see something
was queer by the way he screwed up his mouth. He tosses the paper over
to me. Say! do you know what them two ulsteret guys had done? They'd
given Pinckney a bill of sale, makin' over all rights, privileges and
good-will entire.

"You're it," says I.

"So it seems," says Pinckney. "But I hardly know whether I've got Rajah
or Rajah's got me."

"If I owned something I didn't want," says I, "seems to me I'd sell it.
There must be other come-ons."

"We will sell him," says Pinckney.

Well, we tried. For three or four days we didn't do anything else; and
say, when I think of