h gits 'em
back. Stan' still."

The Wildcat broke a few pounds of mud from the porter's uniform.

"Stan' close to de blaze. When de mud dries you peels easy as a
shell-bark hick'ry nut."

The success of the peeling process was all gummed up at nine o'clock by
the Portland humidity, which won its usual bet. From the heavy skies a
light rain began to fall.

At half past nine, with the booming drums of the parade sounding up the
street, the shivering form of Dwindle Daniels was again sogged down to
its original saturation point.

"Wilecat, I don' see how kin I make mah run to San F'mcisco."

"Yo' makes yo' run all right. Yo' dead-heads me, an' I does yo' work
whilst yo' hangs out de front vegetable ob de car. Ol' wind dry yo' out
sudden. Git ready fo' de gran' rush. Here's de head ob de parade."

The Wildcat threw back his head and bawled into the evening air: "Fried
fish! Smelt fish! Here you is, two bits a pan!"

He lowered his head to gratify his curiosity concerning the technique
of beating a bass drum. "Sho' craves 'at boy's job. Some day when I
gits rich I buys me a bass drum. 'At drum bammer sho' swings a mean
club."

"Fried fish! Smelt fishes! Two bits a pan!"

Following the band and leading the parade, heavily laden with a false
dignity which had completely eradicated his spinal curvature, there
appeared the rag-head Hindoo who had escaped with the Wildcat from the
carload of undesirable aliens on the night of the train robbers' fiesta
below The Dalles.

A little before the head of the parade reached the arc light under
which the Wildcat and Dwindle Daniels had inaugurated their fish
business, the Hindoo turned and raised his arms.

The parade stopped.

The rag-head signalled for his companions to come close about him.

In precise English he broke into a violent harangue wherein the least
radical of the evil doctrines which he preached would have been
sufficient to transform the United States into a second Russia.

Midway of his speech one of the accompanying platoon of police officers
stepped up to him.

"Can that stuff, you Anarchist! Come wid me!"

The officer reached for the Hindoo, and this gesture of the law's hand
was a signal which launched a riot into being.

"Boy, dis looks like a bad ruckus!" The Wildcat spoke quickly to
Dwindle Daniels. "Wish't ol' Cap'n Jack was here. Chances is, us
niggahs gits lynched."

On the tense instant of conflict a solution to the threatening disaster