him from goin' over and kickin' the Major, who still was
oblivious to surroundings, and enwrapped in the gentle art of
sneezin'. Then there come a fearful bump from outside. I knew by
that a showcase was no more.

"'Zeke!' yells Hadds, 'think of somethin' before that woman has us
all in.'

"'Haddsy, old horse,' I says, 'we've only got one show. If we can
create a diversion we win. My head's that rumpled, the only thing
strikes me is for us to go out there and play cat-fight. Holler,
and meaowl, and spit, and screech, and jump around till she can't
help but look at us. That's the way I uset to amuse the twins when
they needed killin'; of course we'll look like a pair of fools----'

"'Yes!' hollers Hadds. 'What do we look like now? You get three
guesses!'

"'Come along!' says I.

"Well, dear friends and brothers, our hearts was in that diversion,
let alone the stake we'd invested in the store. If you don't think
one bald-headed E. G. W. Scraggs and one red-headed Tommy Hadds put
up a high-grade article of cat-fight I don't know how I'm goin' to
prove to the contrary; but it was so.

[Illustration: "Put up a high-grade article of cat-fight."]

"Why, we buck-jumped four foot in the air, sideways, edgeways and
straight pitch-and-teeter; we mi-auwed, and scratched, and tore and
rolled over, and kicked with our hind legs, and such yells was
never heard in a human habitation before nor since.

"It worked. The Mayoress stopped and leaned over the counter.

"'Warm it up, Hadds!' I whispers. 'We got her lookin'!'

"So then we rollicked for a ramps. I see the Majoress smile; she
p'inted her finger toward us.

"'S-sick 'em!' says she. 'Sick 'em, Towser!'

"It would have been all right; we was playin' on velvet, and could
have led that woman out of the store as easy as anything if that
concussed Major hadn't 'a' come to in the wrong place.

"I caught one glimpse of him holdin' tight with both hands to a
shelf, with his eyes jumpin' out of his head and his face as white
as flour.

"Of course no man would really believe that the spectacle of two
grown men playin' cat-fight in the ruins of a drug store, whilest
his own wife looked on and said 'Sick 'em!' was anything but an
optickle delusion, caused by reasons he was familiar with.

"'It's never come like this before!' hollers the Major, and then he
goes down backward for the final touch, carryin' away a kerosene
lamp, and the same landin' in a barrel o