d make the mob believe he was dead. That is the way
it stands now. But pa is not so darn happy as I have seen him, though I
try to do all I can to keep his mind off his trouble. I tell him as long
as his conscience is clear, he is all right, but he says: "But, Hennery,
that's the trouble; it ain't clear. Well, let us have peace, at any
price."

[Illustration: Pa Jumped Like a Box Car.]

CHAPTER XXV.

Pa Breaks in the Zebras and Drives a Six-in-Hand Team in the
Parade--The Freaks Have a Narrow Escape from Drowning.

Pa is stuck on the zebras. I do not know what there is about a zebra
unless it is the wail paper effects of his exterior decoration that
should make a man leave all the other animals and cleave unto the zebra,
but pa has been putting in his leisure time all summer breaking the
zebras to harness, and driving them single and double in the ring
Sundays.

Everybody about the show knew pa was going to spring some surprise on
us. I have tried to reason pa out of his unnatural infatuation for
zebras, but you might as well talk to a rich old man who gets stuck on a
chorus girl, and gives her all his money, and has to go and live at the
poor house.

A zebra always looks to me like a joke that nature has played. Who, but
nature, would ever think of laying out a plan for a zebra, and painting
it in stripes, like a barber's pole, and yet we must admit that few
human artists could paint a million zebras and get the stripes on as
perfect as nature does with her eyes shut. The mule and the zebra are
distant relatives, 'cause lots of mules have a few stripes on their
legs, but the zebra is the eldest son who is aristocratic and inherits
the stuff, while the mule is the younger son who never gets a look in
for the money, but has to work for a living. So it is no wonder to me
that the mule kicks. The zebra is the dude of the family, and the mule
looks up to him, when he ought to kick his slats in, and rub out his
stripes with a mule shoe eraser.

While pa was in the hospital at Kansas City he formed a plan to paralyze
the town by driving six zebras to a tally-ho coach, in the parade, and
the reporters interviewed pa, and the papers were full of it, and the
people were wild with excitement, and everybody wanted to see a
six-in-hand zebra team, driven by Alkali Ike, one of the greatest
western stage drivers that was ever held up by road agents. Pa was to be
Alkali Ike. The show struck Kansas City Sunday