having
rushed back, men and women yelling with fright. Joe saw the outer door
swing open. In another instant the lioness would be out.

At that moment the men dropped the iron bar.

"Quick! Something to fasten the door--to hold it!" cried the
lion-tamer.

Joe acted in a flash and not an instant too soon. He forced the strong
hickory bar of his small trapeze into the places meant to receive the
iron bar, and as the lioness, with a roar of rage, flung herself
against the door, it did not give way, but held. Joe had prevented her
escape.

CHAPTER XIII

A BAD BLOW

"Quick now! With the iron bar!" cried Senor Bogardi. "That trapeze
stick won't hold long!"

But it held long enough. As the lioness, flung back into a corner of
her cage by her impact against the steel door, gathered herself for
another spring, the men slipped into place the iron bar, Joe pulling
out his trapeze.

"It's all right now--no more danger!" called Jim Tracy. "Take it easy,
folks, she can't get out now!"

This was true enough. The beast, after a fruitless effort to force a
way out of the cage, retreated to a corner and lay down, snarling and
growling.

"I don't know what's gotten into Princess," said the trainer as he
looked at her. "She never acted this way before."

"It's a good thing she showed her temper before you got in the cage
with her, and not afterward," remarked Joe, as he was about to pass on
to the performance tent.

"That's right," agreed Senor Bogardi. "And you did the right thing in
the nick of time, my boy. Only for your trapeze bar she'd have been
out among the crowd," and he looked at the men, women and children, who
were now calming down.

The small panic was soon over, and in order to quiet the lioness a big
canvas was thrown over her cage, so she would not be annoyed by
onlookers.

"I guess she needs a rest," her trainer said. "I'll let her alone for
a day or so, and she may get over this."

Joe went on into the tent where he was to do his trapeze acts. It was
nearly time for him to appear, and the other two Lascalla Brothers were
waiting for him. They would do an act together, and Joe one of his
single feats, however, before the three appeared in a triple act.

The young performer was straightening out the ropes attached to his
trapeze, when he noticed that the bar of the small one, which he had
thrust into the door of the lioness' cage, was cracked.

"Hello!" exclaimed Joe. "This w