“How about the show, anyhow, Ben?” asked Ted.

“What have you got?  You might as well let us know now.”

“Not on your autobiography,” answered Ben haughtily.  “I want to say, though, that your eyes will bulge like the knobs on a washstand drawer when you see what I’ve got, and then come to look at the bill for such a stupendous, striking, and singularly successful aggregation of freaks, acts, and divertisements embodied in this colossal and cataclysmic congregation of—­”

“Oh, cheese it,” said Kit.  “You give me the pip.”

“All right, have it your own way,” sighed Ben.  “This is what a fellow gets for serving his country, from Thomas Jefferson to John D. Rockefeller.”

“Come on,” said Ted persuasively.  “Loosen up and tell us what we are to have to-morrow.  This is an executive session of the whole.”

“You’re like a lot of kids the day before Christmas.  You’ve just got to see what mamma’s hidden in the closet,” said Ben.  “Well, I’ll let you in on a little of it.”

“Shoot when you’re ready,” said Kit.

“I was over at Strongburg about a month ago, and, knowing that I’d have to rustle up a show soon, I wrote to a theatrical agent in Chicago to let me know if he could furnish me with a good amusement company at small cost.  He wrote me that he had the very thing, and offered me one of these bum ‘wild west’ shows, with a bunch of spavined ponies, a lot of imitation cowboys, fake Indians, and Coney Island target shooters.”

“An’ yer didn’t take ’em?” asked Bud, in surprise.

“Tush!  Well, I was up against it, when Morrison, the hotel man, told me that there was a showman in town, and perhaps I might get something out of him.

“I hunted him up.  He was a typical showman.  Big fellow, large as a Noah’s ark, dressed like a sunset, and loud as an eighteen-inch gun.”

“I saw the fellow in Soldier Butte the other day.  He was talking to Wiley Creviss in the bank,” said Ted.  “You’ve described him more picturesquely than I should, but I’m convinced he’s the same man.”

“I asked him what he had, and he told me he could furnish me on short notice anything from a three-ring circus to a hand organ and monkey,” continued Ben.  “I told him how much money I wanted to spend, and he said he’d fix me up a show that would make everybody delighted, and I told him to go ahead.  The show blew in to-night, and ran up their tents down near the corral.”

“How many have you got in it?”

“I’ve got a balloon ascension for the afternoon, a giant and a midget, a magician, an Egyptian fortune teller, a trick mule, a Circassian beauty, and a strong man.”  Ben looked around proudly, and the boys burst into peals of laughter.

“Have you scraped the mold off of them yet?” asked Kit.

“How’s that?” asked Ben haughtily.

“Have you pulled the burs off the chestnuts?”

“See here, what do you mean?  Are you casting aspersions on my show?”