A Night Out | Page 5

earth with the body of a foreign cat. This time he came in, swearing, and the two cats reared upon their haunches with the shock; then fell in a tangled, rending, yowling snarl. Omar Ben, by instinctive craft, sought for a point of vantage underneath his foe--a vantage because, when lying on his back, he could claw straight up with all four feet, and the greater the weight of the chap on top, the greater his woe--abdominally.
This point of vantage, however, is rather difficult to hold, with two most earnest gentlemen desirous of it; and so they changed positions--changed so rapidly, in fact, that their bodies resembled a sort of pyrotechnic pinwheel whose centrifugal sparks were composed of eyes and claws and tufts of fur and cat profanity. Also, it lasted longer than the ordinary pinwheel, and was a trifle more uproarious; but it died at last with a sizzling spit, and a lean black streak shot out toward the haven of an alley's mouth.
The streak was Ash-Can Sam. Omar Ben Sufi sat down in the middle of the street, and wondered. He had thrashed something, and he didn't understand it. So he just sat there, quivering, bleeding, battered--but a conqueror.
Ringtail Pete endeavored to express himself, but emotion choked him; therefore he spat fervidly and said:
"Hully gee!"
Then he and the ladies descended from the roof, to walk in silent circles around the champion, regarding him with a species of cataleptic awe. Presently, however, Pete came to earth, extended his paw, and delivered himself of an established truth:
"Well, dang my hide, but it takes er 'ristercrat fer to glitter in a scrap!"
They escorted him all the way to his eighty-thousand-dollar home. The ladies kissed him--both of them--and helped him to clamber weakly over his garden wall.
He turned to Ringtail with an easy, aristocratic smile: "Au revoir, R.T.! Those frawgs were most delicious!"
"Hully gee!" breathed Pete, and disappeared through the dusk of the outer world.

III
Now, in the eighty-thousand-dollar cottage black sorrow reigned throughout the night. There were tears and linguistic prayers. There were tinklings of little bells, while humans called shrilly to vulgar officials along the wires. From a mass of incoherence the officials learned that some evil-hearted ruffian had entered the thirty-thousand-dollar garden and had stolen a priceless cat.
Thus the outer world went hunting. So great was its zeal--so great was the offer of reward--that it captured every cat in town, with the one exception, of course, of Omar Ben Sufi. This particular hero was found next morning, asleep, in the geranium-bed; so they bore him in, while weepings burst forth afresh. And well they might.
Poor Omar Ben was a sight to awaken pity, even in the stoniest of hearts. The number of his hairs could be counted, almost, by plus and minus tufts; one eye was closed; his splendid tail was bent in several angles unrecognized by the rules of art, and he smelled of the outer world--horribly.
His mistress expressed her grief in a noiseless, refined whimper of despair; the French maid shrieked, and called on Heaven to witness the devastation of her every hope; but the master--who had lived, in spite of his Wall Street training--laughed.
"Nonsense!" said he. "You are squandering your sympathies upon a shameless prodigal. The beast has had the time of his life, by George!"
"Oh, Charles, how can you?" wailed the mistress of the priceless cat. "Can't you see how the precious child is suffering?"
Again the master laughed--laughed brutally.
"Of course he's suffering, my dear--but look at the smile on him!"

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