But then the buzz in the house stopped like a director had yelled “Cut!” The lion was getting a little peeved by now, and he began to tell the world what he thought of it. I don’t know if you ever heard that sound. The cough that a lion gets off inside, like in a circus, is nothing like it. Outside, at night, he puts his head to the ground and cuts loose, and it’s like what you read in the books, a roar. It’s an awful thing to hear. You can’t tell where it’s coming from, in the first place, and it shakes the earth, in the second place, and it shakes your heart, in the third place. Even a drunk can understand it. Those people looked at each other, and tried to get the comical talk going again, but it wasn’t quite so comical any more, and yet none of them was so very hot to go out and see what it was.
But of course Happy, after the lion had let three or four of them go, he was a big masterful guy, and he went out to see about it, the cocktail shaker still in his hand, with a towel around it, where he was shaking it. He was stepping a little high.in the feet, but he got there, and when he saw what it was, he went crazy. “’S a grea’ gag,” he says to Kennelly. “Jus’ hol’ ’m there, ri’ like he is, till I ge’m all ou’ here.”
“Happy!” says Kennelly. “It’s not a gag! He’s real, and he’s a killer! Call the police, or do something, but for God’s sake don’t get those people out here!”
“Wha y’ mean, ’s not a gag?” says Happy. “’S grea’s gag ev’ pulled. Shows y’ can do com’dy, get it? Y’r las’ chance. ’S all y’ go’ lef.”
“Happy! Will you—”
But the lion saved him the breath it would take to make Happy understand anything. He must have been getting sick of it himself, because he charged at Happy, and would have got him, only Happy dropped the cocktail shaker when he ran. The lion jumped on the towel, started tearing it to pieces, and Happy reached the house and began calling up the police, yelling at the mob that there was a lion loose out there, and starting a panic. They fell all over themselves getting upstairs, and then some of them climbed out on the portico roof to look; and that was swell, because that lion could take the portico roof at one jump, and still have a couple of feet to spare.
“Come on!” says Kennelly, when the lion started into the towel. “Now’s our chance!”
But those roars, and that charge at Happy, had got Polly. She just stood there, holding on to Kennelly and swallowing; and then the lion left the towel and began running around the pool again, and saw the springboard, and came out to the end of it, and stood there snarling at them, where they were standing in the water twenty or thirty feet away.
“What did he mean when he said it was your last chance?” says Polly, then.
“He meant I’m through,” says Kennelly. “If I don’t get on that set tonight, I can sing ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime!’”
“Oh!”
“I been handing you a line. Now you know the truth.”
“If I’d only run when you said!”
“You were right. He’d have got us.”
“Your last chance and my first. We’ll get there, Tim.”
“Yeah, but how? It would be just my luck to have a crazy lion—”
“Tim!”
“Yes?”
“Could you rope him? Is that your rope in the car?”
When she said that, Kennelly knew she had thought of something. “You bet I can rope him,” he says. “You hold him here, while I get the rope. If he moves off the board, yell.”
He started to sneak back out of the pool, but he didn’t have a chance. Soon as he was three feet away from Polly, the lion ran around to cut him off.
“Get him back there!” says Polly. “I know a way. I’ll get it!”
They splashed water at him, and got him back on the board. They had a tough time doing it, because the drunks on the roof kept yelling how they should stay in the water, and not come out, and a couple of times the lion looked their way, and wouldn’t pay any attention to the water. But they got him out there after a minute, and then Polly stooped down, braced against Kennelly, and shot away for the far end of the pool, swimming under water. The lion stopped snarling and blinked. First there had been two of them there; now there was only one. But Kennelly kept the water going, to keep him interested, and he started snarling again. Then Polly was back with the rope, holding it high to keep it from getting wet, and Kennelly went to work.
He had about the toughest roping job ever. But Kennelly could rope standing on his head if he had to, and it wasn’t long before he had it going right, and shot it. The lion saw it coming and made a swipe at it, but it settled on him pretty, over his head and one shoulder, where his paw struck into it.
Then Kennelly began to move fast. He didn’t brace back and start a tug-of-war with the lion. He slewed over to the side quick, so that when the lion fought the rope he had to do it crosswise of the board, and he was so big he couldn’t get his feet planted right, and couldn’t make use of his weight to pull Kennelly over. Soon as he got to the side, Kennelly hooked his fingers in the gutter, and held there while Polly got out and held while he jumped out. Then they both grabbed the rope and pulled. They couldn’t budge the lion. But then they pulled steady for a second, and eased off quick, and he went toppling into the pool backwards.
He swam to the edge in a second, but every time he would throw a paw over the gutter, Kennelly would jerk on the rope and pull him back in; and while he was doing that, he was edging around until he was on the end of the springboard himself. Then he reeled in his fish. When he had the lion up short down under the end of the board where he couldn’t reach the side of the pool any more, he had him right where he wanted him, and kneeled down to give the rope a couple of hitches around the board so he couldn’t give any more trouble.
But that was where Happy got in it again. You see, when he went back in the house, he didn’t stop at just phoning the police and starting a panic. He kept right on, out front and down the drive, to where the cow-outfit were loading their stagecoach and horses on their truck, getting ready to go home.
“Come on, boys, quick!” he yelled at them, and grabbed one of their pistols out of the holster, and legged it back to the pool. He got there just as Kennelly was winding the rope around the end of the board, and he cut loose at the lion with the gun.
Well, when you begin shooting blanks at a lion, you don’t hurt the lion much, but you are liable to pull yourself off balance with the big recoil that a blank cartridge has, and that was what happened to Happy. The gun went up at the first shot, and jerked him right head-first into the pool, and he began to gulp, gurgle and sink. So Polly tumbled he couldn’t swim, and went in after him. So of course Happy gave her the drowning man’s grip, and the next Kennelly heard was her scream for help. He dived without waiting for more; and for a minute that pool was like you had tried to boil a live alley cat and a couple of Maine lobsters in a three-gallon wash-boiler; and then — all was still.
They got Happy out. They got out themselves. Then they stood there, holding on to each other, waiting for the lion to jump. Nothing happened. They would have run, then, but there was Happy, lying at the side of the pool, and they couldn’t leave him to the lion.
“Blow!” Kennelly says to her, after they had looked this way and that, and nothing had happened.
“And leave you here with this man and that awful animal?” she says.
“I said blow! Now’s your chance!”
“I won’t!”
“The lion’s dead! He’s in the bottom of the pool! He’s drowned!”
She walked over to the light-switch and snapped a button. It was the underwater lights. The lion wasn’t down there. She snapped another one. It was the flood-lights. He wasn’t up in the trees.