“Maybe you don’t believe I remember every word of it even now,” Steve was saying gently. “I think about it at night—that an’ drums on the midway. You ever hear drums on the midway?” He paused and stared politely at Max and Little Lee Roy.

“Yeh,” said Max.

“Don’t it make you feel sad. I remember how the drums was goin’ and I was yellin’, ‘Ladies and gents! Do not try to touch Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden—she will only beat your brains out with her iron rod, and eat them alive!’” Steve waved his arm gently in the air, and Little Lee Roy drew back and squealed. “‘Do not go near her, ladies and gents! I’m warnin’ you!’ So nobody ever did. Nobody ever come near her. Until that man.”

“Sure,” said Max. “That fella.” He shut his eyes.

“Afterwards when he come up so bold, I remembered seein’ him walk up an’ buy the ticket an’ go in the tent. I’ll never forget that man as long as I live. To me he’s a sort of—well—”

“Hero,” said Max.

“I wish I could remember what he looked like. Seem like he was a tallish man with a sort of white face. Seem like he had bad teeth, but I may be wrong. I remember he frowned a lot. Kept frownin’. Whenever he’d buy a ticket, why, he’d frown.”

“Ever seen him since?” asked Max cautiously, still with his eyes closed. “Ever hunt him up?”

“No, never did,” said Steve. Then he went on. “He’d frown an’ buy a ticket ever’ day we was in these two little smelly towns in Texas, sometimes three-four times a day, whether it was fixin’ to eat a chicken or not.”

“O.K., so he gets in the tent,” said Max.

“Well, what the man finally done was, he walked right up to the little stand where it was tied up and laid his hand out open on the planks in the platform. He just laid his hand out open there and said, ‘Come here,’ real low and quick, that-a-way.”

Steve laid his open hand on Little Lee Roy’s porch and held it there, frowning in concentration.

“I get it,” said Max. “He’d caught on it was a fake.”

Steve straightened up. “So ever’body yelled to git away, git away,” he continued, his voice rising, “because it was growlin’ an’ carryin’ on an’ shakin’ its iron bar like they tole it. When I heard all that commotion—boy! I was scared.”

“You didn’t know it was a fake.”

Steve was silent for a moment, and Little Lee Roy held his breath, for fear everything was all over.