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SHOWMAN
and sense of importance. These amateur outfits were always hoping to put on a good enough performance to leave a little margin for costumes and scenery in the next production. That seldom happened— cash was always extremely scarce. But I had the advantage of knowing the property man of the California Theater, which made me the only channel through which my club could hope to borrow a Mississippi steam-boat set for their forthcoming production of Boucicault's old drama, "The Octoroon." My terms were met. It was easy to blarney the property man and arrange my end of the deal, but their end looked pretty shaky along about curtain-time. Business out front was definitely bad and I was almost as dubious about my five dollars as they were.
So I organized a one-man strike. I refused to go on and knife the villain until the money was put in my hand. An understudy was out of the question since the audience had already seen me in earlier scenes. I held all the cards in the deck and stuck to my guns, no matter how earnestly the company pled and argued and threatened in the wings. My cue arrived but the five dollars did not. There was the villain groveling in the swamp, wild with terror of red-skin vengeance on his trail, but the red-skin was holding out for his dough. Our off-stage argument was picturesquely punctuated by the villain's ad-libbings: "He's coming!" we heard, "He's after me— he's on my trail— I hear him nearer— and nearer— and nearer—" As a matter of fact,,
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