debauchery and "frawgs"; so now he squared himself and uncurled his
velvet toes.

Ash-Can Sam crouched low and came in with a headlong rush. Omar Ben
side-stepped and raked him with a stiffly extended paw. It was a good
rake, and there was fur upon his claws--and blood.

"Hully gee!" breathed Pete into Mame's convenient ear. "Did yer pipe de
way bo upper-cut 'im? Gee!"

Ash-Can Sam was wounded--not so much in body as in pugilistic pride. He
turned to wipe away the stain, and, incidentally, to wipe the 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