“Now I’m going to pile him into the corner.”
And Hannibal, snarling, growling, and spitting, ducking his head and with short paw-strokes trying to ward off the insistent broomstick, backed obediently into the corner, crumpled up his hind-parts, and tried to withdraw his corporeal body within itself in a pain-urged effort to make it smaller. And always he kept his nose down and himself harmless for a spring. In the thick of it he slowly raised his nose and yawned. Nor, because it came up slowly, and because Collins had anticipated the yawn by being one thought ahead of Hannibal in Hannibal’s own brain, was the nose rapped.
“That’s the goat,” Collins announced, for the first time speaking in a hearty voice in which was no vibration of strain. “When a lion yawns in the thick of a fight, you know he ain’t crazy. He’s sensible. He’s got to be sensible, or he’d be springing or lashing out instead of yawning. He knows he’s licked, and that yawn of his merely says: ‘I quit. For the I love of Mike leave me alone. My nose is awful sore. I’d like to get you, but I can’t. I’ll do anything you want, and I’ll be dreadful good, but don’t hit my poor sore nose.’
“But man is the boss, and he can’t afford to be so easy. Drive the lesson home that you’re boss. Rub it in. Don’t stop when he quits. Make him swallow the medicine and lick the spoon. Make him kiss your foot on his neck holding him down in the dirt. Make him kiss the stick that’s beaten him. – Watch!”
And Hannibal, the largest lion in captivity, with all his teeth, captured out of the jungle after he was full-grown, a veritable king of beasts, before the menacing broomstick in the hand of a sliver of a man, backed deeper and more crumpled together into the corner. His back was bowed up, the very opposite muscular position to that for a spring, while he drew his head more and more down and under his chest in utter abjectness, resting his weight on his elbows and shielding his poor nose with his massive paws, a single stroke of which could have ripped the life of Collins quivering from his body.
“Now he might be tricky,” Collins announced, “but he’s got to kiss my foot and the stick just the same. Watch!”
He lifted and advanced his left foot, not tentatively and hesitantly, but quickly and firmly, bringing it to rest on the lion’s neck. The stick was poised to strike, one act ahead of the lion’s next possible act, as Collins’s mind was one thought ahead of the lion’s next thought.
And Hannibal did the forecasted and predestined. His head flashed up, huge jaws distended, fangs gleaming, to sink into the slender, silken-hosed ankle above the tan low-cut shoes. But the fangs never sank. They were scarcely started a fifth of the way of the distance, when the waiting broomstick rapped on his nose and made him sink it in the floor under his chest and cover it again with his paws.
“He ain’t crazy,” said Collins. “He knows, from the little he knows, that I know more than him and that I’ve got him licked to a fare-you-well. If he was crazy, he wouldn’t know, and I wouldn’t know his mind either, and I wouldn’t be that one jump ahead of him, and he’d get me and mess the whole cage up with my insides.”
He prodded Hannibal with the end of the broom-handle, after each prod poising it for a stroke. And the great lion lay and roared in helplessness, and at each prod exposed his nose more and lifted it higher, until, at the end, his red tongue ran out between his fangs and licked the boot resting none too gently on his neck, and, after that, licked the broomstick that had administered all the punishment.
“Going to be a good lion now?” Collins demanded, roughly rubbing his foot back and forth on Hannibal’s neck.
Hannibal could not refrain from growling his hatred.
“Going to be a good lion?” Collins repeated, rubbing his foot back and forth still more roughly.
And Hannibal exposed his nose and with his red tongue licked again the tan shoe and the slender, tan-silken ankle that he could have destroyed with one crunch.
CHAPTER XXVIII
One friend Michael made among the many animals he encountered in the Cedarwild School, and a strange, sad friendship it was. Sara she was called, a small, green monkey from South America, who seemed to have been born hysterical and indignant, and with no appreciation of humour. Sometimes, following Collins about the arena, Michael would meet her while she waited to be tried out on some new turn. For, unable or unwilling to try, she was for ever being tried out on turns, or, with little herself to do, as a filler-in for more important performers.
But she always caused confusion, either chattering and squealing with fright or bickering at the other animals. Whenever they attempted to make her do anything, she protested indignantly; and if they tried force, her squalls and cries excited all the animals in the arena and set the work back.
“Never mind,” said Collins finally. “She’ll go into the next monkey band we make up.”
This was the last and most horrible fate that could befall a monkey on the stage, to be a helpless marionette, compelled by unseen sticks and wires, poked and jerked by concealed men, to move and act throughout an entire turn.
But it was before this doom was passed upon her that Michael made her acquaintance. Their first meeting, she sprang suddenly at him, a screaming, chattering little demon, threatening him with nails and teeth. And Michael, already deep-sunk in habitual moroseness merely looked at her calmly, not a ripple to his neck-hair nor a prick to his ears. The next moment, her fuss and fury quite ignored, she saw him turn his head away. This gave her pause. Had he sprung at her, or snarled, or shown any anger or resentment such as did the other dogs when so treated by her, she would have screamed and screeched and raised a hubbub of expostulation, crying for help and calling all men to witness how she was being unwarrantably attacked.
As it was, Michael’s unusual behaviour seemed to fascinate her. She approached him tentatively, without further racket; and the boy who had her in charge slacked the thin chain that held her.
“Hope he breaks her back for her,” was his unholy wish; for he hated Sara intensely, desiring to be with the lions or elephants rather than dancing attendance on a cantankerous female monkey there was no reasoning with.
And because Michael took no notice of her, she made up to him. It was not long before she had her hands on him, and, quickly after that, an arm around his neck and her head snuggled against his. Then began her interminable tale. Day after day, catching him at odd times in the ring, she would cling closely to him and in a low voice, running on and on, never pausing for breath, tell him, for all he knew, the story of her life. At any rate, it sounded like the story of her woes and of all the indignities which had been wreaked upon her. It was one long complaint, and some of it might have been about her health, for she sniffed and coughed a great deal and her chest seemed always to hurt her from the way she had of continually and gingerly pressing the palm of her hand to it. Sometimes, however, she would cease her complaining, and love and mother him, uttering occasional series of gentle mellow sounds that were like croonings.
Hers was the only hand of affection that was laid on him at Cedarwild, and she was ever gentle, never pinching him, never pulling his ears. By the same token, he was the only friend she had; and he came to look forward to meeting her in the course of the morning work – and this, despite that every meeting always concluded in a scene, when she fought with her keeper against being taken away. Her cries and protests would give way to whimperings and wailings, while the men about laughed at the strangeness of the love-affair between her and the Irish terrier.
But Harris Collins tolerated, even encouraged, their friendship.
“The two sour-balls get along best together,” he said. “And it does them good. Gives them something to live for, and that way lies health. But some day, mark my words, she’ll turn on him and give him what for, and their friendship will get a terrible smash.”
And half of it he spoke with the voice of prophecy, and, though she never turned on Michael, the day in the world was written when their friendship would truly receive a terrible smash.
“Now seals are too wise,” Collins explained one day, in a sort of extempore lecture to several of his apprentice trainers. “You’ve just got to toss fish to them when they perform. If you don’t, they won’t, and there’s an end of it. But you can’t depend on feeding dainties to dogs, for instance, though you can make a young, untrained pig perform creditably by means of a nursing bottle hidden up your sleeve.”
“All you have to do is think it over. Do you think you can make those greyhounds extend themselves with the promise of a bite of meat? It’s the whip that makes them extend. – Look over there at Billy Green. There ain’t another way to teach that dog that trick. You can’t love her into doing it. You can’t pay her to do it. There’s only one way, and that’s make her.”
Billy Green, at the moment, was training a tiny, nondescript, frizzly-haired dog. Always, on the stage, he made a hit by drawing from his pocket a tiny dog that would do this particular trick. The last one had died from a wrenched back, and he was now breaking in a new one. He was catching the little mite by the hind-legs and tossing it up in the air, where, making a half-flip and descending head first, it was supposed to alight with its forefeet on his hand and there balance itself, its hind feet and body above it in the air. Again and again he stooped, caught her hind-legs and flung her up into the half-turn. Almost frozen with fear, she vainly strove to effect the trick. Time after time, and every time, she failed to make the balance. Sometimes she fell crumpled; several times she all but struck the ground: and once, she did strike, on her side and so hard as to knock the breath out of her. Her master, taking advantage of the moment to wipe the sweat from his streaming face, nudged her about with his toe till she staggered weakly to her feet.
“The dog was never born that’d learn that trick for the promise of a bit of meat,” Collins went on. “Any more than was the dog ever born that’d walk on its forelegs without having its hind-legs rapped up in the air with the stick a thousand times. Yet you take that trick there. It’s always a winner, especially with the women – so cunning, you know, so adorable cute, to be yanked out of its beloved master’s pocket and to have such trust and confidence in him as to allow herself to be tossed around that way. Trust and confidence hell! He’s put the fear of God into her, that’s what.”
“Just the same, to dig a dainty out of your pocket once in a while and give an animal a nibble, always makes a hit with the audience. That’s about all it’s good for, yet it’s a good stunt. Audiences like to believe that the animals enjoy doing their tricks, and that they are treated like pampered darlings, and that they just love their masters to death. But God help all of us and our meal tickets if the audiences could see behind the scenes. Every trained-animal turn would be taken off the stage instanter, and we’d be all hunting for a job.”
“Yes, and there’s rough stuff no end pulled off on the stage right before the audience’s eyes. The best fooler I ever saw was Lottie’s. She had a bunch of trained cats. She loved them to death right before everybody, especially if a trick wasn’t going good. What’d she do? She’d take that cat right up in her arms and kiss it. And when she put it down it’d perform the trick all right all right, while the audience applauded its silly head off for the kindness and humaneness she’d shown. Kiss it? Did she? I’ll tell you what she did. She bit its nose.”
“Eleanor Pavalo learned the trick from Lottie, and used it herself on her toy dogs. And many a dog works on the stage in a spiked collar, and a clever man can twist a dog’s nose and nobody in the audience any the wiser. But it’s the fear that counts. It’s what the dog knows he’ll get afterward when the turn’s over that keeps most of them straight.”
“Remember Captain Roberts and his great Danes. They weren’t pure-breds, though. He must have had a dozen of them – toughest bunch of brutes I ever saw. He boarded them here twice. You couldn’t go among them without a club in your hand. I had a Mexican lad laid up by them. He was a tough one, too. But they got him down and nearly ate him. The doctors took over forty stitches in him and shot him full of that Pasteur dope for hydrophobia. And he always will limp with his right leg from what the dogs did to him. I tell you, they were the limit. And yet, every time the curtain went up, Captain Roberts brought the house down with the first stunt. Those dogs just flocked all over him, loving him to death, from the looks of it. And were they loving him? They hated him. I’ve seen him, right here in the cage at Cedarwild, wade into them with a club and whale the stuffing impartially out of all of them. Sure, they loved him not. Just a bit of the same old aniseed was what he used. He’d soak small pieces of meat in aniseed oil and stick them in his pockets. But that stunt would only work with a bunch of giant dogs like his. It was their size that got it across. Had they been a lot of ordinary dogs it would have looked silly. And, besides, they didn’t do their regular tricks for aniseed. They did it for Captain Roberts’s club. He was a tough bird himself.”
“He used to say that the art of training animals was the art of inspiring them with fear. One of his assistants told me a nasty one about him afterwards. They had an off month in Los Angeles, and Captain Roberts got it into his head he was going to make a dog balance a silver dollar on the neck of a champagne bottle. Now just think that over and try to see yourself loving a dog into doing it. The assistant said he wore out about as many sticks as dogs, and that he wore out half a dozen dogs. He used to get them from the public pound at two and a half apiece, and every time one died he had another ready and waiting. And he succeeded with the seventh dog. I’m telling you, it learned to balance a dollar on the neck of a bottle. And it died from the effects of the learning within a week after he put it on the stage. Abscesses in the lungs, from the stick.”
“There was an Englishman came over when I was a youngster. He had ponies, monkeys, and dogs. He bit the monkey’s ears, so that, on the stage, all he had to do was to make a move as if he was going to bite and they’d quit their fooling and be good. He had a big chimpanzee that was a winner. It could turn four somersaults as fast as you could count on the back of a galloping pony, and he used to have to give it a real licking about twice a week. And sometimes the lickings were too stiff, and the monkey’d get sick and have to lay off. But the owner solved the problem. He got to giving him a little licking, a mere taste of the stick, regular, just before the turn came on. And that did it in his case, though with some other case the monkey most likely would have got sullen and not acted at all.”
It was on that day that Harris Collins sold a valuable bit of information to a lion man who needed it. It was off time for him, and his three lions were boarding at Cedarwild. Their turn was an exciting and even terrifying one, when viewed from the audience; for, jumping about and roaring, they were made to appear as if about to destroy the slender little lady who performed with them and seemed to hold them in subjection only by her indomitable courage and a small riding-switch in her hand.
“The trouble is they’re getting too used to it,” the man complained. “Isadora can’t prod them up any more. They just won’t make a showing.”
“I know them,” Collins nodded. “They’re pretty old now, and they’re spirit-broken besides. Take old Sark there. He’s had so many blank cartridges fired into his ears that he’s stone deaf. And Selim – he lost his heart with his teeth. A Portuguese fellow who was handling him for the Barnum and Bailey show did that for him. You’ve heard?”
“I’ve often wondered,” the man shook his head. “It must have been a smash.”
“It was. The Portuguese did it with an iron bar. Selim was sulky and took a swipe at him with his paw, and he whopped it to him full in the mouth just as he opened it to let out a roar. He told me about it himself. Said Selim’s teeth rattled on the floor like dominoes. But he shouldn’t have done it. It was destroying valuable property. Anyway, they fired him for it.”
“Well, all three of them ain’t worth much to me now,” said their owner. “They won’t play up to Isadora in that roaring and rampaging at the end. It really made the turn. It was our finale, and we always got a great hand for it. Say, what am I going to do about it anyway? Ditch it? Or get some young lions?”
“Isadora would be safer with the old ones,” Collins said.
“Too safe,” Isadora’s husband objected. “Of course, with younger lions, the work and responsibility piles up on me. But we’ve got to make our living, and this turn’s about busted.”
Harris Collins shook his head.
“What d’ye mean? – what’s the idea?” the man demanded eagerly.
“They’ll live for years yet, seeing how captivity has agreed with them,” Collins elucidated. “If you invest in young lions you run the risk of having them pass out on you. And you can go right on pulling the trick off with what you’ve got. All you’ve got to do is to take my advice.. ”
The master-trainer paused, and the lion man opened his mouth to speak.
“Which will cost you,” Collins went on deliberately, “say three hundred dollars.”
“Just for some advice?” the other asked quickly.
“Which I guarantee will work. What would you have to pay for three new lions? Here’s where you make money at three hundred. And it’s the simplest of advice. I can tell it to you in three words, which is at the rate of a hundred dollars a word, and one of the words is ‘the.’”
“Too steep for me,” the other objected. “I’ve got a make a living.”
“So have I,” Collins assured him. “That’s why I’m here. I’m a specialist, and you’re paying a specialist’s fee. You’ll be as mad as a hornet when I tell you, it’s that simple; and for the life of me I can’t understand why you don’t already know it.”
“And if it don’t work?” was the dubious query.
“If it don’t work, you don’t pay.”
“Well, shoot it along,” the lion man surrendered.
“Wire the cage,” said Collins.
At first the man could not comprehend; then the light began to break on him.
“You mean.. ?”
“Just that,” Collins nodded. “And nobody need be the wiser. Dry batteries will do it beautifully. You can install them nicely under the cage floor. All Isadora has to do when she’s ready is to step on the button; and when the electricity shoots through their feet, if they don’t go up in the air and rampage and roar around to beat the band, not only can you keep the three hundred, but I’ll give you three hundred more. I know. I’ve seen it done, and it never misses fire. It’s just as though they were dancing on a red-hot stove. Up they go, and every time they come down they burn their feet again.
“But you’ll have to put the juice into them slowly,” Collins warned. “I’ll show you how to do the wiring. Just a weak battery first, so as they can work up to it, and then stronger and stronger to the curtain. And they never get used to it. As long as they live they’ll dance just as lively as the first time. What do you think of it?”
“It’s worth three hundred all right,” the man admitted. “I wish I could make my money that easy.”
CHAPTER XXIX
“Guess I’ll have to wash my hands of him,” Collins told Johnny. “I know Del Mar must have been right when he said he was the limit, but I can’t get a clue to it.”
This followed upon a fight between Michael and Collins. Michael, more morose than ever, had become even crusty-tempered, and, scarcely with provocation at all, had attacked the man he hated, failing, as ever, to put his teeth into him, and receiving, in turn, a couple of smashing kicks under his jaw.
“He’s like a gold-mine all right all right,” Collins meditated, “but I’m hanged if I can crack it, and he’s getting grouchier every day. Look at him. What’d he want to jump me for? I wasn’t rough with him. He’s piling up a sour-ball that’ll make him fight a policeman some day.”
A few minutes later, one of his patrons, a tow-headed young man who was boarding and rehearsing three performing leopards at Cedarwild, was asking Collins for the loan of an Airedale.
“I’ve only got one left now,” he explained, “and I ain’t safe without two.”
“What’s happened to the other one?” the master-trainer queried.
“Alphonso – that’s the big buck leopard – got nasty this morning and settled his hash. I had to put him out of his misery. He was gutted like a horse in the bull-ring. But he saved me all right. If it hadn’t been for him I’d have got a mauling. Alphonso gets these bad streaks just about every so often. That’s the second dog he’s killed for me.”
Collins shook his head.
“Haven’t got an Airedale,” he said, and just then his eyes chanced to fall on Michael. “Try out the Irish terrier,” he suggested. “They’re like the Airedale in disposition. Pretty close cousins, at any rate.”
“I pin my faith on the Airedale when it comes to lion dogs,” the leopard man demurred.
“So’s an Irish terrier a lion dog. Take that one there. Look at the size and weight of him. Also, take it from me, he’s all spunk. He’ll stand up to anything. Try him out. I’ll lend him to you. If he makes good I’ll sell him to you cheap. An Irish terrier for a leopard dog will be a novelty.”
“If he gets fresh with them cats he’ll find his finish,” Johnny told Collins, as Michael was led away by the leopard man.
“Then, maybe, the stage will lose a star,” Collins answered, with a shrug of shoulders. “But I’ll have him off my chest anyway. When a dog gets a perpetual sour-ball like that he’s finished. Never can do a thing with them. I’ve had them on my hands before.”
* * * * *
And Michael went to make the acquaintance of Jack, the surviving Airedale, and to do his daily turn with the leopards. In the big spotted cats he recognized the hereditary enemy, and, even before he was thrust into the cage, his neck was all a-prickle as the skin nervously tightened and the hair uprose stiff-ended. It was a nervous moment for all concerned, the introduction of a new dog into the cage. The tow-headed leopard man, who was billed on the boards as Raoul Castlemon and was called Ralph by his intimates, was already in the cage. The Airedale was with him, while outside stood several men armed with iron bars and long steel forks. These weapons, ready for immediate use, were thrust between the bars as a menace to the leopards who were, very much against their wills, to be made to perform.
They resented Michael’s intrusion on the instant, spitting, lashing their long tails, and crouching to spring. At the same instant the trainer spoke with sharp imperativeness and raised his whip, while the men on the outside lifted their irons and advanced them intimidatingly into the cage. And the leopards, bitter-wise of the taste of the iron, remained crouched, although they still spat and whipped their tails angrily.
Michael was no coward. He did not slink behind the man for protection. On the other hand, he was too sensible to rush to attack such formidable creatures. What he did do, with bristling neck-hair, was to stalk stiff-leggedly across the cage, turn about with his face toward the danger, and stalk stiffly back, coming to a pause alongside of Jack, who gave him a good-natured sniff of greeting.
“He’s the stuff,” the trainer muttered in a curiously tense voice. “They don’t get his goat.”
The situation was deservedly tense, and Ralph developed it with cautious care, making no abrupt movements, his eyes playing everywhere over dogs and leopards and the men outside with the prods and bars. He made the savage cats come out of their crouch and separate from one another. At his word of command, Jack walked about among them. Michael, on his own initiative, followed. And, like Jack, he walked very stiffly on his guard and very circumspectly.
One of them, Alphonso, spat suddenly at him. He did not startle, though his hair rippled erect and he bared his fangs in a silent snarl. At the same moment the nearest iron bar was shoved in threateningly close to Alphonso, who shifted his yellow eyes from Michael to the bar and back again and did not strike out.
The first day was the hardest. After that the leopards accepted Michael as they accepted Jack. No love was lost on either side, nor were friendly overtures ever offered. Michael was quick to realize that it was the men and dogs against the cats and that the men and does must stand together. Each day he spent from an hour to two hours in the cage, watching the rehearsing, with nothing for him and Jack to do save stand vigilantly on guard. Sometimes, when the leopards seemed better natured, Ralph even encouraged the two dogs to lie down. But, on bad mornings, he saw to it that they were ever ready to spring in between him and any possible attack.
For the rest of the time Michael shared his large pen with Jack. They were well cared for, as were all animals at Cedarwild, receiving frequent scrubbings and being kept clean of vermin. For a dog only three years old, Jack was very sedate. Either he had never learned to play or had already forgotten how. On the other hand, he was sweet-tempered and equable, and he did not resent the early shows of crustiness which Michael made. And Michael quickly ceased from being crusty and took pleasure in their quiet companionship. There were no demonstrations. They were content to lie awake by the hour, merely pleasantly aware of each other’s proximity.
Occasionally, Michael could hear Sara making a distant scene or sending out calls which he knew were for him. Once she got away from her keeper and located Michael coming out of the leopard cage. With a shrill squeal of joy she was upon him, clinging to him and chattering the hysterical tale of all her woes since they had been parted. The leopard man looked on tolerantly and let her have her few minutes. It was her keeper who tore her away in the end, cling as she would to Michael, screaming all the while like a harridan. When her hold was broken, she sprang at the man in a fury, and, before he could throttle her to subjection, sank her teeth into his thumb and wrist. All of which was provocative of great hilarity to the onlookers, while her squalls and cries excited the leopards to spitting and leaping against their bars. And, as she was borne away, she set up a soft wailing like that of a heart-broken child.
* * * * *
Although Michael proved a success with the leopards, Raoul Castlemon never bought him from Collins. One morning, several days later, the arena was vexed by uproar and commotion from the animal cages. The excitement, starting with revolver shots, was communicated everywhere. The various lions raised a great roaring, and the many dogs barked frantically. All tricks in the arena stopped, the animals temporarily unstrung and unable to continue. Several men, among them Collins, ran in the direction of the cages. Sara’s keeper dropped her chain in order to follow.
“It’s Alphonso – shillings to pence it is,” Collins called to one of his assistants who was running beside him. “He’ll get Ralph yet.”
The affair was all but over and leaping to its culmination when Collins arrived. Castlemon was just being dragged out, and as Collins ran he could see the two men drop him to the ground so that they might slam the cage-door shut. Inside, in so wildly struggling a tangle on the floor that it was difficult to discern what animals composed it, were Alphonso, Jack, and Michael looked together. Men danced about outside, thrusting in with iron bars and trying to separate them. In the far end of the cage were the other two leopards, nursing their wounds and snarling and striking at the iron rods that kept them out of the combat.
Sara’s arrival and what followed was a matter of seconds. Trailing her chain behind her, the little green monkey, the tailed female who knew love and hysteria and was remote cousin to human women, flashed up to the narrow cage-bars and squeezed through. Simultaneously the tangle underwent a violent upheaval. Flung out with such force as to be smashed against the near end of the cage, Michael fell to the floor, tried to spring up, but crumpled and sank down, his right shoulder streaming blood from a terrible mauling and crushing. To him Sara leaped, throwing her arms around him and mothering him up to her flat little hairy breast. She uttered solicitous cries, and, as Michael strove to rise on his ruined foreleg, scolded him with sharp gentleness and with her arms tried to hold him away from the battle. Also, in an interval, her eyes malevolent in her rage, she chattered piercing curses at Alphonso.
A crowbar, shoved into his side, distracted the big leopard. He struck at the weapon with his paw, and, when it was poked into him again, flung himself upon it, biting the naked iron with his teeth. With a second fling he was against the cage bars, with a single slash of paw ripping down the forearm of the man who had poked him. The crowbar was dropped as the man leaped away. Alphonso flung back on Jack, a sorry antagonist by this time, who could only pant and quiver where he lay in the welter of what was left of him.
Michael had managed to get up on his three legs and was striving to stumble forward against the restraining arms of Sara. The mad leopard was on the verge of springing upon them when deflected by another prod of the iron. This time he went straight at the man, fetching up against the cage-bars with such fierceness as to shake the structure.
More men began thrusting with more rods, but Alphonso was not to be balked. Sara saw him coming and screamed her shrillest and savagest at him. Collins snatched a revolver from one of the men.