CHAPTER XXV
It was at eleven in the morning that the pale youth-god put collar andchain on Michael, led him out of the segregation ward, and turned himover to a dark youth-god who wasted no time of greeting on him andmanifested no friendliness. A captive at the end of a chain, on the wayMichael quickly encountered other captives going in his direction. Therewere three of them, and never had he seen the like. Three slouching,ambling monsters of bears they were, and at sight of them Michaelbristled and uttered the lowest of growls; for he knew them, out of hisheredity (as a domestic cow knows her first wolf), as immemorial enemiesfrom the wild. But he had travelled too far, seen too much, and wasaltogether too sensible, to attack them. Instead, walking stiff-leggedand circumspectly, but smelling with all his nose the strange scent ofthe creatures, he followed at the end of his chain his own captor god.
Continually a multitude of strange scents invaded his nostrils. Althoughhe could not see through walls, he got the smells he was later toidentify of lions, leopards, monkeys, baboons, and seals and sea-lions.All of which might have stunned an ordinary dog; but the effect on himwas to make him very alert and at the same time very subdued. It was asif he walked in a new and monstrously populous jungle and wasunacquainted with its ways and denizens.
As he was entering the arena, he shied off to the side morestiff-leggedly than ever, bristled all along his neck and back, andgrowled deep and low in his throat. For, emerging from the arena, camefive elephants. Small elephants they were, but to him they were thehugest of monsters, in his mind comparable only with the cow-whale ofwhich he had caught fleeting glimpses when she destroyed the schooner_Mary Turner_. But the elephants took no notice of him, each with itstrunk clutching the tail of the one in front of it as it had been taughtto do in making an exit.
Into the arena, he came, the bears following on his heels. It was asawdust circle the size of a circus ring, contained inside a squarebuilding that was roofed over with glass. But there were no seats aboutthe ring, since spectators were not tolerated. Only Harris Collins andhis assistants, and buyers and sellers of animals and men in theprofession, were ever permitted to behold how animals were tormented intothe performance of tricks to make the public open its mouth inastonishment or laughter.
Michael forgot about the bears, who were quickly at work on the otherside of the circle from that to which he was taken. Some men, rollingout stout bright-painted barrels which elephants could not crush bysitting on, attracted his attention for a moment. Next, in a pause onthe part of the man who led him, he regarded with huge interest a piebaldShetland pony. It lay on the ground. A man sat on it. And ever andanon it lifted its head from the sawdust and kissed the man. This wasall Michael saw, yet he sensed something wrong about it. He knew notwhy, had no evidence why, but he felt cruelty and power and unfairness.What he did not see was the long pin in the man's hand. Each time hethrust this in the pony's shoulder, the pony, stung by the pain andreflex action, lifted its head, and the man was deftly ready to meet thepony's mouth with his own mouth. To an audience the impression would bethat in such fashion the pony was expressing its affection for themaster.
Not a dozen feet away another Shetland, a coal-black one, was behaving aspeculiarly as it was being treated. Ropes were attached to its forelegs,each rope held by an assistant, who jerked on the same stoutly when athird man, standing in front of the pony, tapped it on the knees with ashort, stiff whip of rattan. Whereupon the pony went down on its kneesin the sawdust in a genuflection to the man with the whip. The pony didnot like it, sometimes so successfully resisting with spread, taut legsand mutinous head-tossings, as to overcome the jerk of the ropes, and, atthe same time wheeling, to fall heavily on its side or to uprear as thepull on the ropes was relaxed. But always it was lined up again to facethe man who rapped its knees with the rattan. It was being taught merelyhow to kneel in the way that is ever a delight to the audiences who seeonly the results of the schooling and never dream of the manner of theschooling. For, as Michael was quickly sensing, knowledge was herelearned by pain. In short, this was the college of pain, this CedarwildAnimal School.
Harris Collins himself nodded the dark youth-god up to him, and turned aninquiring and estimating gaze on Michael.
"The Del Mar dog, sir," said the youth-god.
Collins's eyes brightened, and he looked Michael over more carefully.
"Do you know what he can do?" he queried.
The youth shook his head.
"Harry was a keen one," Collins went on, apparently to the youth-god butmostly for his own benefit, being given to thinking aloud. "He pickedthis dog as a winner. And now what can he do? That's the question. PoorHarry's gone, and we don't know what he can do.--Take off the chain."
Released Michael regarded the master-god and waited for what mighthappen. A squall of pain from one of the bears across the ring hinted tohim what he might expect.
"Come here," Collins commanded in his cold, hard tones.
Michael came and stood before him.
"Lie down!"
Michael lay down, although he did it slowly, with advertised reluctance.
"Damned thoroughbred!" Collins sneered at him. "Won't put any pep intoyour motions, eh? Well, we'll take care of that.--Get up!--Lie down!--Getup!--Lie down!--Get up!"
His commands were staccato, like revolver shots or the cracks of whips,and Michael obeyed them in his same slow, reluctant way.
"Understands English, at any rate," said Collins.
"Wonder if he can turn the double flip," he added, expressing the goldendream of all dog-trainers. "Come on, we'll try him for a flip. Put thechain on him. Come over here, Jimmy. Put another lead on him."
Another reform-school graduate youth obeyed, snapping a girth aboutMichael's loins, to which was attached a thin rope.
"Line him up," Collins commanded. "Ready?--Go!"
And the most amazing, astounding indignity was wreaked upon Michael. Atthe word "Go!", simultaneously, the chain on his collar jerked him up andback in the air, the rope on his hindquarters jerked that portion of himunder, forward, and up, and the still short stick in Collins's hand hithim under the lower jaw. Had he had any previous experience with themanoeuvre, he would have saved himself part of the pain at least byspringing and whirling backward in the air. As it was, he felt as ifbeing torn and wrenched apart while at the same time the blow under hisjaw stung him and almost dazed him. And, at the same time, whirledviolently into the air, he fell on the back of his head in the sawdust.
Out of the sawdust he soared in rage, neck-hair erect, throat a-snarl,teeth bared to bite, and he would have sunk his teeth into the flesh ofthe master-god had he not been the slave of cunning formula. The twoyouths knew their work. One tightened the lead ahead, the other to therear, and Michael snarled and bristled his impotent wrath. Nothing couldhe do, neither advance, nor retreat, nor whirl sideways. The youth infront by the chain prevented him from attacking the youth behind, and theyouth behind, with the rope, prevented him from attacking the youth infront, and both prevented him from attacking Collins, whom he knewincontrovertibly to be the master of evil and hurt.
Michael's wrath was as superlative as was his helplessness. He couldonly bristle and tear his vocal chords with his rage. But it was a veryancient and boresome experience to Collins. He was even taking advantageof the moment to glance across the arena and size up what the bears weredoing.
"Oh, you thoroughbred," he sneered at Michael, returning his attention tohim. "Slack him! Let go!"
The instant his bonds were released, Michael soared at Collins, andCollins, timing and distancing with the accuracy of long years, kickedhim under the jaw and whirled him back and down into the sawdust.
"Hold him!" Collins ordered. "Line him out!"
And the two youths, pulling in opposite directions with chain and rope,stretched him into helplessness.
Collins glanced across the ring to the entrance, where two teams of heavydraft-horses were enter
ing, followed by a woman dressed toover-dressedness in the last word of a stylish street-costume.
"I fancy he's never done any flipping," Collins remarked, coming back tothe problem of Michael for a moment. "Take off your lead, Jimmy, and goover and help Smith.--Johnny, hold him to one side there and mind yourlegs. Here comes Miss Marie for her first lesson, and that mutt of ahusband of hers can't handle her."
Michael did not understand the scene that followed, which he witnessed,for the youth led him over to look on at the arranging of the woman andthe four horses. Yet, from her conduct, he sensed that she, too, wascaptive and ill-treated. In truth, she was herself being trainedunwillingly to do a trick. She had carried herself bravely right to themoment of the ordeal, but the sight of the four horses, ranged two andtwo opposing her, with the thing patent that she was to hold in her handsthe hooks on the double-trees and form the link that connected the twospans which were to pull in opposite directions--at the sight of this hercourage failed her and she shrank back, drooping and cowering, her faceburied in her hands.
"No, no, Billikens," she pleaded to the stout though youthful man who washer husband. "I can't do it. I'm afraid. I'm afraid."
"Nonsense, madam," Collins interposed. "The trick is absolutely safe.And it's a good one, a money-maker. Straighten up a moment." With hishands he began feeling out her shoulders and back under her jacket. "Theapparatus is all right." He ran his hands down her arms. "Now! Dropthe hooks." He shook each arm, and from under each of the fluffy lacecuffs fell out an iron hook fast to a thin cable of steel that evidentlyran up her sleeves. "Not that way! Nobody must see. Put them back. Tryit again. They must come down hidden in your palms. Like this.See.--That's it. That's the idea."
She controlled herself and strove to obey, though ever and anon she castappealing glances to Billikens, who stood remote and aloof, his browswrinkled with displeasure.
Each of the men driving the harnessed spans lifted up the double-trees sothat the girl could grasp the hooks. She tried to take hold, but brokedown again.
"If anything breaks, my arms will be torn out of me," she protested.
"On the contrary," Collins reassured her. "You will lose merely most ofyour jacket. The worst that can happen will be the exposure of the trickand the laugh on you. But the apparatus isn't going to break. Let meexplain again. The horses do not pull against you. They pull againsteach other. The audience thinks that they are pulling against you.--Nowtry once more. Take hold the double-trees, and at the same moment slipdown the hooks and connect.--Now!"
He spoke sharply. She shook the hooks down out of her sleeves, but drewback from grasping the double-trees. Collins did not betray hisvexation. Instead, he glanced aside to where the kissing pony and thekneeling pony were leaving the ring. But the husband raged at her:
"By God, Julia, if you throw me down this way!"
"Oh, I'll try, Billikens," she whimpered. "Honestly, I'll try. See! I'mnot afraid now."
She extended her hands and clasped the double-trees. With a thin writheof a smile, Collins investigated the insides of her clenched hands tomake sure that the hooks were connected.
"Now brace yourself! Spread your legs. And straighten out." With hishands he manipulated her arms and shoulders into position. "Remember,you've got to meet the first of the strain with your arms straight out.After the strain is on, you couldn't bend 'em if you wanted to. But ifthe strain catches them bent, the wire'll rip the hide off of you.Remember, straight out, extended, so that they form a straight line witheach other and with the flat of your back and shoulders. That's it.Ready now."
"Oh, wait a minute," she begged, forsaking the position. "I'll do it--oh,I will do it, but, Billikens, kiss me first, and then I won't care if myarms are pulled out."
The dark youth who held Michael, and others looking on, grinned. Collinsdissembled whatever grin might have troubled for expression, andmurmured:
"All the time in the world, madam. The point is, the first time mustcome off right. After that you'll have the confidence.--Bill, you'dbetter love her up before she tackles it."
And Billikens, very angry, very disgusted, very embarrassed, obeyed,putting his arms around his wife and kissing her neither tooperfunctorily nor very long. She was a pretty young thing of a woman,perhaps twenty years old, with an exceedingly childish, girlish face anda slender-waisted, generously moulded body of fully a hundred and fortypounds.
The embrace and kiss of her husband put courage into her. She stiffenedand steeled herself, and with compressed lips, as he stepped clear ofher, muttered, "Ready."
"Go!" Collins commanded.
The four horses, under the urge of the drivers, pressed lazily into theircollars and began pulling.
"Give 'em the whip!" Collins barked, his eyes on the girl and noting thatthe pull of the apparatus was straight across her.
The lashes fell on the horses' rumps, and they leaped, and surged, andplunged, with their huge steel-shod hoofs, the size of soup-plates,tearing up the sawdust into smoke.
And Billikens forgot himself. The terribleness of the sight painted thehonest anxiety for the woman on his face. And her face was akaleidoscope. At the first, tense and fearful, it was like that of aChristian martyr meeting the lions, or of a felon falling through thetrap. Next, and quickly, came surprise and relief in that there was nohurt. And, finally, her face was proudly happy with a smile of triumph.She even smiled to Billikens her pride at making good her love to him.And Billikens relaxed and looked love and pride back, until, on the spurof the second, Harris Collins broke in:
"This ain't a smiling act! Get that smile off your face. The audiencehas got to think you're carrying the pull. Show that you are. Make yourface stiff till it cracks. Show determination, will-power. Show greatmuscular effort. Spread your legs more. Bring up the muscles throughyour skirt just as if you was really working. Let 'em pull you this waya bit and that way a bit. Give 'em to. Spread your legs more. Make anoise on your face as if you was being pulled to pieces an' that all thatholds you is will-power.--That's the idea! That's the stuff! It's awinner, Bill! It's a winner!--Throw the leather into 'em! Make 'm jump!Make 'm get right down and pull the daylights out of each other!"
The whips fell on the horses, and the horses struggled in all theirhugeness and might to pull away from the pain of the punishment. It wasa spectacle to win approval from any audience. Each horse averagedeighteen hundredweight; thus, to the eye of the onlooker, seven thousandtwo hundred pounds of straining horse-flesh seemed wrenching and draggingapart the slim-waisted, delicately bodied, hundred-and-forty pound womanin her fancy street costume. It was a sight to make women in circusaudiences scream with terror and turn their faces away.
"Slack down!" Collins commanded the drivers.
"The lady wins," he announced, after the manner of a ringmaster.--"Bill,you've got a mint in that turn.--Unhook, madam, unhook!"
Marie obeyed, and, the hooks still dangling from her sleeves, made ashort run to Billikens, into whose arms she threw herself, her own armsfolding him about the neck as she exclaimed before she kissed him:
"Oh, Billikens, I knew I could do it all the time! I was brave, wasn'tI!"
"A give-away," Collins's dry voice broke in on her ecstasy. "Letting allthe audience see the hooks. They must go up your sleeves the moment youlet go.--Try it again. And another thing. When you finish the turn, nochestiness. No making out how easy it was. Make out it was the verydevil. Show yourself weak, just about to collapse from the strain. Giveat the knees. Make your shoulders cave in. The ringmaster will halfstep forward to catch you before you faint. That's your cue. Beat himto it. Stiffen up and straighten up with an effort of will-power--will-power's the idea, gameness, and all that, and kiss your hands to theaudience and make a weak, pitiful sort of a smile, as though your heart'sbeen pulled 'most out of you and you'll have to go to the hospital, butfor right then that you're game an' smiling and kissing your hands to theaudience that
's riping the seats up and loving you.--Get me, madam? You,Bill, get the idea! And see she does it.--Now, ready! Be a bit wistfulas you look at the horses.--That's it! Nobody'd guess you'd palmed thehooks and connected them.--Straight out!--Let her go!"
And again the thirty-six-hundredweight of horses on either side pittedits strength against the similar weight on the other side, and theseeming was that Marie was the link of woman-flesh being torn asunder.
A third and a fourth time the turn was rehearsed, and, between turns,Collins sent a man to his office, for the Del Mar telegram.
"You take her now, Bill," he told Marie's husband, as, telegram in hand,he returned to the problem of Michael. "Give her half a dozen triesmore. And don't forget, any time any jay farmer thinks he's got a spanthat can pull, bet him on the side your best span can beat him. Thatmeans advance advertising and some paper. It'll be worth it. Theringmaster'll favour you, and your span can get the first jump. If I wasyoung and footloose, I'd ask nothing better than to go out with yourturn."
Harris Collins, in the pauses gazing down at Michael, read Del Mar'sSeattle telegram:
"_Sell my dogs. You know what they can do and what they are worth. Am done with them. Deduct the board and hold the balance until I see you. I have the limit of a dog. Every turn I ever pulled is put in the shade by this one. He's a ten strike. Wait till you see him_."
Over to one side in the busy arena, Collins contemplated Michael.
"Del Mar was the limit himself," he told Johnny, who held Michael by thechain. "When he wired me to sell his dogs it meant he had a better turn,and here's only one dog to show for it, a damned thoroughbred at that. Hesays it's the limit. It must be, but in heaven's name, what is its turn?It's never done a flip in its life, much less a double flip. What do youthink, Johnny? Use your head. Suggest something."
"Maybe it can count," Johnny advanced.
"And counting-dogs are a drug on the market. Well, anyway, let's try."
And Michael, who knew unerringly how to count, refused to perform.
"If he was a regular dog, he could walk anyway," was Collins' next idea."We'll try him."
And Michael went through the humiliating ordeal of being jerked erect onhis hind legs by Johnny while Collins with the stick cracked him underthe jaw and across the knees. In his wrath, Michael tried to bite themaster-god, and was jerked away by the chain. When he strove toretaliate on Johnny, that imperturbable youth, with extended arm, merelylifted him into the air on his chain and strangled him.
"That's off," quoth Collins wearily. "If he can't stand on his hind legshe can't barrel-jump--you've heard about Ruth, Johnny. She was a winner.Jump in and out of nail-kegs, on her hind legs, without ever touchingwith her front ones. She used to do eight kegs, in one and out into thenext. Remember when she was boarded here and rehearsed. She was a gold-mine, but Carson didn't know how to treat her, and she croaked off withpenumonia at Cripple Creek."
"Wonder if he can spin plates on his nose," Johnny volunteered.
"Can't stand up on hind legs," Collins negatived. "Besides, nothing likethe limit in a turn like that. This dog's got a specially. He ain'tordinary. He does some unusual thing unusually well, and it's up to usto locate it. That comes of Harry dying so inconsiderately and leavingthis puzzle-box on my hands. I see I just got to devote myself to him.Take him away, Johnny. Number Eighteen for him. Later on we can put himin the single compartments."