CHAPTER XXVII
"The thing is, Johnny, you can't love dogs into doing professionaltricks, which is the difference between dogs and women," Collins told hisassistant. "You know how it is with any dog. You love it up into lyingdown and rolling over and playing dead and all such dub tricks. And thenone day you show him off to your friends, and the conditions are changed,and he gets all excited and foolish, and you can't get him to do a thing.Children are like that. Lose their heads in company, forget all theirtraining, and throw you down."
"Now on the stage, they got real tricks to do, tricks they don't do,tricks they hate. And they mightn't be feeling good--got a touch ofcold, or mange, or are sour-balled. What are you going to do? Apologizeto the audience? Besides, on the stage, the programme runs likeclockwork. Got to start performing on the tick of the clock, andanywhere from one to seven turns a day, all depending what kind of timeyou've got. The point is, your dogs have got to get right up andperform. No loving them, no begging them, no waiting on them. Andthere's only the one way. They've got to know when you start, you meanit."
"And dogs ain't fools," Johnny opined. "They know when you meananything, an' when you don't."
"Sure thing," Collins nodded approbation. "The moment you slack up onthem is the moment they slack up in their work. You get soft, and seehow quick they begin making mistakes in their tricks. You've got to keepthe fear of God over them. If you don't, they won't, and you'll findyourself begging for spotted time on the bush circuits."
Half an hour later, Michael heard, though he understood no word of it,the master-trainer laying another law down to another assistant.
"Cross-breds and mongrels are what's needed, Charles. Not onethoroughbred in ten makes good, unless he's got the heart of a coward,and that's just what distinguishes them from mongrels and cross-breds.Like race-horses, they're hot-blooded. They've got sensitiveness, andpride. Pride's the worst. You listen to me. I was born into thebusiness and I've studied it all my life. I'm a success. There's onlyone reason I'm a success--I KNOW. Get that. I KNOW."
"Another thing is that cross-breds and mongrels are cheap. You needn'tbe afraid of losing them or working them out. You can always get more,and cheap. And they ain't the trouble in teaching. You can throw thefear of God into them. That's what's the matter with the thoroughbreds.You can't throw the fear of God into them."
"Give a mongrel a real licking, and what's he do? He'll kiss your hand,and be obedient, and crawl on his belly to do what you want him to do.They're slave dogs, that's what mongrels are. They ain't got courage,and you don't want courage in a performing dog. You want fear. Now yougive a thoroughbred a licking and see what happens. Sometimes they die.I've known them to die. And if they don't die, what do they do? Eitherthey go stubborn, or vicious, or both. Sometimes they just go to bitingand foaming. You can kill them, but you can't keep them from biting andfoaming. Or they'll go straight stubborn. They're the worst. They'rethe passive resisters--that's what I call them. They won't fight back.You can flog them to death, but it won't buy you anything. They're likethose Christians that used to be burned at the stake or boiled in oil.They've got their opinions, and nothing you can do will change them.They'll die first. . . . And they do. I've had them. I was learningmyself . . . and I learned to leave the thoroughbred alone. They beatyou out. They get your goat. You never get theirs. And they're time-wasters, and patience-wasters, and they're expensive."
"Take this terrier here." Collins nodded at Michael, who stood severalfeet back of him, morosely regarding the various activities of the arena."He's both kinds of a thoroughbred, and therefore no good. I've nevergiven him a real licking, and I never will. It would be a waste of time.He'll fight if you press him too hard. And he'll die fighting you. He'stoo sensible to fight if you don't press him too hard. And if you don'tpress him too hard, he'll just stay as he is, and refuse to learnanything. I'd chuck him right now, except Del Mar couldn't make amistake. Poor Harry knew he had a specially, and a crackerjack, and it'sup to me to find it."
"Wonder if he's a lion dog," Charles suggested.
"He's the kind that ain't afraid of lions," Collins concurred. "But whatsort of a specially trick could he do with lions? Stick his head intheir mouths? I never heard of a dog doing that, and it's an idea. Butwe can try him. We've tried him at 'most everything else."
"There's old Hannibal," said Charles. "He used to take a woman's head inhis mouth with the old Sales-Sinker shows."
"But old Hannibal's getting cranky," Collins objected. "I've beenwatching him and trying to get rid of him. Any animal is liable to gooff its nut any time, especially wild ones. You see, the life ain'tnatural. And when they do, it's good night. You lose your investment,and, if you don't know your business, maybe your life."
And Michael might well have been tried out on Hannibal and have lost hishead inside that animal's huge mouth, had not the good fortune of apropos-ness intervened. For, the next moment, Collins was listening to thehasty report of his lion-and-tiger keeper. The man who reported waspossibly forty years of age, although he looked half as old again. Hewas a withered-faced man, whose face-lines, deep and vertical, looked asif they had been clawed there by some beast other than himself.
"Old Hannibal is going crazy," was the burden of his report.
"Nonsense," said Harris Collins. "It's you that's getting old. He's gotyour goat, that's all. I'll show it to you.--Come on along, all of you.We'll take fifteen minutes off of the work, and I'll show you a shownever seen in the show-ring. It'd be worth ten thousand a week anywhere. . . only it wouldn't last. Old Hannibal would turn up his toes out ofsheer hurt feelings.--Come on everybody! All hands! Fifteen minutesrecess!"
And Michael followed at the heels of his latest and most terrible master,the twain leading the procession of employees and visiting professionalanimal men who trooped along behind. As was well known, when HarrisCollins performed he performed only for the elite, for the hoi-polloi ofthe trained-animal world.
The lion-and-tiger man, who had clawed his own face with the beast-clawsof his nature, whimpered protest when he saw his employer's preparationto enter Hannibal's cage; for the preparation consisted merely inequipping himself with a broom-handle.
Hannibal was old, but he was reputed the largest lion in captivity, andhe had not lost his teeth. He was pacing up and down the length of hiscage, heavily and swaying, after the manner of captive animals, when theunexpected audience erupted into the space before his cage. Yet he tookno notice whatever, merely continuing his pacing, swinging his head fromside to side, turning lithely at each end of his cage, with all the airof being bent on some determined purpose.
"That's the way he's been goin' on for two days," whimpered his keeper."An' when you go near 'm, he just reaches for you. Look what he done tome." The man held up his right arm, the shirt and undershirt ripped toshreds, and red parallel grooves, slightly clotted with blood, showingwhere the claws had broken the skin. "An' I wasn't inside. He did itthrough the bars, with one swipe, when I was startin' to clean his cage.Now if he'd only roar, or something. But he never makes a sound, justkeeps on goin' up an' down."
"Where's the key?" Collins demanded. "Good. Now let me in. And lock itafterward and take the key out. Lose it, forget it, throw it away. I'llhave all the time in the world to wait for you to find it to let me out."
And Harris Collins, a sliver of a less than a light-weight man, who livedin mortal fear that at table the mother of his children would crown himwith a plate of hot soup, went into the cage, before the criticalaudience of his employees and professional visitors, armed only with abroom-handle. Further, the door was locked behind him, and, the momenthe was in, keeping a casual but alert eye on the pacing Hannibal, hereiterated his order to lock the door and remove the key.
Half a dozen times the lion paced up and down, declining to take anynotice of the intruder. And then, when his back was turned as he wentdown the cage, Collins stepped dir
ectly in the way of his return path andstood still. Coming back and finding his way blocked, Hannibal did notroar. His muscular movements sliding each into the next like so muchsilk of tawny hide, he struck at the obstacle that confronted his way.But Collins, knowing ahead of the lion what the lion was going to do,struck first, with the broom-handle rapping the beast on its tender nose.Hannibal recoiled with a flash of snarl and flashed back a secondsweeping stroke of his mighty paw. Again he was anticipated, and the rapon his nose sent him into recoil.
"Got to keep his head down--that way lies safety," the master-trainermuttered in a low, tense voice.
"Ah, would you? Take it, then."
Hannibal, in wrath, crouching for a spring, had lifted his head. Theconsequent blow on his nose forced his head down to the floor, and theking of beasts, nose still to floor, backed away with mouth-snarls andthroat-and-chest noises.
"Follow up," Collins enunciated, himself following, rapping the noseagain sharply and accelerating the lion's backward retreat.
"Man is the boss because he's got the head that thinks," Collins preachedthe lesson; "and he's just got to make his head boss his body, that'sall, so that he can think one thought ahead of the animal, and act oneact ahead. Watch me get his goat. He ain't the hard case he's trying tomake himself believe he is. And that idea, which he's just starting, hasgot to be taken out of him. The broomstick will do it. Watch."
He backed the animal down the length of the cage, continually rapping atthe nose and keeping it down to the floor.
"Now I'm going to pile him into the corner."
And Hannibal, snarling, growling, and spitting, ducking his head and withshort paw-strokes trying to ward off the insistent broomstick, backedobediently into the corner, crumpled up his hind-parts, and tried towithdraw his corporeal body within itself in a pain-urged effort to makeit smaller. And always he kept his nose down and himself harmless for aspring. In the thick of it he slowly raised his nose and yawned. Nor,because it came up slowly, and because Collins had anticipated the yawnby being one thought ahead of Hannibal in Hannibal's own brain, was thenose rapped.
"That's the goat," Collins announced, for the first time speaking in ahearty voice in which was no vibration of strain. "When a lion yawns inthe thick of a fight, you know he ain't crazy. He's sensible. He's gotto 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 theI love of Mike leave me alone. My nose is awful sore. I'd like to getyou, 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 thelesson home that you're boss. Rub it in. Don't stop when he quits. Makehim swallow the medicine and lick the spoon. Make him kiss your foot onhis neck holding him down in the dirt. Make him kiss the stick that'sbeaten him.--Watch!"
And Hannibal, the largest lion in captivity, with all his teeth, capturedout 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, backeddeeper and more crumpled together into the corner. His back was bowedup, the very opposite muscular position to that for a spring, while hedrew 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 hismassive paws, a single stroke of which could have ripped the life ofCollins quivering from his body.
"Now he might be tricky," Collins announced, "but he's got to kiss myfoot and the stick just the same. Watch!"
He lifted and advanced his left foot, not tentatively and hesitantly, butquickly and firmly, bringing it to rest on the lion's neck. The stickwas poised to strike, one act ahead of the lion's next possible act, asCollins'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. Theywere scarcely started a fifth of the way of the distance, when thewaiting broomstick rapped on his nose and made him sink it in the floorunder 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 afare-you-well. If he was crazy, he wouldn't know, and I wouldn't knowhis mind either, and I wouldn't be that one jump ahead of him, and he'dget me and mess the whole cage up with my insides."
He prodded Hannibal with the end of the broom-handle, after each prodpoising it for a stroke. And the great lion lay and roared inhelplessness, and at each prod exposed his nose more and lifted ithigher, until, at the end, his red tongue ran out between his fangs andlicked 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 footback 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 andforth still more roughly.
And Hannibal exposed his nose and with his red tongue licked again thetan shoe and the slender, tan-silken ankle that he could have destroyedwith one crunch.