It was at eleven in the morning that the pale youth-god put collar and
chain on Michael, led him out of the segregation ward, and turned him
over to a dark youth-god who wasted no time of greeting on him and
manifested no friendliness. A captive at the end of a chain, on the way
Michael quickly encountered other captives going in his direction. There
were three of them, and never had he seen the like. Three slouching,
ambling monsters of bears they were, and at sight of them Michael
bristled and uttered the lowest of growls; for he knew them, out of his
heredity (as a domestic cow knows her first wolf), as immemorial enemies
from the wild. But he had travelled too far, seen too much, and was
altogether too sensible, to attack them. Instead, walking stiff-legged
and circumspectly, but smelling with all his nose the strange scent of
the creatures, he followed at the end of his chain his own captor god.
Continually a multitude of strange scents invaded his nostrils. Although
he could not see through walls, he got the smells he was later to
identify of lions, leopards, monkeys, baboons, and seals and sea-lions.
All of which might have stunned an ordinary dog; but the effect on him
was to make him very alert and at the same time very subdued. It was as
if he walked in a new and monstrously populous jungle and was
unacquainted with its ways and denizens.
As he was entering the arena, he shied off to the side more
stiff-leggedly than ever, bristled all along his neck and back, and
growled deep and low in his throat. For, emerging from the arena, came
five elephants. Small elephants they were, but to him they were the
hugest of monsters, in his mind comparable only with the cow-whale of
which he had caught fleeting glimpses when she destroyed the schooner
_Mary Turner_. But the elephants took no notice of him, each with its
trunk clutching the tail of the one in front of it as it had been taught
to do in making an exit.
Into the arena, he came, the bears following on his heels. It was a
sawdust circle the size of a circus ring, contained inside a square
building that was roofed over with glass. But there were no seats about
the ring, since spectators were not tolerated. Only Harris Collins and
his assistants, and buyers and sellers of animals and men in the
profession, were ever permitted to behold how animals were tormented into
the performance of tricks to make the public open its mouth in
astonishment or laughter.
Michael forgot about the bears, who were quickly at work on the other
side of the circle from that to which he was taken. Some men, rolling
out stout bright-painted barrels which elephants could not crush by
sitting on, attracted his attention for a moment. Next, in a pause on
the part of the man who led him, he regarded with huge interest a piebald
Shetland pony. It lay on the ground. A man sat on it. And ever and
anon it lifted its head from the sawdust and kissed the man. This was
all Michael saw, yet he sensed something wrong about it. He knew not
why, 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 he
thrust this in the pony's shoulder, the pony, stung by the pain and
reflex action, lifted its head, and the man was deftly ready to meet the
pony's mouth with his own mouth. To an audience the impression would be
that in such fashion the pony was expressing its affection for the
master.
Not a dozen feet away another Shetland, a coal-black one, was behaving as
peculiarly as it was being treated. Ropes were attached to its forelegs,
each rope held by an assistant, who jerked on the same stoutly when a
third man, standing in front of the pony, tapped it on the knees with a
short, stiff whip of rattan. Whereupon the pony went down on its knees
in the sawdust in a genuflection to the man with the whip. The pony did
not like it, sometimes so successfully resisting with spread, taut legs
and mutinous head-tossings, as to overcome the jerk of the ropes, and, at
the same time wheeling, to fall heavily on its side or to uprear as the
pull on the ropes was relaxed. But always it was lined up again to face
the man who rapped its knees with the rattan. It was being taught merely
how to kneel in the way that is ever a delight to the audiences who see
only the results of the schooling and never dream of the manner of the
schooling. For, as Michael was quickly sensing, knowledge was here
learned by pain. In short, this was the college of pain, this Cedarwild
Animal School.
Harris Collins himself nodded the dark youth-god up to him, and turned an
inquiring 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 but
mostly for his own benefit, being given to thinking aloud. "He picked
this dog as a winner. And now what can he do? That's the question. Poor
Harry'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 might
happen. A squall of pain from one of the bears across the ring hinted to
him 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 into
your motions, eh? Well, we'll take care of that.--Get up!--Lie down!--Get
up!--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 golden
dream of all dog-trainers. "Come on, we'll try him for a flip. Put the
chain on him. Come over here, Jimmy. Put another lead on him."
Another reform-school graduate youth obeyed, snapping a girth about
Michael'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. At
the word "Go!", simultaneously, the chain on his collar jerked him up and
back in the air, the rope on his hindquarters jerked that portion of him
under, forward, and up, and the still short stick in Collins's hand hit
him under the lower jaw. Had he had any previous experience with the
manoeuvre, he would have saved himself part of the pain at least by
springing and whirling backward in the air. As it was, he felt as if
being torn and wrenched apart while at the same time the blow under his
jaw stung him and almost dazed him. And, at the same time, whirled
violently 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 of
the master-god had he not been the slave of cunning formula. The two
youths knew their work. One tightened the lead ahead, the other to the
rear, and Michael snarled and bristled his impotent wrath. Nothing could
he do, neither advance, nor retreat, nor whirl sideways. The youth in
front by the chain prevented him from attacking the youth behind, and the
youth behind, with the rope, prevented him from attacking the youth in
front, and both prevented him from attacking Collins, whom he knew
incontrovertibly to be the master of evil and hurt.
Michael's wrath was as superlative as was his helplessness. He could
only bristle and tear his vocal chords with his rage. But it was a very
ancient and boresome experience to Collins. He was even taking advantage
of the moment to glance across the arena and size up what the bears were
doing.
"Oh, you thoroughbred," he sneered at Michael, returning his attention to
him. "Slack him! Let go!"
The instant his bonds were released, Michael soared at Collins, and
Collins, timing and distancing with the accuracy of long years, kicked
him 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 heavy
draft-horses were entering, followed by a woman dressed to
over-dressedness in the last word of a stylish street-costume.
"I fancy he's never done any flipping," Collins remarked, coming back to
the problem of Michael for a moment. "Take off your lead, Jimmy, and go
over and help Smith.--Johnny, hold him to one side there and mind your
legs. Here comes Miss Marie for her first lesson, and that mutt of a
husband 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 and
the four horses. Yet, from her conduct, he sensed that she, too, was
captive and ill-treated. In truth, she was herself being trained
unwillingly to do a trick. She had carried herself bravely right to the
moment of the ordeal, but the sight of the four horses, ranged two and
two opposing her, with the thing patent that she was to hold in her hands
the hooks on the double-trees and form the link that connected the two
spans which were to pull in opposite directions--at the sight of this her
courage failed her and she shrank back, drooping and cowering, her face
buried in her hands.
"No, no, Billikens," she pleaded to the stout though youthful man who was
her 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 his
hands he began feeling out her shoulders and back under her jacket. "The
apparatus is all right." He ran his hands down her arms. "Now! Drop
the hooks." He shook each arm, and from under each of the fluffy lace
cuffs fell out an iron hook fast to a thin cable of steel that evidently
ran up her sleeves. "Not that way! Nobody must see. Put them back. Try
it 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 cast
appealing glances to Billikens, who stood remote and aloof, his brows
wrinkled with displeasure.
Each of the men driving the harnessed spans lifted up the double-trees so
that the girl could grasp the hooks. She tried to take hold, but broke
down 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 of
your jacket. The worst that can happen will be the exposure of the trick
and the laugh on you. But the apparatus isn't going to break. Let me
explain again. The horses do not pull against you. They pull against
each other. The audience thinks that they are pulling against you.--Now
try once more. Take hold the double-trees, and at the same moment slip
down the hooks and connect.--Now!"
He spoke sharply. She shook the hooks down out of her sleeves, but drew
back from grasping the double-trees. Collins did not betray his
vexation. Instead, he glanced aside to where the kissing pony and the
kneeling 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'm
not afraid now."
She extended her hands and clasped the double-trees. With a thin writhe
of a smile, Collins investigated the insides of her clenched hands to
make sure that the hooks were connected.
"Now brace yourself! Spread your legs. And straighten out." With his
hands 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 if
the strain catches them bent, the wire'll rip the hide off of you.
Remember, straight out, extended, so that they form a straight line with
each 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 my
arms are pulled out."
The dark youth who held Michael, and others looking on, grinned. Collins
dissembled whatever grin might have troubled for expression, and
murmured:
"All the time in the world, madam. The point is, the first time must
come off right. After that you'll have the confidence.--Bill, you'd
better 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 too
perfunctorily nor very long. She was a pretty young thing of a woman,
perhaps twenty years old, with an exceedingly childish, girlish face and
a slender-waisted, generously moulded body of fully a hundred and forty
pounds.
The embrace and kiss of her husband put courage into her. She stiffened
and steeled herself, and with compressed lips, as he stepped clear of
her, muttered, "Ready."
"Go!" Collins commanded.
The four horses, under the urge of the drivers, pressed lazily into their
collars and began pulling.
"Give 'em the whip!" Collins barked, his eyes on the girl and noting that
the pull of the apparatus was straight across her.
The lashes fell on the horses' rumps, and they leaped, and surged, and
plunged, 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 the
honest anxiety for the woman on his face. And her face was a
kaleidoscope. At the first, tense and fearful, it was like that of a
Christian martyr meeting the lions, or of a felon falling through the
trap. Next, and quickly, came surprise and relief in that there was no
hurt. 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 spur
of the second, Harris Collins broke in:
"This ain't a smiling act! Get that smile off your face. The audience
has got to think you're carrying the pull. Show that you are. Make your
face stiff till it cracks. Show determination, will-power. Show great
muscular effort. Spread your legs more. Bring up the muscles through
your skirt just as if you was really working. Let 'em pull you this way
a bit and that way a bit. Give 'em to. Spread your legs more. Make a
noise on your face as if you was being pulled to pieces an' that all that
holds you is will-power.--That's the idea! That's the stuff! It's a
winner, 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 their
hugeness and might to pull away from the pain of the punishment. It was
a spectacle to win approval from any audience. Each horse averaged
eighteen hundredweight; thus, to the eye of the onlooker, seven thousand
two hundred pounds of straining horse-flesh seemed wrenching and dragging
apart the slim-waisted, delicately bodied, hundred-and-forty pound woman
in her fancy street costume. It was a sight to make women in circus
audiences 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 a
short run to Billikens, into whose arms she threw herself, her own arms
folding 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't
I!"
"A give-away," Collins's dry voice broke in on her ecstasy. "Letting all
the audience see the hooks. They must go up your sleeves the moment you
let go.--Try it again. And another thing. When you finish the turn, no
chestiness. No making out how easy it was. Make out it was the very
devil. Show yourself weak, just about to collapse from the strain. Give
at the knees. Make your shoulders cave in. The ringmaster will half
step forward to catch you before you faint. That's your cue. Beat him
to 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 the
audience and make a weak, pitiful sort of a smile, as though your heart's
been pulled 'most out of you and you'll have to go to the hospital, but
for right then that you're game an' smiling and kissing your hands to the
audience 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 wistful
as you look at the horses.--That's it! Nobody'd guess you'd palmed the
hooks and connected them.--Straight out!--Let her go!"
And again the thirty-six-hundredweight of horses on either side pitted
its strength against the similar weight on the other side, and the
seeming 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 tries
more. And don't forget, any time any jay farmer thinks he's got a span
that can pull, bet him on the side your best span can beat him. That
means advance advertising and some paper. It'll be worth it. The
ringmaster'll favour you, and your span can get the first jump. If I was
young and footloose, I'd ask nothing better than to go out with your
turn."
Harris Collins, in the pauses gazing down at Michael, read Del Mar's
Seattle 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 the
chain. "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. He
says 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 you
think, 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 on
his hind legs by Johnny while Collins with the stick cracked him under
the jaw and across the knees. In his wrath, Michael tried to bite the
master-god, and was jerked away by the chain. When he strove to
retaliate on Johnny, that imperturbable youth, with extended arm, merely
lifted him into the air on his chain and strangled him.
"That's off," quoth Collins wearily. "If he can't stand on his hind legs
he 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 touching
with her front ones. She used to do eight kegs, in one and out into the
next. 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 with
penumonia 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 like
the limit in a turn like that. This dog's got a specially. He ain't
ordinary. He does some unusual thing unusually well, and it's up to us
to locate it. That comes of Harry dying so inconsiderately and leaving
this 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 him
in the single compartments."