THE KEEPER OF THE BULLS
Please forgive a garrulity when the subject is elephants and the
narrator a circus man. They are so many-sided, these pachyderms, so
lovable, so exasperating and so fearful, that their complete story is a
far greater one than that of all the other menagerie animals combined.
In previous chapters there has been a recording of the sagacity and
humorous sides of their natures. But there is another angle, that of
the time when they become obstreperous, amenable to only one man--the
“keeper of the bulls.”
There are certain well-founded American traditions regarding the
equally American circus which it seems almost sacrilege to disturb. For
instance, it has been handed from generation to generation that when a
big show goes into territory comprised of many small towns the circus
splits into several parts like the fabled joint snake and exhibits in
three or four places at once. Again, it’s a certainty that the fiercest
beasts in captivity are the lions and the tigers, and that if ever
one of them should escape it at once would vent the pent-up rage of
years of imprisonment by killing every one in sight. By the same line
of reasoning the bravest man on the whole blatant organization must
be the lion trainer, who twice daily--rain or shine--goes into the
dens with these beasts and by a narrow margin comes forth with skin
and body still hanging together. A different existence indeed from
that of the bull-man--who has nothing to do save to keep his placid,
gigantic, ever-begging charges from eating too many peanuts, to bring
them forth now and then that they may push a few wagons complacently
around the lot, or trot them into the ring during the crowded hours
of the performance to do the hootchy-kootchy in their lumbering,
comical fashion, to play a big mouth harp with their trunks until that
laughing, easy-going trainer takes it away from them, to cavort at a
pachydermic game of baseball or bear the million-dollar beauty around
the arena at the head of the grand entrée. All in all, comparatively
speaking, it would seem much easier than shooting a blank-cartridged
revolver into the bellowing jaws of a roaring lion. Of course he must
be handy always to warn the uneducated that his big, clumsy charges
hate tobacco, and that they never forget an injury, but those are only
little idiosyncrasies which bob up even with some human beings. No
matter how placid a person or beast may be--
But to get back to the traditions. A show never splits and never
exhibits in several places at once. The lion and tiger trainer has his
troubles, it is true, but his is not the hardest job of the show. And
the life of the elephant keeper isn’t placid!
For, as it often happens with traditions, the usual reasoning is wrong.
In the first place, the bulls are not placid, just as they are not
clumsy, just as they do not remember an injury for years and just as
they do not promptly set upon the man who insults their taste with a
juicy plug of tobacco. Perhaps, long, long ago there may have been a
solitary elephant that disliked nicotine, but times evidently have
changed. To-day a plug of tobacco is a titbit for any elephant, and
more than once is a visitor’s pocket ransacked by an inquiring trunk
searching for a chew. Elephants eat tobacco just as they eat sugar cane
or pop corn or peanuts or candy. To them it is a delicacy. Nor is the
taste confined only to chewing tobacco; if you’ll keep your eyes open
the next time you go to a circus you may even see elephants shooting
snipes, where visitors have dropped their cigar butts along the picket
line. Which ends that.
Their memories are no longer than those of any other intelligent
animal, and their clumsiness and slowness are things that exist only
in appearance. As for the relationship of ease between the lot of the
keeper of the lions and the keeper of the bulls, the lion trainer
leads a bored existence. All that is necessary for him to do is to keep
a whip rein on a group of beasts, and by a reasonable amount of care
guard his own skin. The keeper of the bulls has an entirely different
task.
[Illustration: IN WINTER QUARTERS.]
[Illustration: IN THE ACT OF A BREAKAWAY.]
Inconsistency is a thing which surrounds an elephant on every side
in his life in the circus. Just as he is the best-liked beast of the
menagerie, so is he the most feared. Just as he is the thing that must
be counted upon literally to drag the show out of the mud when the
mire of a wet circus lot has sunk every wagon to the wheel hubs and so
entangled the heavy conveyances that horseflesh, even tractors, lose
their efficiency, so on the very next day he may wreck everything he
has worked so hard to save. He will swing forward confidently to the
attack, should a lion make a breakaway, but the proximity of a mouse
or even a small, harmless snake on a country wayside is the signal for
hysteria. He will carry a cannon on his back into a performance and
stand immobile while the booming charge breaks in deafening fashion
above him, and then, on the next Fourth of July, “go flighty” at
the popping of a penny firecracker. He will remain at a picket line
through confusion and turmoil while thousands of persons crowd about
him, then pull up stakes and chase the daylights out of a candy vender
who consistently offends him by selling dainties among the show goers
instead of distributing them free along the elephant line. He is the
most sagacious animal in captivity, yet, when he becomes frightened he
doesn’t know enough to turn out of the way of a brick building. His
daily food consists of fully two hundred pounds of roughage, a few
pounds of coal which he munches greedily if he can but get it, a bushel
or so of grain, ten or twenty pounds of pure dirt--chocolate loam or
swamp muck preferred--and a tub or two of water, yet he will quit it
all gladly for one lonely peanut or a piece of candy. In the circus
world they’ve changed an old, old expression to fit their own needs:
“Inconsistency--thy name is elephant!”
For, it seems, the paradox is a continual thing with the great
pachyderms which form the backbone of practically every circus. There
is never a time in which they are not depended upon to save the show in
times of late arrivals, muddy or sandy lots, or on long hauls from the
unloading runs to the exhibition grounds, when the two or three tons
of flesh and bone and muscle which every elephant possesses are thrown
into play to augment the efforts of the straining draft stock and
chugging tractors. Yet, by the same token, upon one man and one alone,
depends the task of keeping them the placid, humorous clowns which they
really should be, the keeper of the bulls.
In explanation, a herd of elephants--and in some of the big circuses
a herd will number as high as twenty-five members--is built upon the
monarchial system, with a princess or two, a queen and a king in
control. The princesses and queen are elephants; the only male ruler
allowed is the superintendent of the herd, the man to whom the queen,
or leader, vows allegiance. No matter what other men may do, what
other men may command, if the keeper of the herd decides otherwise,
then otherwise is the result. The leader obeys him above all others;
the princesses obey her, and the male members tag along in a group of
bulky camp followers, citizens, agitators and revolutionists. The males
make the trouble in an elephant monarchy, the females make the laws and
enforce them.
As an example: Old Mom and her herd were in Canada several years
ago, and one of its stands was Winnipeg. The performances were dated
for Monday and, as is usual with a circus, the show had arrived in
town a day ahead. The tents had been erected, the seats placed, the
animals fed and exercised, the ring curbs fastened into position, the
hippodrome track smoothed into readiness, the rigging for the various
aerial acts set, and the circus had settled to rest.
In the menagerie the lions and tigers nodded sleepily, with nothing
to disturb them from their Sunday slothfulness. The elephant picket
line was calm and peaceful, the long trunks weaving lazily at the
transference of a full portion of roughage from ground to mouth. Group
by group the circus people departed from the lot, townward bound, for
the usual Sunday stroll and the luxury of a night in a hotel instead of
the cramped berths of the sleepers. Only the watchmen were left about
the various tents, only the assistants in the menagerie.
Night came, starlit and peaceful. The torches began to gleam about
the circus grounds, spots of limited brilliance barely sufficient to
provide protection against the pitfalls of stakes and wagon tongues
and tight-pulled guy ropes. Hours passed in torpid peace. Down town
the superintendent of the elephant herd, Fred Alispaw, seated himself
at the table of a night restaurant and glanced across toward his wife,
awaiting her decision on the menu of an after-theater supper. He called
a waiter. He began the giving of an order. Then suddenly the café,
the street, the city were in darkness, following a green blaze of
lightning and its consequent crash of thunder. A moment more and the
rain was pelting, borne at the fore of a forty-mile gale. Winnipeg all
in a second had become a storm-stricken city, its lights extinguished
by a lightning bolt which had struck one of the main feed wires, its
street-car service blocked, its streets running small rivers from the
rain, its every activity for the moment halted. In the café diners
laughed, struck matches and waited for the lights to come on again,
all but one man, stumbling through the darkness toward the doorway,
Fred Alispaw, keeper of the bulls.
“Stay here until the lights come on!” he ordered hastily of his wife.
“I’ve got to get to the lot!”
“But the cars are stopped.”
“Can’t help that. I’ll find a taxi! I’ve got to get to the lot!”
Out into the sheetlike rain he went, to leap to the running board of
the first passing automobile and literally commandeer it for a trip to
the circus grounds several miles away. His experience with elephants
and the instinctive knowledge of what the beasts might do under
circumstances such as this demanded swift action, and plenty of it.
More, intuition proved correct!
The storm had struck as suddenly at the circus grounds as in the
city. With the first flash of lightning the wind had swept through
the menagerie tent with galelike force, lifting the side walling and
causing it to slap and bellow and snap in queer ghostly fashion. The
elephant herd, peaceful and drowsing at its double row of stakes only a
moment before, had heard and seen!
There was no keeper to reassure them; only assistants. To an elephant
an assistant counts for little if the supreme voice is absent, and
right at that moment Alispaw was miles away. In vain the menagerie men
sank their bull-hooks into the ears of the plunging charges, then,
bobbing about like so many plummets, strove in vain to hold the beasts
in line. Even Old Mom, the head of the herd, had become panicky with
the rest, not from fear of the storm but from the fright caused by
the sight of that twisting, writhing side wall as it had shown for an
instant in the glare of the lightning. To the elephants it represented
some unknown bellowing monster about to attack; the unexplained thing
always means trouble in an elephant herd. So the stampede had begun.
One by one the extra stakes were dragged from the ground. One by one
the frantic animal attendants were thrown aside or knocked down by the
flail-like blows of tossing trunks. The thunder now bore an obbligato
of screaming, hissing cat animals, crouched in fear in their dens,
of shouting men, of rending stakes, clanking chains and squealing,
trumpeting elephants. Then still another thunder, that of ton-heavy
bodies plunging across the menagerie tent, the crashing of timbers as
they knocked poles and cages from their path, and the stampede of the
nine-elephant herd was on! A moment later the stages, the poles, the
seats and grand stand of the main tent were splintering and snapping
as some sixty thousand pounds of fear-maddened elephant flesh tore
madly here and there in the big inclosure, rushing wildly, then
wheeling as frantically in the other direction as a lightning flash
showed that writhing, flapping thing of wind-blown canvas surrounding
them on every side. Greater and greater the frenzy became; in the
milling two of the males collided and began to fight with swift
smashing rushes and lashing trunks. Louder and louder became the
squealing and trumpeting--suddenly to lull. A voice had come faintly
from the darkness of the menagerie tent--every torch long had been
extinguished--a voice which caused Old Mom to turn and to trumpet with
a new note.
“Mom--Mom! Here I am!”
Again the call sounded and Old Mom answered, the queen obeying the
command of her overlord. The fighting ceased. A new signal sounded from
the throat of Old Mom. The elephants steadied. A moment later Alispaw,
standing in the connection between the menagerie and the main tent, saw
revealed in a flash of lightning a great hulking shadow coming slowly
but steadily toward him, while in the rear there followed eight others,
practically abreast! Old Mom had heard the voice she sought. That was
enough!
[Illustration: OLD MOM AND HER GIRL FRIEND FREIDA.]
[Illustration: KAS AND MO WHEN THEY ARRIVED IN AMERICA.]
But the fight had only begun. The storm now was taking on a new
intensity, a new fury, and the trainer knew that he had but two allies,
Mom and Frieda, her elephantine lady in waiting. As soon as possible he
caught the two elephants by their ears and stood between them, talking
to them, reassuring them, while they wrapped their trunks about
him and squealed their delight, while the rest of the herd milled and
trumpeted about them, each crowding its utmost to be near the thing
which to them meant safety. For nearly an hour it continued, with
the fate of the show in the hands of one man, literally buried in a
bumping, jostling mass of thirty tons of frightened elephants--one man
whom they trusted and whose presence alone could hold them against
a new panic. Then slowly, with the aid of his assistants and a lone
flickering torch, he began the task of working the mammals back to
their picket line.
For Mom and for Frieda it was comparatively easy. For the rest it was a
far more difficult task. Alispaw could not be in every place at once,
and the moment the herd became strung out to the slightest degree there
would be a concerted rush to be near the lead elephants and the keeper
who guided them. In vain the assistants strove to drive them back, and
at last one of the men, losing his head, struck violently at one of the
beasts with an iron-tipped tent stake, only to miscalculate. The blow
struck Alispaw, and he dropped unconscious, and the note of fright in
Old Mom’s bellow brought a new spasm of fear and a resumption of the
milling to the rest of the herd.
Once more they circled and crowded--all but one. That one was Old Mom,
half crouched over the prostrate trainer, whimpering and touching him
with her trunk, and through her frightened curiosity forming a bulwark
against the rest of the surging herd. For a full five minutes this
continued; then, dizzy and reeling, the keeper crawled to his feet and
renewed his calls of assurance. The storm lessened. Slowly Old Mom
wheeled into place at the picket line and submitted to her chains.
Frieda came beside her; then, still trembling, still grunting and
squealing and protesting, the rest followed. Daylight found the picket
line again a thing of comparatively peaceful elephants, and all because
of one man!
Nor is this at all unusual. Strictly otherwise. With the Barnum and
Bailey Circus is a quiet gentle-voiced man who has been the keeper
of the show’s big herd of elephants for more than a quarter of a
century, while his aid at the head of the herd is an ancient lady of
some eighty-five summers who can read his every intonation, his every
command, and who forces her will upon the rest of the herd, or knows
the reason why! In elephantdom there appears to be a certain respect
for superiority; the leader of the herd attacks with impunity any
beast under her control, no matter how fierce it may be, how big or
how favored in fighting proclivities. In the winter quarters of one
of the Western circuses is a glaring patch of cement work which a few
years ago stopped up a gaping hole of some ten feet in diameter where
a leader elephant butted a recalcitrant member of her herd through an
eighteen-inch brick wall! When the keeper of a herd has the allegiance
of that herd’s leader he has fought half his battle. But that keeper
may be forced to leave suddenly, and what then?
That’s exactly the question every circus owner asks when there is a
sudden shift in the superintendency of the elephant line, and in which
there is no time to work in a new keeper gradually as the person in
command. More than once it has meant trouble, not only to the circus
but to the elephant. In view of this, enter Snyder.
They called him the biggest elephant in captivity. Whether he was or
not, he was one of the best performers, one of the most intractable,
and at the same time one of the most valuable. When Snyder departed
this life it meant that a twenty-five thousand-dollar performing
tusker, trained to walk on his hind hoofs about the whole circumference
of the hippodrome track, at the same time carrying his trainer on
his three-foot tusks, left the circus world forever. As a result his
trainers were selected with care and the slightest evidence of must, or
badness, in his eyes was the signal for instant and various activities
to hold him from a stampede. Far better to keep a valuable elephant out
of parades and performances--even to imprison him day after day in
the bull cars--than to run the risk of a rampage which may end in the
necessity for an execution.
Consequently Henry Boucher, a trainer, was eased into Snyder’s life
with all the care of the launching of a yacht when his old keeper
resigned a few years ago. The elephant gradually accepted his new
master, then came to love him. Two years passed, in which Boucher held
the big performer safe from runaways, stampedes and temperamental
outbreaks. Then, a year ago, in Salina, Kansas, the trainer became
violently ill and was forced to leave the circus on short notice.
The next day Snyder grunted and snorted and trumpeted in vain. His
trainer was gone. That afternoon the beast was kept out of performance,
and he weaved uneasily at his picket chain, slapping his trunk
viciously at every passing candy seller--how every elephant hates
them--even refusing food. His eyes began to cloud slightly, the first
indication of must. The matinée performance ended, and an assistant,
assigned to the position of substitute trainer, released the chain
which held the be-tusked brute and led him into the empty big top, or
main tent, for a first rehearsal under new management.
Snyder listened to just one command. Then with a rush he knocked
the substitute from his path, splintered the quarter poles which
crisscrossed before him, smashed a path through a tier of seats, broke
through the side walling, lowered his head, then with a great butting
lurch overturned the first wagon he saw, headed back through the side
walling of the menagerie, seized the monkey cage at its tongue base
with his trunk and threw it from him like a boy throwing a baseball.
The cat animals began to roar and screech; he made for the dens, one
by one, and overturned them. The hippopotamus grunted excitedly in his
five-ton den, and Snyder rushed for it like the maddened thing he was;
an impact followed like the crashing of runaway engines, and the den,
with its bulky freight, catapulted through the side wall and ten feet
clear of the tent.
They tried to surround him by peaceful elephants, to mingle him with
the rest of the herd and thus return him to captivity. It was useless.
Snyder had turned renegade; he recognized no superior and he fought the
leader of the herd with the same frenzy that he fought any inanimate
object which blocked his path. So at last they sent for rifles; nor was
it long before twenty-five thousand dollars in elephant flesh became
only an object for a museum. Four steel bullets in his brain had ended
the career of an elephant which had refused to recognize any one but
the master of his choice.
So you see there are grounds for that circus saying regarding
inconsistency. Once an elephant becomes thoroughly angry, little can
block his path. Yet in the regular course of events that same elephant
actually can be afraid of his own shadow!
On one of the big shows are Kas and Mo, named respectively and
respectfully for Kansas and Missouri. Both are what are known to the
bull-men as agitators, both flighty, unreasoning, and seemingly always
anxious to find something that will serve as an excuse for trouble.
Both also are punks, the circus name for anything not yet full grown,
and the lack of maturity in age may account for the equal absence of
steadiness in character. In any event their course has been a stormy
one. Their first day on the show, when they arrived fresh from India in
the care of a Singhalese, ended with a general stampede of the entire
herd when the two punks decided to run straight through it without an
introduction; the panic, although it lasted only the length of a city
block, resulted in nearly a thousand dollars in damages. The first
windy day after their arrival brought a breakaway on their part, and
the danger of a like action on the part of the adult members of the
herd. The first parade was one of constant attempts at runaways and
the smashing of a two-hundred-dollar plate-glass window. Finally there
came the time when, at the slightest hint of any unusual happening, Kas
and Mo were loaded hurriedly into the first available wagon and sent
unceremoniously to the cars. This continued during the entire first
season.
However, elephant trainers are persistent beings, and all that winter
the keeper of the herd labored with Kas and Mo to bring them to a
condition of dependability. To every possible noise, action and
circumstance that might cause fear on their part they were subjected,
until the flighty brutes were considered proof against anything that
might occur on a circus lot. Then they were turned over to Lucia
Zora, wife of the menagerie superintendent, for a novelty in elephant
training--the driving of the diminutive pachyderms in tandem style
before a flower-bedecked two-wheel cart. It really seemed that Kas and
Mo had reformed. They learned quickly; they obeyed every command.
Springtime came and the show went forth to its first exhibition stand,
rehearsing, as is usual, for three days before the opening date.
Everything was lovely. Kas and Mo, garlanded and festooned with strands
of paper flowers, took their place in the grand entrée like veterans.
Zora was pleased. So was the keeper of the bulls. So was the owner of
the show. So was every one. The past was forgotten.
The opening day arrived. Kas and Mo went into parade with their woman
trainer, their garlands of roses and their high-wheeled cart, looking
neither to the right nor to the left. At the afternoon performance they
moved into their position in the elephant section of the grand entrée
in a manner both joyous and faithful. Night arrived, the chandeliers
gleamed, the signal to prepare for entrée sounded from the whistle of
the equestrian director, and the punks took their place at the head
of the section, awaiting the time when the rest of the entrée should
emerge from the flags, or performers’ entrance, that they, with the
remainder of the menagerie exhibits, might enter at the other end of
the tent, thus filling the hippodrome track simultaneously. At the head
of the tandem was Kas, somewhat anxiously awaiting the signal to start.
At the left was a low-hung chandelier which caught the beast’s body and
silhouetted it against the near-by side wall of the menagerie tent.
Beyond was a main tent filled with gaping spectators, staring vapidly
toward the empty rings and stages and hippodrome track, waiting for the
show to begin. And just then Kas saw its shadow on the side wall.
The punk grunted and raised its trunk. Over at the side wall that
mysterious thing raised its trunk also. Kas fidgeted. So did the
shadow. The big ears of Kas distended in fright. Over there a pair of
black ears moved in unison. Everything that Kas did was immediately
aped by that thing on the wall. It was too much.
A squeal, a snort, then suddenly the crowded tent saw a tandem team of
elephants pitch through the gay dividing curtain and swing into the
hippodrome track at full speed, the rose-bedecked cart careening behind
them on one wabbling wheel, and behind this the entire elephant herd,
following excitedly and without a reason save the fact that Kas and Mo
were leading the way. A moment later the cart hit a ring curb, while
the bespangled Lucia Zora dived gracefully and far through the air to
a dazed position on a pile of canvas, and the runaway elephant parade
went on!
Around the hippodrome track they thundered, two squealing baby
elephants in the lead, ten excited, bewildered adult beasts in the
rear, and the whole shouting, panting menagerie force trailing
vainly in their dust. The first curve came and the punks left their
cart leaning in drunken, awry fashion where it had collided with a
center-pole. The second, and they tangled in their flower-decorated
harness, but they went on! A third curve, a fourth, then straight
through the dividing curtain they plunged again, the rest of the herd
after them, and back to their places in the picket line! Meanwhile
out there in the main tent an amused crowd stared again at an empty
hippodrome track, not knowing whether the whole thing had been an
accident or some new form of elephant race!
Naturally it is an impossibility for any man or set of men to maintain
an unbroken record of halting panics. Their charges are too big, too
possessed with temperament, too prone to become frightened at the most
puerile things for a keeper always to outguess them and outmaneuver
them. However, the number of panics on the part of the various elephant
herds in which damage is caused or the big brutes actually succeed in
getting away is so far over-shadowed by the attempts at revolt which
are broken up in their inception that there is not an opportunity
for comparison. Hardly a day passes among the various circuses that
at least one elephant does not decide to pit his will against that
of the man in charge. But actual panics, with consequent damage,
happen extremely seldom. In fact, strange as it may seem, the actual
breakaways of any extent in circus history are so few that they number
less than a score. When it is considered that there are fully fifty
circuses in America which possess elephants, some idea may be gained
of the efficacy of those men who manage the herds, who day after day,
outguess and outgeneral their charges--the keepers of the bulls. But
one hears little of these clashes of will. In the life of the keeper
of the bulls his failures become public property; his successes are
reflected in his pay envelope only, and the crowd often goes home
without even the thrill of knowing that an elephantine revolution was
nipped in the making.
For instance, few persons in Berkeley, California, remember an elephant
stampede in that city. The very persons who saw it probably would be
willing to take oath that nothing of the kind ever happened.
Yet there was a stampede, and one that for at least five minutes
threatened to be extremely serious.
Berkeley, in the circus dictionary, is a “rah-rah” town, a feared thing
to a menagerie department. It means a college, and the traditional
enmity that has grown up between tent shows and student bodies through
long years of fights and troubles occasioned by the overexuberance
of youth, and the disturbances that almost invariably follow the
attendance at a performance of a large body of students with their
class yells, their chain steps and snake dances. Circuses are composed
of high-strung persons who risk their lives as a part of their daily
work, and of equally high-strung horses and other animals. Disturbances
during the performances are not to their liking.
But on this particular morning in Berkeley things apparently were going
exceeding well.
The parade had started on time from the lot, and now was traversing
the longest and most crowded street of the whole route. The bands were
blaring happily. The bull section, numbering some twelve animals, was
shuffling along the asphalt in peace and contentment.
Suddenly from around a corner there swung into line with the parade a
lock-step crew of some three hundred students, their feet stamping
the pavement in unison, their lips chanting a monotonous college
song, joining the procession directly behind the bull section. The
elephant keepers spurred up their horses and attempted to stop
the demonstration. The college men simply grinned at them and
tramped steadily on. Time after time the bull-men gave warning of
what the result of the monotonous chant and still more monotonous
tramp-tramp-tramp of hundreds of stamping feet might be. The parade
marshal looked around wildly for police. They were somewhere else. He
strove to block the marching line with his horse. They circled him and
went on, still beside the shuffling bull line.
Now ears were distending. Piglike eyes were rolling in their too small
sockets. Heavy skins were beginning to wrinkle.
At last there came a call from Shorty, the head keeper, and the
elephant men gave up their task. “Don’t try to break up that line.
If they won’t stop let ’em go. These bulls’ll break at the first
rough-house. Stand by to tail ’em down!”
Into position shot the assistants, each ready to dig his spurs into
his horse at the first sign of a break. Far ahead went Shorty, taking
his position just behind the gigantic trembling Mary, bearing the Ten
Thousand Dollar Queen of the Harem at the head of the section, a harem
beauty who, incidentally, just at that moment wished she was back in
Coshocton; in fact, anywhere except in that bobbing howdah. Leader Mary
was beginning to shimmy slightly with increased fright, and her shuffle
on the hot asphalt carried a new wiggle of impending danger. Then the
marching three hundred broke into a weird class yell, and the stampede
began.
Straight forward went Leader Mary, to scrape a lion’s cage, to swerve
slightly to one side, then, with the Ten Thousand Dollar Queen of the
Harem squawking aimlessly in the howdah, to lead off in a wild scramble
straight down the street, with the rest of the herd smashing along in
her rear. Then it was that the preparations of Shorty, the keeper of
the bulls, went into execution.
At the first move of the elephant section the horses of keepers moved
also--into a furious pace, for the speed of an elephant is a deceptive
thing, and it is a good horse that can keep abreast of him, once he
unlimbers into full steam ahead. The stamping college men were left
behind now; even the front section of the parade with its suddenly
hushed band and blank-faced clowns was passed almost in an instant. Out
of them all only the Ten Thousand Dollar Queen of the Harem was left,
still bouncing in her howdah, still squealing and squawking, while,
spurs deep in their horses, the elephant men strove their best to keep
abreast of the fast-traveling bull section, echoing and reëchoing the
shout of Shorty at the head of the line:
“Hi there! Mule up! Mule up there, Mary!
Frieda--Frenchy--Sultan--tails! Tails there--tails!”
It was a double command, which traveled along the line and back again
as fast as men could voice it, the order to run, and at the same time
for each elephant to grasp the tail of the beast before him. Blocks
passed while throats grew hoarse, and while the thick-packed throngs of
the curbings stared vacuously, wondering why the circus should be in
such a hurry to get its elephants out of the line of march.
But never a warning sounded, never a hint that a panic was in progress;
only that repeated and re-repeated command:
“Tails there! Mule up, you! Tails--tails!” All of it meant an
experiment in elephant psychology, and one that had been tried many
times before. At last the command sank in. The second elephant of the
line grasped the tail of Leader Mary and continued to run. The third
elephant obeyed; the fourth, the fifth, and on through the whole
section.
But the command continued:
“Mule up there--mule up! Tails!”
Another two blocks and the command changed; more, the elephant line
obeyed. A block after that, and the whole section was peacefully
shuffling along again, simply through the fact that the frightened
beasts had been made to believe that their trainer really desired them
to run, and that in their breakaway they were merely carrying out
orders. Nor could they know that in obeying the command of tails, they
handicapped themselves so that the speed of one could be no greater
than that of another, and that as long as the leader kept to a straight
line, so must the rest.
Further, the occupation of their single-track minds in the execution of
an order which coincided with their natural tendencies had wiped out in
forgetfulness the fact that something had threatened them, and brought
to them the belief that their trainer merely was running them away from
an obnoxious thing. Therefore, when the command came to slow down they
did so in confidence, and in the assurance that any danger was over.
Many a person went that day from watching the parade, wondering perhaps
why the elephant trainer should desire to put his beasts through their
paces. But few of them realized that the little play of speed had saved
not only the circus but the downtown section of Berkeley, with its
thronged sidewalks, from disaster.
The trick works time after time; it is the stand-by of the elephant
keeper, his first hope at the beginning of a breakaway. A few years
ago, in Parkersburg, West Virginia, a circus had just arrived on the
lot, with the consequent confusion of setting up, of yowling caged
animals, of lumbering, trucking wagons, and trotting ring stock as the
various elements of the show traveled into position. Standing near
the menagerie tent were two elephants, secured side by side with neck
chains, which fastened one to the other. The keeper of the herd was
within the tent, superintending the staking out of the picket line,
and leaving the two big beasts in the care of an assistant until he
should call for them. But a second later he was outside the tent and in
action. The chained bulls had lost their heads.
As usual, the most innocent thing in the world had caused it, simply
the bucking of a hippodrome, or race horse, as he had passed on the way
to the stable tents. But that had been enough, and neck and neck the
two elephants had started across the lot. A collision with a wagon,
and the assistant, clinging until this moment to a bull-hook fastened
in an elephantine ear, ceased to trouble or impede their flight. Over
went the wagon; on went the bulls. Another wagon blocked their path,
and with a side-swipe they capsized it, then swerving slightly in their
course they straddled, quite by accident, the rear of a heavy pole
wagon with their connecting chains, and began to twist madly in their
efforts to free themselves and travel onward to more destruction. But
just then a new element entered, the keeper of the bulls.
“Pick it up there!” he shouted. “Sandow! Morgan! Pick it up--pick it
up!”
It was the command to push, and without realizing that they were
yielding their freedom the elephants strained forward. A poler hurried
into position at the tongue of the wagon to guide it, while from the
rear came in ever-increasing forcefulness:
“That’s right--pick it up! Pick it up there--let’s go now--pick it up!
Morgan--Sandow! Shake a leg there--pick it up!”
The elephants picked it up. With the poler guiding the way, they took
that wagon on a half-trot across the circus lot and back again, around
the big top and up to the midway, and finally for a trip of a few
blocks down the street and return, the keeper still commanding them,
still prodding them with his bull-hook, still obsessed with the desire
that they pick it up. At last, panting and wabbly, the two recalcitrant
elephants brought the wagon back into the exact position where it had
rested at the time of their collision and were allowed to slow their
pace. A bull-hook caught in a fanlike ear.
“Now you two come over here and straighten up this damage!” commanded
the keeper, and meekly the twain obeyed, to set their trunks under
the sides of the wagons they had capsized and unprotestingly raised
them into position again. Five minutes later they were in place at the
picket line, peaceful and calm, their fright effaced, ready for the
bugle call of parade.
With it all, the life of a bull-keeper is a thing of constant gambling.
He has none of the assurances with which the performers of other
beasts are blessed; the lion or tiger trainer has his cages, and the
knowledge that even should a vicious cat escape, a bullet or two from
a heavy-calibered revolver at close range can finish him. It takes a
steel-jacketed army bullet to make an elephant even realize he’s being
shot!
More, the beasts are too big to be caged. They are too strong for
anything except a perfect network of drop-forged chains. Even then,
nothing short of a pile driver can set wood deep enough into the
ground to hold them when they really desire to run. It’s wholly a
matter of a good leader of the herd, good princesses working under
her, the hope that there are few agitators or revolutionists in the
rest of the monarchy, and a strong trust in fate and the breaks of
circumstance. For even the elephant keeper never knows what may start
his difficulties. An invasion of fleas in the sandy districts of the
West can do it; an elephant’s hide can turn a leaden revolver bullet,
but it can’t stand fleas! There’s trouble even in mosquitoes.
For the flea and the mosquito evidently have more judgment regarding
the points of vulnerability in an elephant’s hide than does a bullet.
They select the soft spots behind the ears, the eyelids and tender
mouth and flanks for their work, and once they arrive in numbers,
trouble begins. It is not at all unusual to see elephants being dosed
with flea preventives. The mosquito pest is far more rare, but at least
one runaway is chargeable to this cause.
Incidentally, the instance gave another credit mark to the career of
Old Mom, and another example of at least one elephant with common
sense. The show was making a Sunday run in Canada by which it bridged
a long expanse of territory between money-making stands, heading far
into the north of the Dominion, where few shows had exhibited and
where the natives would be glad to part with a double admission price
for the pleasure of seeing a bigger circus than usual. The run had
been preceded by several days of moist, mosquito-breeding weather,
with the result that when the show train made a feed stop at a small
prairie settlement, and the elephants were unloaded for a trip of half
a mile to the nearest water, the insects swarmed in such millions that
they almost obliterated the lettering of the railroad cars. About the
railroad tracks several hundred smudges were lighted, thus freeing that
exact territory from the pests, but the elephants weren’t fortunate.
They were forced to travel out into the country for water, and the
mosquitoes went with them.
By the time the watering process was finished every elephant was
crusted with stinging, poisonous insects and squealing with discomfort.
They pulled from their keepers; in vain Old Mom, obeying the commands
of Alispaw, strove to hold them in line. She bellowed, she butted,
she lashed with her trunk--but to no purpose. A moment more and an
inveterate agitator made the break, followed by two others, and
instantly the rest of the herd rushed after them. More, Old Mom
broke from the bull-hooked grasp of her keeper, and with Frieda, her
handmaiden, beside her, swung madly into flight also!
It seemed that at last the ability of Old Mom to command a situation
was lost. Faster and faster she went, passing the slower members of the
herd, and at last forcing her way to the very front of the stampede,
Frieda puffing along in her wake. For a full eighth of a mile she led
the rush straight out into the prairie; then the pursuers, far in the
rear, noticed that she was beginning to turn in her course. Soon she
had made a semicircle and was leading the plunging herd straight back
in the direction of the cars.
Thundering on they went, the workmen and clustered performers parting
spasmodically as they approached the runs, Old Mom still in the lead,
and heading, it seemed, on a straight path for the sleeping cars and
the crash which seemed inevitable. Once an elephant loses its head it
takes no cognizance of what may be before it; its mentality knows a
beeline only, no matter if the obstruction be a stone quarry.
Nearer, nearer! Then it suddenly became evident that Old Mom evidently
was in full possession of her faculties--and a bright idea. At the
tracks she swerved, and while horses and workmen scurried for safety,
she led the way straight to the elephant cars and climbed in!
The runs, or running board by which the beasts usually made their
entrance and exit had been removed in preparation for the switching of
the cars. So the climbing operation was a literal one. With the rest of
the bulls behind her, Old Mom, grunting and squealing, made the ascent,
and Frieda followed.
Then in the semidarkness of the smudge-filled car she trumpeted
happily, and the rest of the herd crowded in after her. A stampede of
nearly a mile was over without a cent of damage.
In fact, Old Mom, with her faith and her levelheadedness, has meant
salvation in many an instance. I once saw this sensible old elephant
lead her herd across the cable bridge which connects Wheeling,
West Virginia, with the Ohio side, with a storm in progress, the
surroundings inky black, the rain pelting, the keepers almost as
terrified as the brutes, with the beams of the bridge cracking from
overweight, and the structure itself swinging fully eight feet
from side to side! Below was a sheer drop to the Ohio River; two
elephants had become panic-stricken and had broken from the bull-man
in attendance, rushing frantically forward to the protection of their
leader. The rest of the herd had begun to mill, with only a thirty-foot
width of bridge as their arena; bull-men were befuddled and nearly
blinded by the pelting rain. Yet Old Mom held true to the commands of
her trainer, and with weird trumpetings which sounded sharp above even
the rush of wind and crackling of thunder, someway, somehow, reassured
her herd. Then with the ever-present Frieda at her side, she began to
lead the way, slow step after slow step to the opposite side.
That very slowness was the salvation of the herd; instinctively they
knew that she was testing the bridge, and by some sort of animal
understanding, did likewise. The rocking lessened. A half-hour later
Old Mom brought her charges safe out at the other side, every elephant
walking in comical, gingerly fashion for a full block after leaving
the structure, for all the world like overgrown fat boys trying to
negotiate an area of eggshells.
Yet even Mom has her failings, her likes and dislikes; and once, at
least, her discipline has ended in tragedy. Woeful is the life of the
subject elephant that defies Old Mom, ancient though she may be. Well
past the hundred-year mark in age, dependable when every other bull
of the picket line is frantic, there is one failing; Old Mom is a
disciplinarian to the point of being a martinet. More than that, she
is as foolish in her likes as a person in second childhood, and her
favorite is the worst trouble-maker of the whole herd!
Long ago they named him Billy, a quarrelsome, snobby little runt of an
elephant that spends half his time in winter quarters striving to slap
the daylights out of the hoglike old hippopotamus that wallows in his
permanent tank near the picket line, and the remainder of his existence
in stealing feed from the rest of the elephants. Nor does one of that
bull line dare to protest! Immediately there comes a squeal from Billy,
and from farther down the line a bellow of anger from Old Mom, where,
eyes glaring, trunk twisting, ears wide, she wheels forward toward
her picket pin and prepares to free herself that she may punish the
offender. For punishment is swift and sure to those who offend her by
offending her pet. Billy, to Old Mom, is a little angel. He can do no
wrong. To the rest of the herd he is an obnoxious, selfish, obtrusive
little devil that can do no right. They hate him. But they submit,
rather than feel the thump of Old Mom’s trunk, or the pile-driver
impact of her hard skull. Winter quarters or the road, it is all the
same. Old Mom has taught her little angel her secrets of escape, with
the result that he wanders the elephant line at will, in spite of
stakes, bonds or even keepers. Old Mom’s protection of Billy extends to
humans, and the runt does as he pleases.
For eight years had this continued when the tragedy came. For eight
years, Floto, the stodgiest, most amiable male member of the herd, had
submitted to every indignity one elephant can heap upon another. Billy
had stolen his feed. Billy had edged forward when visitors arrived
with peanuts, and literally taken them out of Floto’s trunk. Floto had
protested and been punished, and so Floto had endured. But during those
eight years the hatred was being stored against a day of judgment. And
near the end of the season, at Orange, Texas, it came.
The press services which carried the story of that day’s event
announced that some one had given Floto a chew of tobacco and that he
had gone mad because of it. But that was only tradition and a guess.
Floto was one of the best tobacco eaters of the picket line. And Floto
had something more on his mind than a bad taste. The story of his death
is one of rebellion and revenge.
Old Mom was out on the lot, busily pushing the wagons into position for
the loading of the night. The matinée was over. The menagerie tent
was drowsing in that calm which intervenes between the afternoon show
and the gleaming chandeliers of night. Floto was at his picket pin,
glorying in his portion of hay. Then came Billy.
He rooted in as usual and began to gobble Floto’s feed share, even as
he had done for eight years. But this time Old Mom was not there to
protect him. Floto snorted and warned the runt out of his way. But the
fat little Billy only grunted and reached for another trunkful. It was
the final insult.
A weird trumpet blast, and the three-ton Floto rose high on his
haunches. Then with a sudden thumping drop, he came to all fours again,
and seizing his piggish enemy in his trunk, raised him squealing over
his head, only to throw him, breathless, to the ground, and then,
breaking his stay chains, to leap upon his pudgy enemy before the
smaller elephant could regain his feet. A moment of mauling followed,
in which thundering hoofs knocked resistance from the fallen beast, and
then, using his head for a combination roller and battering ram, the
angered elephant scraped the body of the beleaguered animal along the
hard sandy ground until the heavy flesh was torn from the runt’s body
in great patches, and the blood flowed from fully a dozen wounds.
Animal men with bull-hooks strove futilely to pull him away. He shook
them off and began to pound the prostrate Billy with flail-like blows
of his trunk, suddenly to halt and wheel, trembling, yet defiant. Old
Mom, with Charles Churchill, her keeper, at her head, was swinging
under the side wall to restore order. But the time for that was past.
Floto was in the position of a cornered criminal. He had disobeyed
every law of the mistress of the herd, and now he defied her. He did
not even wait for Old Mom to approach him. Head lowered, trunk tightly
curled, he swung forward to the attack, butted her out of the way and
plunged through the side wall, out into the sparsely peopled circus
lot, an outlaw at last.
Wagons tumbled out of his way as he crashed into them. Ticket boxes
turned to matchwood when he caught them and crushed them with swift
stamping blows of his heavy forefeet. Ropes parted like strings before
his plowing progress. A workman crossed his path; the elephant caught
him in his trunk and threw him thirty feet into an irrigation ditch.
Back to the menagerie he went, to butt every elephant that faced him,
to overturn cages, to seize frightened, screaming ponies and break
their backs. Then they called for the rifles.
Only thirty-thirties were in the ticket wagon, equipped with leaden
bullets. But the animal men felt that enough shots from them might
suffice; at least they might be able to hold the maddened beast at
bay until a rushing automobile, already sent townwards, could return
with army rifles. Hurriedly the guns were distributed and the magazines
filled. Then as fast as hands could work the levers thirty shots were
fired at the head of the outlaw, every one striking its mark.
But the bullets did little more than pierce the heavy flesh; some of
them dropped to the ground without even breaking the thick armor of
hide that covered the elephant’s skull.
He stood and took the shots, one after another, hardly seeming to
notice their impact. Then suddenly, as though bewildered, as though
seeking a reason for it all, he whirled for a moment in aimless
circles, then headed straight for the empty big top. The bullets had
not entered the animal’s thick skull, but something akin to a thought
had. The stinging of the speeding lead in some way seemed to convey
an idea to the brute that the humans who had commanded him were now
striving to force him to do a certain thing, and in a hazy moment of
obedience he hurried to its execution as swiftly as possible, the only
thing he knew!
Into the center ring he rushed, to halt, a single elephant in the
middle of a deserted circus tent. There, alone, _sans_ the music,
_sans_ the crowds, _sans_ the brilliance and the brightness which
usually accompanied the performance, Floto the outlaw, the blood
streaming from thirty bullet holes, without guidance, without even a
cue, went through every figure of his act, while at the connections the
men of the circus stood and watched, unable to cope with him, unable
to kill him, unable to conquer him; watched while he waltzed about the
ring, while he knelt over an imaginary trainer, while he walked on his
hind hoofs; and while, with a sudden change of thought, he crashed
across the stages, tore down a section of seats, and then, bursting
through the side wall, ran for the open country.
All that night they trailed him, a trail of broken fences, of smashed
chicken yards, of wide swaths through growing crops! The next morning
they found Floto a bare half-mile from town, where he evidently was
circling back to the circus. But he still was the outlaw, still the
renegade. He sighted the armed men and trumpeted. Then with a swift
movement he turned toward a telegraph pole and wrapped his trunk
about it. There was a sharp crackle. Wires spit and sang as they
popped. Floto had snapped the pole clean at its base and, swinging
it even as an angered man would swing a club, had headed straight
toward his hunters! There they killed him, with three swift volleys of
steel-jacketed bullets, even as he charged them, Floto who had feared
discipline enough to become a renegade!
From all of which may be gathered that the life of the keeper of the
bulls is far from a bored existence.
Nor is it always a matter of a spasmodic breakaway or a single bad
animal that must be feared. There is one instance, a great many years
ago, of a herd that was incorrigible not only for a day, but a season.
But to the story: There had been a change in the men commanding the
herd, a sudden change, and one which the elephants did not like. At
least, they gave evidence of a displeasure that was not only keen but
lasting. The show, as was usual, opened its season in the Coliseum, in
Chicago, and according to the ordinary custom held its rehearsals for
three days before the beginning of the regular performance.
The day for dress rehearsal came--the final time of practice, in
which the whole show, from spectacle to races, is run through--and
twelve elephants of the herd of twenty-two, each with its heavy velvet
blankets, its trappings and its howdah, were led into position to await
the signal for entrée. Which was also the signal for trouble.
The acoustics of a building are far different from those of a tent.
The minute the band started, so did the elephants. Some arrived at
the arena by the front entrance. Some shot down the chutes into the
basement, some headed straight for the horse stalls, crippling a number
of the ring stock, and six became wedged in another chute, and for a
time threatened the safety of that portion of the building. At last
sweating, shouting bull-men corralled them and prepared for the only
possible thing,--to rehearse their charges all night if necessary to
make them ready for the next afternoon’s show.
The program was followed; dawn found the elephants still being forced
through their entrance and their tricks. But even after twelve hours of
practice only four of the big beasts were found sufficiently tractable
to risk in entrée.
Show time came, with the blankets again, the trappings and the
howdahs. The elephants made their entrance. The audience applauded
enthusiastically. All of which was another new noise to the nervous
beasts. Off went the four, heading for their picket line in the
basement, and starting a panic among the pachyderms that had been left
behind. Three hours later the tired elephant men reported peace again,
but only for a short time. The night show brought another near-panic,
and the “preposterous poundage of ponderous pachyderms” was eliminated
from the program of the circus, at least as far as the Coliseum was
concerned. In this connection, the circus man is no person to take
risks. His first thought is his audience, and when animals show signs
of incorrigibility, they are removed from performance until they have
become good again.
In the two weeks of the show’s engagement which followed, the trainers
prepared for the future. Every unusual noise, every possible thing that
might be the cause of fright on the part of the beasts, was provided
for. Horses dragging sacks were ridden up and down in front of them;
guns were fired behind them, tin cans dropped in a pile in front of
them; they were even entertained every few hours by a pair of fighting
dogs! Whenever an animal trainer thought of a noise or thing that might
frighten an elephant, the picket line immediately was introduced to it,
with trimmings.
On the last day of the engagement the trainers reported that they
believed they had made progress sufficient to allow the presentation of
one elephant act. The presentation was all. The only action was that of
the entire herd rushing wildly for that dearly beloved basement and its
comparative safety.
But now there came a new chance; the show left the indoors and went
into the open, back to the land of canvas. For three months there was
nothing more dangerous than minor fretfulness and lone recalcitrants,
and it was believed that trouble at last was over. Then, at Rawlins,
Wyoming, where the cow-puncher population of the entire surrounding
country had congregated to watch the unloading of the big circus, the
bulls were led forth as usual--and a dog fight started!
A rampage began less than a minute later. Five minutes more and the
railroad yards were filled with wandering, frightened elephants; a
passenger train was stalled at the station, the engineer fearing to
pull out lest his coaches be overturned by an elephant galumphing
forth from a hiding place behind a box car; the passenger station was
filled with refugees; and the cow-punchers were eagerly volunteering
to rope the darned critters an’ bring ’em in, draggin’ behind a saddle
pommel. More, when six of the bulls took to the open prairie the offer
was accepted--anything that looked like aid was a welcome thing to the
circus just then--and the strangest roping contest in Wyoming’s history
began. Also the greatest defeat that a bunch of Western cow-punchers
ever knew.
Not that they didn’t succeed in roping the big beasts, for they did.
But that was the end of the capture. The minute a rope settled about
an elephant’s neck the pachyderm decided to go elsewhere, taking
rope, horse and cow-puncher with him until the lariat snapped. As
a last resort some thirty of the cow hands decided upon a form of
elephant round-up, an attempt to force the elephants to submission by
the usual methods of a cattle round-up. It lasted only until the six
recalcitrants decided to move on. Whereupon they lowered their heads,
pushed the horses and riders out of the way and loped gayly forth
to new fields and broader prairies. Late that night a new relay of
cow-punchers, accompanied by a half dozen of the captured elephants
which had been thoroughly pacified, and headed by the bull-keepers,
found the truants a full twenty-five miles from town, and by mingling
them with the passive beasts finally returned them to the cars. After
which another full three weeks passed in which the elephants were
missing from performance, followed by another period of passivity.
This lasted, however, only until the show reached Bakersfield,
California, and a canvasman chased a frightened rabbit, which had
bobbed up about the show grounds, under the side walling and into
the menagerie tent. The rabbit went out the other side of the tent.
So did twelve of the parade elephants, wrecking everything from the
menagerie to the sideshow, and heading for an irrigation canal at the
other end of the lot. Here they were dragged from the water, the parade
paraphernalia muddy and ruined, and brought back to the picket line
once more, where they remained peaceful for a whole twenty-four hours.
The next day, at Santa Barbara, an agitator chirruped, the queer,
almost bird-like call which precedes a panic, and away they all went
again! Some chose town and the wrecking of fences and small buildings.
Others made the outer circle, disrupting the garden hopes of residents
for weeks to come. Two more made for the fish market and ruined it.
Another struck an automobile, wrecking it and injuring two persons.
The remaining six of the runaways, smelling the open water, made for
the bay and hopelessly mired themselves in the salt marshes, with the
result that forty horses and nearly three thousand feet of rope were
required to pull each of them from the mud.
That was too much. A few days later, at Tucson, Arizona, the bull cars
were run fifteen miles out of town, and the agitators were put to death.
All of which has its antithesis in another stampede which actually made
money. The gods sometimes favor even a keeper of the bulls, and such
was the case in the stampede of Old Mom’s herd at Idaho Falls.
The day had been hot. The elephants came out of the performing ring of
the matinée tired and “juggy,” as a bull-man terms lassitude, to be led
quite indifferently to a near-by irrigation ditch to drink. There, by
their straining against the elephant hooks, they indicated that a mere
drink would not satisfy.
“What’re we goin’ t’ do?” inquired an assistant as he scrambled at the
end of a bull-hook. “They want in an’ they’re goin’ t’ have in!”
“Hold them bulls!” came the curt reply of the keeper. “Sink that hook
deeper an’ hold them bulls.”
“What’s the matter?” It was a new voice. “They just want a swim, don’t
they?”
“Yeh.” The keeper touched his cap to the owner of the show.
“Yeh--that’s what they’re after.”
“Then why don’t you let ’em have it?”
“Afraid. Snake River’s just over this hump here, and they might make
for it. It’s deep an’ swifter’n ’ell. Been a half a dozen horses
drowned right here; nothing’s ever come out of it alive.”
“But,” argued the little owner, “that isn’t this ditch, is it? Why
should they want to go over to a river they can’t see when there’s all
this water right here?”
The keeper grinned in sickly fashion.
“You don’t know bulls. They’ll--”
“Quit your kidding. Let ’em go. The poor things are hot.”
“All right.” The keeper sighed--a sigh with a good-by in it. “You’re
boss. Hey, men! Turn ’em loose!”
There was a rush, a splash of water, then shining bulky forms that
flopped and scrambled out of the water at the other side of the
irrigation ditch. The herd, in its entirety, had smelled broader
expanses of water, and almost abreast they went for it, all but Old
Mom, who trumpeted wildly, who squealed and bellowed and roared, but
who for a moment remained alone. Even her faithful Frieda deserted
her, running wildly with Snyder and Trilby over the edge of the hump
and sliding down a declivity of solid rock into the raging waters
of the Snake River rapids. Behind them the two remaining members of
the herd halted, stood a moment in fear, then whimpering returned to
the side of Old Mom, while the circus owner, believing he had sent
a valuable elephant herd to its death, hurriedly decided to move
elsewhere than within the range of the baleful eye of the keeper of the
bulls.
Down in the rapids, with its falls and dangerous suck holes below, the
three elephants floundered a moment, then splashed out in different
directions. Frieda, her common sense aroused at last, swam with all her
strength straight for the opposite shore, finally landing in safety
just above the falls. But Trilby and Snyder, forgetting the swiftness
of the current in their enjoyment of the water’s coolness, drifted
lazily along, until too late. A moment more and the hundreds of excited
sightseers who had gathered atop the banks saw the rolling, tossing,
suddenly frantic beasts plunge, over the falls and into the suck holes
and whirlpools beneath, from which no living thing ever had emerged.
By this time the owner was far away and seeking even more speed. A man
in an automobile hastened to overtake him and to break the news that
his elephants were in the Snake River death trap. He nodded glumly and
went on.
The elephants now were in a suck hole which formed the main amusement
of the boys of the town who, when the lure of other games had faded,
were wont to push large logs over the edge into the swirling waters
and watch them churned to bits by the fierce action of the boiling
waters. Trilby had vanished. Only the edge of Snyder’s trunk showed at
long intervals. Atop the bank the keeper of the bulls breathed another
good-by to two of his best elephants.
Then a shout. Fully three hundred feet below the suck hole Trilby,
immersed for what had seemed hours, had come to the surface and was
fighting valiantly toward shore. Finally she gained it, to crawl to a
rocky ledge, to stagger, then to fall exhausted. Five minutes later
Snyder lay beside her, equally fatigued. And there they remained,
moaning with almost human intonations, until their keeper, with Old
Mom, came to their rescue.
All through the town the word spread that a living thing--two living
things, in fact--had survived the death trap. The crowds gathered;
it was as though conquering heroes had returned from a war. The
townspeople even forgave Frieda and refused damages when it was learned
that she had ambled from her landing point to a livery yard and
caused a panic among the horses stabled there. That night the tents
were unable to contain the crowds that thronged to see the elephants
which had braved the whirlpools. And in the years to come, the simple
announcement of the coming of the circus was enough to insure the
influx of thousands of dollars, as long as it contained the assurance
that the death-trap elephants would be a part of the performance.
But such a happy thing as this in the life of a bull-keeper is almost
too good to be true. In the circus world the young man seeking
adventure is never told to go West, nor to become a prospector, nor
to drive in motor-car speed events, nor to aspire to the Northwest
Mounties. It is merely suggested that if he’s really in earnest and
doesn’t care what happens, it might be a good idea to learn the
rudiments of being a keeper of the bulls. After that if he isn’t
satisfied he’s hopeless!
THE END
[Illustration]
UNDER THE BIG TOP
_By_ COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER
Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 238 pages.
“To any one who has ever thrilled over a circus, ‘Under the Big Top’
should be a joy. Mr. Cooper knows his subject. He writes of the circus,
its pageantry and its romance, its vicissitudes and its thrills, in
a vivid, most entertaining fashion.”--_“F. F. V.” in The New York
Tribune._
“Mr. Cooper gives no end of interesting information about the circus.
He has the dramatic instinct that both senses a good story and tells it
well, and so his little anecdotes are always interesting, having point,
punch, humor, pathos, human appeal.”--_The New York Times._
“There is so much genuine interest in Mr. Cooper’s book that a detailed
account of the subjects of which it treats is impossible. His book
is a compendium of information concerning a subject on which there
has always been a great amount of speculation and curiosity, and it
answers fully and completely every question that can be asked about the
circus.”--_The Philadelphia Public Ledger._
“Whenever the historian of the circus sits down to his task and squares
his elbows, he will need to have on his desk Mr. Cooper’s ‘Under the
Big Top.’ As an account of the circus as it is, here and now, it is
altogether satisfying.”--_Brander Matthews in The Literary Digest
International Book Review._
“Taken all in all, ‘Under the Big Top’ is certainly one of the most
fascinating books of the season. It is that unusual type of book that
appeals to young or old, boys and girls, men and women. It takes
us to a strange world outside our own lives and tells us about it
interestingly and truly.”--_The Detroit Saturday Night._
Boston LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY Publishers
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.