| CHAPTER XXVIII
One friend Michael made among the many animals he encountered in
the Cedarwild School, and a strange, sad friendship it was. Sara
she was called, a small, green monkey from South America, who
seemed to have been born hysterical and indignant, and with no
appreciation of humour. Sometimes, following Collins about the
arena, Michael would meet her while she waited to be tried out on
some new turn. For, unable or unwilling to try, she was for ever
being tried out on turns, or, with little herself to do, as a
filler-in for more important performers.
But she always caused confusion, either chattering and squealing
with fright or bickering at the other animals. Whenever they
attempted to make her do anything, she protested indignantly; and
if they tried force, her squalls and cries excited all the animals
in the arena and set the work back.
"Never mind," said Collins finally. "She'll go into the next
monkey band we make up."
This was the last and most horrible fate that could befall a
monkey on the stage, to be a helpless marionette, compelled by
unseen sticks and wires, poked and jerked by concealed men, to
move and act throughout an entire turn.
But it was before this doom was passed upon her that Michael made
her acquaintance. Their first meeting, she sprang suddenly at
him, a screaming, chattering little demon, threatening him with
nails and teeth. And Michael, already deep-sunk in habitual
moroseness merely looked at her calmly, not a ripple to his neck-
hair nor a prick to his ears. The next moment, her fuss and fury
quite ignored, she saw him turn his head away. This gave her
pause. Had he sprung at her, or snarled, or shown any anger or
resentment such as did the other dogs when so treated by her, she
would have screamed and screeched and raised a hubbub of
expostulation, crying for help and calling all men to witness how
she was being unwarrantably attacked.
As it was, Michael's unusual behaviour seemed to fascinate her.
She approached him tentatively, without further racket; and the
boy who had her in charge slacked the thin chain that held her.
"Hope he breaks her back for her," was his unholy wish; for he
hated Sara intensely, desiring to be with the lions or elephants
rather than dancing attendance on a cantankerous female monkey
there was no reasoning with.
And because Michael took no notice of her, she made up to him. It
was not long before she had her hands on him, and, quickly after
that, an arm around his neck and her head snuggled against his.
Then began her interminable tale. Day after day, catching him at
odd times in the ring, she would cling closely to him and in a low
voice, running on and on, never pausing for breath, tell him, for
all he knew, the story of her life. At any rate, it sounded like
the story of her woes and of all the indignities which had been
wreaked upon her. It was one long complaint, and some of it might
have been about her health, for she sniffed and coughed a great
deal and her chest seemed always to hurt her from the way she had
of continually and gingerly pressing the palm of her hand to it.
Sometimes, however, she would cease her complaining, and love and
mother him, uttering occasional series of gentle mellow sounds
that were like croonings.
Hers was the only hand of affection that was laid on him at
Cedarwild, and she was ever gentle, never pinching him, never
pulling his ears. By the same token, he was the only friend she
had; and he came to look forward to meeting her in the course of
the morning work--and this, despite that every meeting always
concluded in a scene, when she fought with her keeper against
being taken away. Her cries and protests would give way to
whimperings and wailings, while the men about laughed at the
strangeness of the love-affair between her and the Irish terrier.
But Harris Collins tolerated, even encouraged, their friendship.
"The two sour-balls get along best together," he said. "And it
does them good. Gives them something to live for, and that way
lies health. But some day, mark my words, she'll turn on him and
give him what for, and their friendship will get a terrible
smash."
And half of it he spoke with the voice of prophecy, and, though
she never turned on Michael, the day in the world was written when
their friendship would truly receive a terrible smash.
"Now seals are too wise," Collins explained one day, in a sort of
extempore lecture to several of his apprentice trainers. "You've
just got to toss fish to them when they perform. If you don't,
they won't, and there's an end of it. But you can't depend on
feeding dainties to dogs, for instance, though you can make a
young, untrained pig perform creditably by means of a nursing
bottle hidden up your sleeve."
"All you have to do is think it over. Do you think you can make
those greyhounds extend themselves with the promise of a bite of
meat? It's the whip that makes them extend.--Look over there at
Billy Green. There ain't another way to teach that dog that
trick. You can't love her into doing it. You can't pay her to do
it. There's only one way, and that's MAKE her."
Billy Green, at the moment, was training a tiny, nondescript,
frizzly-haired dog. Always, on the stage, he made a hit by
drawing from his pocket a tiny dog that would do this particular
trick. The last one had died from a wrenched back, and he was now
breaking in a new one. He was catching the little mite by the
hind-legs and tossing it up in the air, where, making a half-flip
and descending head first, it was supposed to alight with its
fore-feet on his hand and there balance itself, its hind feet and
body above it in the air. Again and again he stooped, caught her
hind-legs and flung her up into the half-turn. Almost frozen with
fear, she vainly strove to effect the trick. Time after time, and
every time, she failed to make the balance. Sometimes she fell
crumpled; several times she all but struck the ground: and once,
she did strike, on her side and so hard as to knock the breath out
of her. Her master, taking advantage of the moment to wipe the
sweat from his streaming face, nudged her about with his toe till
she staggered weakly to her feet.
"The dog was never born that'd learn that trick for the promise of
a bit of meat," Collins went on. "Any more than was the dog ever
born that'd walk on its fore-legs without having its hind-legs
rapped up in the air with the stick a thousand times. Yet you
take that trick there. It's always a winner, especially with the
women--so cunning, you know, so adorable cute, to be yanked out of
its beloved master's pocket and to have such trust and confidence
in him as to allow herself to be tossed around that way. Trust
and confidence hell! He's put the fear of God into her, that's
what."
"Just the same, to dig a dainty out of your pocket once in a while
and give an animal a nibble, always makes a hit with the audience.
That's about all it's good for, yet it's a good stunt. Audiences
like to believe that the animals enjoy doing their tricks, and
that they are treated like pampered darlings, and that they just
love their masters to death. But God help all of us and our meal
tickets if the audiences could see behind the scenes. Every
trained-animal turn would be taken off the stage instanter, and
we'd be all hunting for a job."
"Yes, and there's rough stuff no end pulled off on the stage right
before the audience's eyes. The best fooler I ever saw was
Lottie's. She had a bunch of trained cats. She loved them to
death right before everybody, especially if a trick wasn't going
good. What'd she do? She'd take that cat right up in her arms
and kiss it. And when she put it down it'd perform the trick all
right all right, while the audience applauded its silly head off
for the kindness and humaneness she'd shown. Kiss it? Did she?
I'll tell you what she did. She bit its nose."
"Eleanor Pavalo learned the trick from Lottie, and used it herself
on her toy dogs. And many a dog works on the stage in a spiked
collar, and a clever man can twist a dog's nose and nobody in the
audience any the wiser. But it's the fear that counts. It's what
the dog knows he'll get afterward when the turn's over that keeps
most of them straight."
"Remember Captain Roberts and his great Danes. They weren't pure-
breds, though. He must have had a dozen of them--toughest bunch
of brutes I ever saw. He boarded them here twice. You couldn't
go among them without a club in your hand. I had a Mexican lad
laid up by them. He was a tough one, too. But they got him down
and nearly ate him. The doctors took over forty stitches in him
and shot him full of that Pasteur dope for hydrophobia. And he
always will limp with his right leg from what the dogs did to him.
I tell you, they were the limit. And yet, every time the curtain
went up, Captain Roberts brought the house down with the first
stunt. Those dogs just flocked all over him, loving him to death,
from the looks of it. And were they loving him? They hated him.
I've seen him, right here in the cage at Cedarwild, wade into them
with a club and whale the stuffing impartially out of all of them.
Sure, they loved him not. Just a bit of the same old aniseed was
what he used. He'd soak small pieces of meat in aniseed oil and
stick them in his pockets. But that stunt would only work with a
bunch of giant dogs like his. It was their size that got it
across. Had they been a lot of ordinary dogs it would have looked
silly. And, besides, they didn't do their regular tricks for
aniseed. They did it for Captain Roberts's club. He was a tough
bird himself."
"He used to say that the art of training animals was the art of
inspiring them with fear. One of his assistants told me a nasty
one about him afterwards. They had an off month in Los Angeles,
and Captain Roberts got it into his head he was going to make a
dog balance a silver dollar on the neck of a champagne bottle.
Now just think that over and try to see yourself loving a dog into
doing it. The assistant said he wore out about as many sticks as
dogs, and that he wore out half a dozen dogs. He used to get them
from the public pound at two and a half apiece, and every time one
died he had another ready and waiting. And he succeeded with the
seventh dog. I'm telling you, it learned to balance a dollar on
the neck of a bottle. And it died from the effects of the
learning within a week after he put it on the stage. Abscesses in
the lungs, from the stick."
"There was an Englishman came over when I was a youngster. He had
ponies, monkeys, and dogs. He bit the monkey's ears, so that, on
the stage, all he had to do was to make a move as if he was going
to bite and they'd quit their fooling and be good. He had a big
chimpanzee that was a winner. It could turn four somersaults as
fast as you could count on the back of a galloping pony, and he
used to have to give it a real licking about twice a week. And
sometimes the lickings were too stiff, and the monkey'd get sick
and have to lay off. But the owner solved the problem. He got to
giving him a little licking, a mere taste of the stick, regular,
just before the turn came on. And that did it in his case, though
with some other case the monkey most likely would have got sullen
and not acted at all."
It was on that day that Harris Collins sold a valuable bit of
information to a lion man who needed it. It was off time for him,
and his three lions were boarding at Cedarwild. Their turn was an
exciting and even terrifying one, when viewed from the audience;
for, jumping about and roaring, they were made to appear as if
about to destroy the slender little lady who performed with them
and seemed to hold them in subjection only by her indomitable
courage and a small riding-switch in her hand.
"The trouble is they're getting too used to it," the man
complained. "Isadora can't prod them up any more. They just
won't make a showing."
"I know them," Collins nodded. "They're pretty old now, and
they're spirit-broken besides. Take old Sark there. He's had so
many blank cartridges fired into his ears that he's stone deaf.
And Selim--he lost his heart with his teeth. A Portuguese fellow
who was handling him for the Barnum and Bailey show did that for
him. You've heard?"
"I've often wondered," the man shook his head. "It must have been
a smash."
"It was. The Portuguese did it with an iron bar. Selim was sulky
and took a swipe at him with his paw, and he whopped it to him
full in the mouth just as he opened it to let out a roar. He told
me about it himself. Said Selim's teeth rattled on the floor like
dominoes. But he shouldn't have done it. It was destroying
valuable property. Anyway, they fired him for it."
"Well, all three of them ain't worth much to me now," said their
owner. "They won't play up to Isadora in that roaring and
rampaging at the end. It really made the turn. It was our
finale, and we always got a great hand for it. Say, what am I
going to do about it anyway? Ditch it? Or get some young lions?"
"Isadora would be safer with the old ones," Collins said.
"Too safe," Isadora's husband objected. "Of course, with younger
lions, the work and responsibility piles up on me. But we've got
to make our living, and this turn's about busted."
Harris Collins shook his head.
"What d'ye mean?--what's the idea?" the man demanded eagerly.
"They'll live for years yet, seeing how captivity has agreed with
them," Collins elucidated. "If you invest in young lions you run
the risk of having them pass out on you. And you can go right on
pulling the trick off with what you've got. All you've got to do
is to take my advice . . . "
The master-trainer paused, and the lion man opened his mouth to
speak.
"Which will cost you," Collins went on deliberately, "say three
hundred dollars."
"Just for some advice?" the other asked quickly.
"Which I guarantee will work. What would you have to pay for
three new lions? Here's where you make money at three hundred.
And it's the simplest of advice. I can tell it to you in three
words, which is at the rate of a hundred dollars a word, and one
of the words is 'the.'"
"Too steep for me," the other objected. "I've got a make a
living."
"So have I," Collins assured him. "That's why I'm here. I'm a
specialist, and you're paying a specialist's fee. You'll be as
mad as a hornet when I tell you, it's that simple; and for the
life of me I can't understand why you don't already know it."
"And if it don't work?" was the dubious query.
"If it don't work, you don't pay."
"Well, shoot it along," the lion man surrendered.
"WIRE THE CAGE," said Collins.
At first the man could not comprehend; then the light began to
break on him.
"You mean . . . ?"
"Just that," Collins nodded. "And nobody need be the wiser. Dry
batteries will do it beautifully. You can install them nicely
under the cage floor. All Isadora has to do when she's ready is
to step on the button; and when the electricity shoots through
their feet, if they don't go up in the air and rampage and roar
around to beat the band, not only can you keep the three hundred,
but I'll give you three hundred more. I know. I've seen it done,
and it never misses fire. It's just as though they were dancing
on a red-hot stove. Up they go, and every time they come down
they burn their feet again.
"But you'll have to put the juice into them slowly," Collins
warned. "I'll show you how to do the wiring. Just a weak battery
first, so as they can work up to it, and then stronger and
stronger to the curtain. And they never get used to it. As long
as they live they'll dance just as lively as the first time. What
do you think of it?"
"It's worth three hundred all right," the man admitted. "I wish I
could make my money that easy."Previous chapter:Next chapter Michael, Brother of Jerry; by Jack London. CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV CHAPTER XXVI CHAPTER XXVII CHAPTER XXVIII CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXX CHAPTER XXXI CHAPTER XXXII CHAPTER XXXIII CHAPTER XXXIV CHAPTER XXXV CHAPTER XXXVI Book list. |
(Thursday, 18 April, 2024.)
