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 d.a.m.ned 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-G.o.d, 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 rehea.r.s.ed. 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."
CHAPTER XXVI
Number Eighteen was a big compartment or cage in the dog row, large enough with due comfort for a dozen Irish terriers like Michael. For Harris Collins was scientific. Dogs on vacation, boarding at the Cedarwild Animal School, were given every opportunity to recuperate from the hardships and wear and tear of from six months to a year and more on the road. It was for this reason that the school was so popular a boarding-place for performing animals when the owners were on vacation or out of "time." Harris Collins kept his animals clean and comfortable and guarded from germ diseases. In short, he renovated them against their next trips out on vaudeville time or circus engagement.
To the left of Michael, in Number Seventeen, were five grotesquely clipped French poodles. Michael could not see them, save when he was being taken out or brought back, but he could smell them and hear them, and, in his loneliness, he even started a feud of snarling bickeringness with Pedro, the biggest of them who acted as clown in their turn. They were aristocrats among performing animals, and Michael"s feud with Pedro was not so much real as play-acted. Had he and Pedro been brought together they would have made friends in no time. But through the slow monotonous drag of the hours they developed a fict.i.tious excitement and interest in mouthing their quarrel which each knew in his heart of hearts was no quarrel at all.
In Number Nineteen, on Michael"s right, was a sad and tragic company.
They were mongrels, kept spotlessly and germicidally clean, who were unattached and untrained. They composed a sort of reserve of raw material, to be worked into established troupes when an extra one or a subst.i.tute was needed. This meant the h.e.l.l of the arena where the training went on. Also, in spare moments, Collins, or his a.s.sistants, were for ever trying them out with all manner of tricks in the quest of special apt.i.tudes on their parts. Thus, a mongrel semblance to a cooker spaniel of a dog was tried out for several days as a pony-rider who would leap through paper hoops from the pony"s back, and return upon the back again. After several falls and painful injuries, it was rejected for the feat and tried out as a plate-balancer. Failing in this, it was made into a see-saw dog who, for the rest of the turn, filled into the background of a troupe of twenty dogs.
Number Nineteen was a place of perpetual quarrelling and pain. Dogs, hurt in the training, licked their wounds, and moaned, or howled, or were irritable to excess on the slightest provocation. Always, when a new dog entered--and this was a regular happening, for others were continually being taken away to hit the road--the cage was vexed with quarrels and battles, until the new dog, by fighting or by non resistance, had commanded or been taught its proper place.
Michael ignored the denizens of Number Nineteen. They could sniff and snarl belligerently across at him, but he took no notice, reserving his companionship for the play-acted and perennial quarrel with Pedro. Also, Michael was out in the arena more often and far longer hours than any of them.
"Trust Harry not to make a mistake on a dog," was Collins"s judgment; and constantly he strove to find in Michael what had made Del Mar declare him a ten strike and the limit.
Every indignity, in the attempt to find out, was wreaked upon Michael.
They tried him at hurdle-jumping, at walking on forelegs, at pony-riding, at forward flips, and at clowning with other dogs. They tried him at waltzing, all his legs cord-fastened and dragged and jerked and slacked under him. They spiked his collar in some of the attempted tricks to keep him from lurching from side to side or from falling forward or backward. They used the whip and the rattan stick; and twisted his nose.
They attempted to make a goal-keeper of him in a football game between two teams of pain-driven and pain-bitten mongrels. And they dragged him up ladders to make him dive into a tank of water.
Even they essayed to make him "loop the loop"--rushing him down an inclined trough at so high speed of his legs, accelerated by the slash of whips on his hindquarters, that, with such initial momentum, had he put his heart and will into it, he could have successfully run up the inside of the loop, and across the inside of the top of it, back-downward, like a fly on the ceiling, and on and down and around and out of the loop. But he refused the will and the heart, and every time, when he was unable at the beginning to leap sideways out of the inclined trough, he fell grievously from the inside of the loop, bruising and injuring himself.
"It isn"t that I expect these things are what Harry had in mind," Collins would say, for always he was training his a.s.sistants; "but that through them I may get a cue to his specially, whatever in G.o.d"s name it is, that poor Harry must have known."
Out of love, at the wish of his love-G.o.d, Steward, Michael would have striven to learn these tricks and in most of them would have succeeded.
But here at Cedarwild was no love, and his own thoroughbred nature made him stubbornly refuse to do under compulsion what he would gladly have done out of love. As a result, since Collins was no thoroughbred of a man, the clashes between them were for a time frequent and savage. In this fighting Michael quickly learned he had no chance. He was always doomed to defeat. He was beaten by stereotyped formula before he began.
Never once could he get his teeth into Collins or Johnny. He was too common-sensed to keep up the battling in which he would surely have broken his heart and his body and gone dumb mad. Instead, he retired into himself, became sullen, undemonstrative, and, though he never cowered in defeat, and though he was always ready to snarl and bristle his hair in advertis.e.m.e.nt that inside he was himself and unconquered, he no longer burst out in furious anger.
After a time, scarcely ever trying him out on a new trick, the chain and Johnny were dispensed with, and with Collins he spent all Collins"s hours in the arena. He learned, by bitter lessons, that he must follow Collins around; and follow him he did, hating him perpetually and in his own body slowly and subtly poisoning himself by the juices of his glands that did not secrete and flow in quite their normal way because of the pressure put upon them by his hatred.
The effect of this, on his body, was not perceptible. This was because of his splendid const.i.tution and health. Wherefore, since the effect must be produced somewhere, it was his mind, or spirit, or nature, or brain, or processes of consciousness, that received it. He drew more and more within himself, became morose, and brooded much. All of which was spiritually unhealthful. He, who had been so merry-hearted, even merrier- hearted than his brother Jerry, began to grow saturnine, and peevish, and ill-tempered. He no longer experienced impulses to play, to romp around, to run about. His body became as quiet and controlled as his brain.
Human convicts, in prisons, attain this quietude. He could stand by the hour, to heel to Collins, uninterested, infinitely bored, while Collins tortured some mongrel creature into the performance of a trick.
And much of this torturing Michael witnessed. There were the greyhounds, the high-jumpers and wide-leapers. They were willing to do their best, but Collins and his a.s.sistants achieved the miracle, if miracle it may be called, of making them do better than their best. Their best was natural. Their better than best was unnatural, and it killed some and shortened the lives of all. Rushed to the springboard and the leap, always, after the take-off, in mid-air, they had to encounter an a.s.sistant who stood underneath, an extraordinarily long buggy-whip in hand, and lashed them vigorously. This made them leap from the springboard beyond their normal powers, hurting and straining and injuring them in their desperate attempt to escape the whip-lash, to beat the whip-lash in the air and be past ere it could catch their flying flanks and sting them like a scorpion.
"Never will a jumping dog jump his hardest," Collins told his a.s.sistants, "unless he"s made to. That"s your job. That"s the difference between the jumpers I turn out and some of these dub amateur-jumping outfits that fail to make good even on the bush circuits."
Collins continually taught. A graduate from his school, an a.s.sistant who received from him a letter of recommendation, carried a high credential of a sheepskin into the trained-animal world.
"No dog walks naturally on its hind legs, much less on its forelegs,"
Collins would say. "Dogs ain"t built that way. _They have to be made to_, that"s all. That"s the secret of all animal training. They have to. You"ve got to make them. That"s your job. Make them. Anybody who can"t, can"t make good in this factory. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and get busy."
Michael saw, without fully appreciating, the use of the spiked saddle on the bucking mule. The mule was fat and good-natured the first day of its appearance in the arena. It had been a pet mule in a family of children until Collins"s keen eyes rested on it; and it had known only love and kindness and much laughter for its foolish mulishness. But Collins"s eyes had read health, vigour, and long life, as well as laughableness of appearance and action in the long-eared hybrid.
Barney Barnato he was renamed that first day in the arena, when, also, he received the surprise of his life. He did not dream of the spike in the saddle, nor, while the saddle was empty, did it press against him. But the moment Samuel Bacon, a negro tumbler, got into the saddle, the spike sank home. He knew about it and was prepared. But Barney, taken by surprise, arched his back in the first buck he had ever made. It was so prodigious a buck that Collins eyes snapped with satisfaction, while Sam landed a dozen feet away in the sawdust.
"Make good like that," Collins approved, "and when I sell the mule you"ll go along as part of the turn, or I miss my guess. And it will be some turn. There"ll be at least two more like you, who"ll have to be nervy and know how to fall. Get busy. Try him again."
And Barney entered into the h.e.l.l of education that later won his purchaser more time than he could deliver over the best vaudeville circuits in Canada and the United States. Day after day Barney took his torture. Not for long did he carry the spiked saddle. Instead, bare- back, he received the negro on his back, and was spiked and set bucking just the same; for the spike was now attached to Sam"s palm by means of leather straps. In the end, Barney became so "touchy" about his back that he almost began bucking if a person as much as looked at it.
Certainly, aware of the stab of pain, he started bucking, whirling, and kicking whenever the first signal was given of some one trying to mount him.
At the end of the fourth week, two other tumblers, white youths, being secured, the complete, builded turn was performed for the benefit of a slender, French-looking gentleman, with waxed moustaches. In the end he bought Barney, without haggling, at Collins"s own terms and engaged Sammy and the other two tumblers as well. Collins staged the trick properly, as it would be staged in the theatre, even had ready and set up all the necessary apparatus, and himself acted as ringmaster while the prospective purchaser looked on.
Barney, fat as b.u.t.ter, humorous-looking, was led into the square of cloth- covered steel cables and cloth-covered steel uprights. The halter was removed and he was turned loose. Immediately he became restless, the ears were laid back, and he was a picture of viciousness.
"Remember one thing," Collins told the man who might buy. "If you buy him, you"ll be ringmaster, and you must never, never spike him. When he comes to know that, you can always put your hands on him any time and control him. He"s good-natured at heart, and he"s the gratefullest mule I"ve ever seen in the business. He"s just got to love you, and hate the other three. And one warning: if he goes real bad and starts biting, you"ll have to pull out his teeth and feed him soft mashes and crushed grain that"s steamed. I"ll give you the recipe for the digestive dope you"ll have to put in. Now--watch!"
Collins stopped into the ring and caressed Barney, who responded in the best of tempers and tried affectionately to nudge and shove past on the way out of the ropes to escape what he knew was coming.
"See," Collins exposited. "He"s got confidence in me. He trusts me. He knows I"ve never spiked him and that I always save him in the end. I"m his good Samaritan, and you"ll have to be the same to him if you buy him.--Now I"ll give you your spiel. Of course, you can improve on it to suit yourself."
The master-trainer walked out of the rope square, stepped forward to an imaginary line, and looked down and out and up as if he were gazing at the pit of the orchestra beneath him, across at the body of the house, and up into the galleries.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he addressed the sawdust emptiness before him as if it were a packed audience, "this is Barney Barnato, the biggest joker of a mule ever born. He"s as affectionate as a Newfoundland puppy--just watch--"
Stepping back to the ropes, Collins extended his hand across them, saying: "Come here, Barney, and show all these people who you love best."
And Barney twinkled forward on his small hoofs, nozzled the open hand, and came closer, nozzling up the arm, nudging Collins"s shoulders with his nose, half-rearing as if to get across the ropes and embrace him.
What he was really doing was begging and entreating Collins to take him away out of the squared ring from the torment he knew awaited him.
"That"s what it means by never spiking him," Collins shot at the man with the waxed moustaches, as he stepped forward to the imaginary line in the sawdust, above the imaginary pit of the orchestra, and addressed the imaginary house.
"Ladies and gentlemen, Barney Barnato is a josher. He"s got forty tricks up each of his four legs, and the man don"t live that he"ll let stick on big back for sixty seconds. I"m telling you this in fair warning, before I make my proposition. Looks easy, doesn"t it?--one minute, the sixtieth part of an hour, to be precise, sixty seconds, to stick on the back of an affectionate josher mule like Barney. Well, come on you boys and broncho riders. To anybody who sticks on for one minute I shall immediately pay the sum of fifty dollars; for two whole, entire minutes, the sum of five hundred dollars."