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Careers of Danger and Daring

<hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>THE WILD-BEAST TAMER</h2> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>I</h2> <h3>WE VISIT A QUEER RESORT FOR CIRCUS PEOPLE AND TALK WITH A TRAINER OF ELEPHANTS</h3> <div class='cap'>WELL down on Fourth Avenue, below the bird-fanciers, the rat-catchers, the antique-shops, and the dingy hotels where lion-tamers put up, is "Billy's" place, the great rendezvous of the country for circus folk, and here any afternoon or evening, especially in the dull winter-time, you may find heroes of the flying trapeze, bereft of show-ring trappings, playing monotonous euchre with keepers of the cages, or sitting in convivial and reminiscent groups that include everything from the high-salaried star down to some humble tooter in the band at present looking for a job. All kinds of acrobats come to "Billy's," all kinds of animal men, everybody who has to do with a show, barring the owners. If a Norwegian wrestler wants to get track of an Egyptian giant he goes to "Billy's." If an elephant-trainer needs a new helper he goes to "Billy's." It is at once a club, a haven, a post-office, and a general intelligence bureau for members of this wandering and fascinating profession.</div> It was my fortune recently to spend an evening at "Billy's," and I had as companion a veteran circus man, able to explain things. After taking in the externals, which were commonplace enough save for "big-top" celebrities ranged along the walls in tiers of photographs, we sat us down where a man in a blue shirt was telling how a lioness and three cubs got out of a cage somewhere one afternoon just after the performance. It seems one of the cubs had been playing with a loose bolt, and the first thing anybody knew, there they were, all four of them, skipping about free in the menagerie tent. The story detailed various efforts to get the lioness back into her cage—prodding, lassoing, shouting—and the total failure of these because she would neither leave her cubs nor let them be taken from her. Finally, the situation grew serious, for the evening performance was coming on, and it was quite sure there would be no audience with an uncaged lioness on the premises. So it became a matter of business in this wise—a lioness worth a few hundred dollars against an audience worth a couple of thousand. Word was sent to the head of the show, and back came the order, "Kill her." In vain the keeper pleaded for one more trial; he would risk a hand-to-hand struggle with hot irons. The head of the show said, "No"; the lioness was desperate, and he wouldn't have his men expose their lives. It was a case of "Shoot her, and do it quick." Of course, that settled it; they did shoot her, and as the blue-shirted man described the execution I was impressed by his tenderness in speaking of that poor, defiant mother, and then of the three little cubs that "howled for her a whole month, sir, and looked so sad it made us boys feel like murderers, blamed if it didn't!" <div class="figright"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus66.jpg" width-obs="400" height-obs="600" alt="HOW THE LIONESS WAS CAPTURED ON THE OPEN PRAIRIE." title="" /> HOW THE LIONESS WAS CAPTURED ON THE OPEN PRAIRIE.</div> Another man, with steely gray eyes and a stubble of beard, ventured the opinion that they must have had a pretty poor quality of gumption in that outfit, or somebody would have got the lioness into her cage. He was mighty sure George Conklin would have done it. George was over in Europe now handling big cats for the Barnum show. There wasn't anything George didn't know about lions. "Why, I'll give you a case," said he. "We were showing out in Kansas, and one night a cage fell off the circus train, became unlashed or something as she swung round a curve, and when we stuck our heads out of the sleeper there were a pair of greenish, burning eyes coming down the side of the track, and we could hear a ruh-ruh-r-r-r-ruh—something between a bark and a roar—that didn't cheer us up any, you'd better believe. Then George Conklin yelled, 'By the Lord, it's Mary! Come on, boys; we must get her!' and out we went. Mary was a full-grown lioness, and she was loose there in the darkness, out on a bare prairie, without a house or a fence anywhere for miles." "Hold on," said I; "how did your circus train happen to stop when the cage fell off?" With indulgent smile, he explained that a circus train running at night always has guards on the watch, who wave quick lanterns to the engineer in any emergency. "Well," continued the man, "George Conklin had that cage fixed up and the lioness safe inside within forty minutes by the clock. Do? Why, it was easy enough. We unrolled about a hundred yards of side-wall wall tenting, and carried it toward the lioness. It was a line of men, holding up a length of canvas so that it formed a long, moving fence. And every man carried a flaming kerosene torch. There was a picture to remember, that line of heads over the canvas wall, and the flaring lights gradually circling around the lioness, who backed, growling and switching her tail—backed away from the fire, until presently, as we closed in, we had her in the mouth of a funnel of canvas, with torches everywhere, except just at her back, where the open cage was. Then Conklin spoke sharp to her, just as if they were in the ring, and snapped his whip, and the next thing Miss Mary was safe behind the bars. It was a pretty neat job, I can tell you." During this talk a broad-shouldered man had joined the group, and my companion whispered that he was "Bill" Newman, the famous elephant-trainer. Mr. Newman at once showed an interest in the discussion, and agreed that there are times when you can do nothing with an animal but kill it. "Now, there was old Albert," said he, "a fine ten-foot tusker, that I'd seen grow up from a baby, and I was fond of him, too, but I had to kill him. It was in '85, and we were showing in New Hampshire. Albert had been cranky for a long time—never with me, but with the other men—and in Nashua he slammed a keeper against the ground so hard that he died the next morning just as we were coming into Keene. That settled it, and at the afternoon performance Mr. Hutchinson announced in the ring that we had an elephant on our hands under sentence of death, and he was willing to turn this elephant over to the local rifle corps if they felt equal to the execution. You see, he had heard there was a company of sharpshooters in Keene, and it struck him this was a good way to be rid of a bad elephant, and get some advertising at the same time. "Well, those Keene riflemen weren't going to be bluffed by a showman. They said to bring on the elephant, and they'd take care of him. So, after the performance I led old Albert back to a piece of woods behind the tents, and we hitched tackle to his four legs and stretched him out between four trees so he couldn't move, and then the rifle corps lined up about twelve paces off, ready to shoot. That elephant knew he was going to die; yes, sir, he knew it perfectly well, but he was a lot cooler than some of those riflemen. Why, there was one fellow on the end of the line shaking so he could hardly aim. You see, they were afraid old Albert would break loose and come at 'em if they only wounded him. "'Do you men know where to shoot?' I called out. "'We're going to shoot at his head,' answered the captain. "'All right,' said I; 'you'd better send for lanterns and more ammunition. You're liable to be shooting here all night.' "'Then, where shall we shoot?' asked the captain. "'That depends,' I answered. 'If you can send your bullets straight into his eye at a forty-five degree up-slant, you'll fix him all right. But if you don't hit his eye you can shoot the rest of his head full of holes, and he won't care. You've got to reach his brain, and that's a little thing in where I'm telling you.' "This made the captain do some thinking, for Albert looked awful big and his eye looked awful small, and they didn't want to bungle the job. 'Well,' said he, 'is there any other place we can aim at except his eye?' "'Aim here,' I told him, and I drew a circle with a piece of chalk just back of his left foreleg, a circle about as big as your hand. When a man has cut up as many elephants as I have he knows where the heart is. But most men don't. "After this there was a hush, while the whole crowd held its breath, and old Albert looked at me out of his little eyes as much as to say, 'So you're going to let 'em do me after all, are you?' and then came the sharp command, 'Ready, fire!' and thirty-two rifle-balls started for that chalk-mark. And how many do you think got there? Five out of thirty-two; I counted 'em, but five did the business. Poor old Albert dropped without a sound or a struggle." Newman sighed at the memory. "Isn't there some exaggeration," I asked, "in what you said about shooting an elephant full of holes without killing him?" "Exaggeration!" answered Newman. "Not a bit of it. Why, there was an elephant named Samson with the Cole show, and he got loose once in a town out in Idaho and ran through the streets crazy mad, killing horses, smashing into houses, ripping the whole place wide open. Well, sir, they shot at him with Winchesters, revolvers, shot-guns, every darned thing they had, until that elephant was full of lead, but he went off all right the next day, and never seemed any the worse for it up to the day when he was burned to death with the Barnum show at Bridgeport." The mention of this catastrophe reminded me of reports that wild beasts in a burning menagerie are silent before the flames, and I asked Mr. Newman if he believed it. "No, sir," said he; "it isn't true. I was in Bridgeport when the Barnum show burned up, and I never heard such roaring and screaming. It was awful. Even the rhinoceros, which can't make much noise, was running around the yard grunting and squealing, with flames four feet high shooting up from his back and sides. You see, a rhinoceros is almost solid fat, and as soon as he caught fire he burned like an oil-tank." "Didn't you save any lions or tigers?" He shook his head. "Wasn't any use trying. They'd have been shot by policemen as fast as we could get 'em out. Besides, we couldn't get 'em out. We concentrated on elephants, and saved all the herd but five. There were free elephants all over Bridgeport that night, and a queer thing was we had to look sharp that some of the elephants we'd saved didn't run back into the fire. You know how horses will go back into a burning stable. Well, elephants are just the same. That's how we lost the white elephant. She walked straight into the blaze, when she might just as well have walked out through the open door." By this time most of the company at "Billy's" had gathered about to listen, for Newman was a veteran among veterans, and was now in the full swing of reminiscence. He went back to his earliest days, back to Putnam County, New York, where young men might well be drawn to the circus life, so many famous showmen has this region produced—"Jim" Kelly and Seth B. Howes and Langway and the Baileys. "I started with Langway, the old lion-tamer," said Newman, "and he was one of the best. I'll never forget what he told me once when he was breaking in a den of lions and tigers—there were three lions and two tigers, all full grown and fresh from the jungle. "'Bill,' said he, 'I'm an old man, and this here is my last den. I won't break in no more big cats, but I'll break this den in so they'll never work for another man after I'm gone. It'll look easy what I do, and folks'll want you to tackle 'em, Bill, but don't you never do it, for if you do these cats'll chew ye up sure.' <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus67.jpg" width-obs="510" height-obs="600" alt="MAN IN CAGE WITH LIONS." title="" /> MAN IN CAGE WITH LIONS.</div> "Well, he worked that den in great shape for a year or so, and then he died, and I minded his words. I let those lions and tigers alone. They hired a lion-tamer named Davis to work 'em, and sure enough he got chewed up bad, just as the old man said he would, and the end of it was that nobody ever did work that den again; it couldn't be done, although they'd been like kittens with Langway. What he did to 'em's always been a mystery." Newman paused, as impressive story-tellers do, and then, drawing once more upon his memories, he told how a terrible death came to poor "Patsy" Meagher as he was drilling a herd of elephants once in winter quarters at Columbus, Ohio. "It was the day before Thanksgiving," he said. "I'll never forget it, and a big bull elephant named Syd took the order wrong, went 'right face' instead of 'left face,' or something, and 'Patsy' got mad and hooked him pretty hard. Some think it was 'Patsy's' fault, because he gave the wrong order by mistake and Syd did what he said, while the other elephants did the thing he meant to say. Anyhow, Syd turned on 'Patsy' and let him have both tusks, brass balls and all, right through the body. Killed him in half a minute. Why, sir, they took 'Patsy's' watch out through his back. That's the sort of thing you're liable to run up against." "Did they kill Syd?" I asked. "No; they gave him the benefit of the doubt. You see, it ain't square to blame an elephant for obeying orders." Then came the story of how they killed bad old Pilot at the Madison Square Garden back in 1883, fought his hard spirit all night long with clubs and pitchforks and prods and hot irons, one hundred men flaying and jabbing in relays against a poor, bound animal that died rather than yield—died without a sound as day was breaking. "Yes, sir," said Newman; "he never squealed, he wouldn't squeal, and three minutes before he died he nearly killed me with a swing of his trunk. Oh, he was game all right, Pilot was." Newman came back to the difficulty of working animals broken in by another tamer, but he declared that the thing can be done in some cases if the new tamer has in him that unknown something to which all wild beasts submit. His own wife, for example, after a dozen years of peaceful married life, determined one day that she would make a herd of eight big Asiatic elephants obey her, a thing no woman had ever attempted. And within three weeks she did it, and drilled the herd in public for years afterward—in fact, became a greater star than her husband. All of which was most unusual, and due entirely to her exceptional nerve and physical power. "Why, sir," said Newman, proudly, "she was six feet tall and built like an athlete. She—she only died a few years ago, and—and—" That gulp and the catch in his voice told the whole story. This was no longer a dauntless elephant-trainer, but a stricken, heart-broken man. What now were glories of the ring to him—his wife was dead! <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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