Jack London - Michael, Brother of Jerry

“Now on the stage, they got real tricks to do, tricks they don’t do, tricks they hate. And they mightn’t be feeling good—got a touch of cold, or mange, or are sour-balled. What are you going to do? Apologize to the audience? Besides, on the stage, the programme runs like clockwork. Got to start performing on the tick of the clock, and anywhere from one to seven turns a day, all depending what kind of time you’ve got. The point is, your dogs have got to get right up and perform. No loving them, no begging them, no waiting on them. And there’s only the one way. They’ve got to know when you start, you mean it.”

“And dogs ain’t fools,” Johnny opined. “They know when you mean anything, an’ when you don’t.”

“Sure thing,” Collins nodded approbation. “The moment you slack up on them is the moment they slack up in their work. You get soft, and see how quick they begin making mistakes in their tricks. You’ve got to keep the fear of God over them. If you don’t, they won’t, and you’ll find yourself begging for spotted time on the bush circuits.”

Half an hour later, Michael heard, though he understood no word of it, the master-trainer laying another law down to another assistant.

“Cross-breds and mongrels are what’s needed, Charles. Not one thoroughbred in ten makes good, unless he’s got the heart of a coward, and that’s just what distinguishes them from mongrels and cross-breds. Like race-horses, they’re hot-blooded. They’ve got sensitiveness, and pride. Pride’s the worst. You listen to me. I was born into the business and I’ve studied it all my life. I’m a success. There’s only one reason I’m a success—I KNOW. Get that. I KNOW.”

“Another thing is that cross-breds and mongrels are cheap. You needn’t be afraid of losing them or working them out. You can always get more, and cheap. And they ain’t the trouble in teaching. You can throw the fear of God into them. That’s what’s the matter with the thoroughbreds. You can’t throw the fear of God into them.”

“Give a mongrel a real licking, and what’s he do? He’ll kiss your hand, and be obedient, and crawl on his belly to do what you want him to do. They’re slave dogs, that’s what mongrels are. They ain’t got courage, and you don’t want courage in a performing dog. You want fear. Now you give a thoroughbred a licking and see what happens. Sometimes they die. I’ve known them to die. And if they don’t die, what do they do? Either they go stubborn, or vicious, or both. Sometimes they just go to biting and foaming. You can kill them, but you can’t keep them from biting and foaming. Or they’ll go straight stubborn. They’re the worst. They’re the passive resisters—that’s what I call them. They won’t fight back. You can flog them to death, but it won’t buy you anything. They’re like those Christians that used to be burned at the stake or boiled in oil. They’ve got their opinions, and nothing you can do will change them. They’ll die first. . . . And they do. I’ve had them. I was learning myself . . . and I learned to leave the thoroughbred alone. They beat you out. They get your goat. You never get theirs. And they’re time-wasters, and patience-wasters, and they’re expensive.”

“Take this terrier here.” Collins nodded at Michael, who stood several feet back of him, morosely regarding the various activities of the arena. “He’s both kinds of a thoroughbred, and therefore no good. I’ve never given him a real licking, and I never will. It would be a waste of time. He’ll fight if you press him too hard. And he’ll die fighting you. He’s too sensible to fight if you don’t press him too hard. And if you don’t press him too hard, he’ll just stay as he is, and refuse to learn anything. I’d chuck him right now, except Del Mar couldn’t make a mistake. Poor Harry knew he had a specially, and a crackerjack, and it’s up to me to find it.”

“Wonder if he’s a lion dog,” Charles suggested.

“He’s the kind that ain’t afraid of lions,” Collins concurred. “But what sort of a specially trick could he do with lions? Stick his head in their mouths? I never heard of a dog doing that, and it’s an idea. But we can try him. We’ve tried him at ’most everything else.”

“There’s old Hannibal ,” said Charles. “He used to take a woman’s head in his mouth with the old Sales-Sinker shows.”

“But old Hannibal ’s getting cranky,” Collins objected. “I’ve been watching him and trying to get rid of him. Any animal is liable to go off its nut any time, especially wild ones. You see, the life ain’t natural. And when they do, it’s good night. You lose your investment, and, if you don’t know your business, maybe your life.”

And Michael might well have been tried out on Hannibal and have lost his head inside that animal’s huge mouth, had not the good fortune of apropos-ness intervened. For, the next moment, Collins was listening to the hasty report of his lion-and-tiger keeper. The man who reported was possibly forty years of age, although he looked half as old again. He was a withered-faced man, whose face-lines, deep and vertical, looked as if they had been clawed there by some beast other than himself.

“Old Hannibal is going crazy,” was the burden of his report.

“Nonsense,” said Harris Collins. “It’s you that’s getting old. He’s got your goat, that’s all. I’ll show it to you.—Come on along, all of you. We’ll take fifteen minutes off of the work, and I’ll show you a show never seen in the show-ring. It’d be worth ten thousand a week anywhere . . . only it wouldn’t last. Old Hannibal would turn up his toes out of sheer hurt feelings.—Come on everybody! All hands! Fifteen minutes recess!”

And Michael followed at the heels of his latest and most terrible master, the twain leading the procession of employees and visiting professional animal men who trooped along behind. As was well known, when Harris Collins performed he performed only for the йlite, for the hoi-polloi of the trained-animal world.

The lion-and-tiger man, who had clawed his own face with the beast-claws of his nature, whimpered protest when he saw his employer’s preparation to enter Hannibal ’s cage; for the preparation consisted merely in equipping himself with a broom-handle.

Hannibal was old, but he was reputed the largest lion in captivity, and he had not lost his teeth. He was pacing up and down the length of his cage, heavily and swaying, after the manner of captive animals, when the unexpected audience erupted into the space before his cage. Yet he took no notice whatever, merely continuing his pacing, swinging his head from side to side, turning lithely at each end of his cage, with all the air of being bent on some determined purpose.

“That’s the way he’s been goin’ on for two days,” whimpered his keeper. “An’ when you go near ’m, he just reaches for you. Look what he done to me.” The man held up his right arm, the shirt and undershirt ripped to shreds, and red parallel grooves, slightly clotted with blood, showing where the claws had broken the skin. “An’ I wasn’t inside. He did it through the bars, with one swipe, when I was startin’ to clean his cage. Now if he’d only roar, or something. But he never makes a sound, just keeps on goin’ up an’ down.”

“Where’s the key?” Collins demanded. “Good. Now let me in. And lock it afterward and take the key out. Lose it, forget it, throw it away. I’ll have all the time in the world to wait for you to find it to let me out.”

And Harris Collins, a sliver of a less than a light-weight man, who lived in mortal fear that at table the mother of his children would crown him with a plate of hot soup, went into the cage, before the critical audience of his employees and professional visitors, armed only with a broom-handle. Further, the door was locked behind him, and, the moment he was in, keeping a casual but alert eye on the pacing Hannibal , he reiterated his order to lock the door and remove the key.