Careers of Danger and Daring

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!"

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.'

"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!

II

METHODS OF LION-TAMERS AND THE STORY OF BRUTUS'S ATTACK ON MR. BOSTOCK

THE wild-beast tamer as generally pictured is a mysterious person who stalks about sternly in high boots and possesses a remarkable power of the eye that makes lions and tigers quail at his look and shrink away. He rules by fear, and the crack of his whip is supposed to bring memories of torturing points and red-hot irons.

Such is the story-book lion-tamer, and I may as well say at once that outside of story-books he has small existence. There is scarcely any truth in this theory of hate for hate and conquest by fear. It is no more fear that makes a lion walk on a ball than it is fear that makes a horse pull a wagon. It is habit. The lion is perfectly willing to walk on the ball, and he has reached that mind, not by cruel treatment, but by force of his trainer's patience and kindness and superior intelligence.

Of course a wild-beast tamer should have a quick eye and a delicate sense of hearing, so that he may be warned of a sudden spring at him or a rush from behind; and it is important that he be a sober man, for alcohol breaks the nerve or gives a false courage worse than folly: but the quality on which he must chiefly rely and which alone can make him a great tamer – not a second-rate bungler – is a genuine fondness for his animals. This does not mean that the animals will necessarily be fond of the tamer; some will be fond of him, some will be indifferent to him, some will fear and hate him. Nor will the tamer's fondness protect him from fang and claw. We shall see that there is danger always, accident often, but without the fondness there would be greater danger and more frequent accident. A fondness for lions and tigers gives sympathy for them, sympathy gives understanding of them, and understanding gives mastery of them, or as much mastery as is possible. What but this fondness would keep a tamer constantly with his animals, not only in the public show (the easiest part), but in the dens and treacherous runway, in the strange night hours, in the early morning romp, when no one is looking, when there is no reason for being with them except the tamer's own joy in it?

I do not purpose now to present in detail the methods of taming wild beasts; rather what happens after they are tamed: but I may say that a lion-tamer always begins by spending weeks or months in gaining a new animal's confidence. Day after day he will stand for a long time outside the cage, merely looking at the lion, talking to him, impressing upon the beast a general familiarity with his voice and person. And each time, as he goes away, he is careful to toss in a piece of meat as a pleasant memento of his visit.

Later he ventures inside the bars, carrying some simple weapon – a whip, a rod, perhaps a broom, which is more formidable than might be supposed, through the jab of its sharp bristles. One tamer used a common chair with much success against unbroken lions. If the creature came at him, there were the four legs in his face; and soon the chair came to represent boundless power to that ignorant lion. He feared it and hated it, as was seen on one occasion when the tamer left it in the cage and the lion promptly tore it into splinters.

Days may pass before the lion will let his tamer do more than merely stay inside the cage at a distance. Very well; the tamer stays there. He waits hour after hour, week after week, until a time comes when the lion will let him move nearer, will permit the touch of his hand, will come forward for a piece of meat, and at last treat him like a friend, so that finally he may sit there quite at ease, and even read his newspaper, as one man did.

Lastly begins the practice of tricks: the lion must spring to a pedestal and be fed; he must jump from one pedestal to another and be fed, must keep a certain pose and be fed. A bit of meat is always the final argument, and the tamer wins (if he wins at all, for sometimes he fails) by patience and kindness.

"There is no use getting angry with a lion," said a well-known tamer to me, "and there is no use in carrying a revolver. If you shoot a lion or injure him with any weapon, it is your loss, for you must buy another lion, and the chances are that he will kill you, anyway, if he starts to do it. The thing is to keep him from starting."

I once had a talk with the lion-tamer Philadelphia on the subject of breaking lions, and heard from him what need a tamer has of patience. "I have sat in a lion's cage," said Philadelphia, "two or three hours every day for weeks, yes, for months, waiting for him to come out of his sulky corner and take a piece of meat from me. And that was only a start toward the mastery."

"Wouldn't he attack you?"

Philadelphia smiled. "He did at first, but that was soon settled. It isn't hard to best a lion if you go at it right. I usually carry a pair of clubs. Some men prefer a broom, because the bristles do great work in a lion's face, without injuring him. But the finest weapon you can use against a fighting lion is a hose of water. That stops his fight, only you mustn't have the water too cold, or he may get pneumonia. You mightn't think it, but lions are very delicate. In using the clubs, you must be careful not to strike 'em hard across the back. You'd be surprised to know how easy it is to break a lion's backbone, especially if it's a young lion."

In support of this statement that lions are delicate, I remember hearing old John Smith, director of the Central Park Menagerie, set forth a list of lions' ailments, and the coddling and doctoring they require. Lion medicine is usually administered in the food or drink, but there are cases requiring more heroic measures, and then the animal must be bound down before the doctors can treat him. It should be remembered that lions in city menageries are more dangerous than circus lions, since they are either wild ones brought straight from the jungle and never tamed or rebellious ones, anarchist lions that have turned against their tamers, perhaps killed them, and have finally been sold to any zoölogical garden that would take them.

"When we have to rope a lion down to doctor him," said Smith, "we drop nooses through the top bars and catch his four legs, and let down one around his body. Then we haul these fast, and there you are. You can feel his pulse or give him stuff or pull out one of his teeth or anything."

"It must be pretty hard to pull a lion's tooth," I remarked.

"Not very. Here's the forceps I use; you see it isn't very big. This is for the upper jaw, and that other one is for the lower jaw."

I made some remark, meant to be facetious, about not giving lions gas, but the old man took me up sharply. "Certainly we give 'em gas. How else in the world do you think we operate on 'em? They get chloroform same as a person. I have a bag for it that fits over a lion's head, and pulls up tight with a string. In the bag is a sponge saturated with chloroform, and the first you know off goes Mr. Lion into quiet sleep, and you can do what you like with him. But you have to be mighty careful not to give him too much, and look sharp at his heart action, or you'll have a dead lion on your hands. Say, I've found out one thing chloroforming lions that lots of doctors don't know. It's this, that if a lion comes back hard to consciousness after you've put him to sleep, you can help things along by catching hold of his tail and heaving him up on his head. That sends the blood down to his brain, where you want it, and pretty soon you'll see his muscles begin to twitch, and back he comes. I told a doctor about this once, and he said he'd done the very same thing with patients."

Coming again to the need of patience, let me quote my friend "Bill" Newman. "Why," said he, "I've spent weeks and weeks teaching an elephant to ring a bell – just that one thing. You have to sit by him hour after hour, giving him the bell in his trunk and giving it to him again when he drops it, and then again and again for a whole morning, and then for many mornings until he gets the idea and rings it right. It's the same way teaching an elephant to fan himself or teaching tricks to a clown elephant; you have to wait and wait, and never give up. Once an elephant understands what you want he'll do it, but it's awful hard sometimes making 'em understand."

"How do you teach them to stand on their heads and on their hind legs?" I asked.

"With the same kind of patience and with tackle. Just heave 'em up or roll 'em over the way they're supposed to go and then keep at it. Some learn quicker than others. Once in a while you get a mean one, and then look out."

An instance of the affection felt for wild beasts by their tamers is offered in the case of Madame Bianca, the French tamer, who in the winter of 1900 was with the Bostock Wild Animal Show giving daily exhibitions in Baltimore, where her skill and daring with lions and tigers earned wide admiration. It will be remembered how fire descended suddenly on this menagerie one night and destroyed the animals amid fearful scenes. And in the morning Bianca stood in the ruins and looked upon the charred bodies of her pets. Had she lost her dearest friends, she could scarcely have shown deeper grief. She was in despair, and declared that she would never tame another group; she would leave the show business. And when the menagerie was stocked afresh with lions and tigers Bianca would not go near their cages. These were lions indeed, but not her lions, and she shook her head and mourned for "Bowzer," the handsomest lioness in captivity, and "Spitfire," and "Juliette," and the black-maned "Brutus."

This recalls a story that Mr. Bostock told me, showing how Bianca's fondness for her lions persisted even in the face of fierce attack. It was in Kansas City, and for some days Spitfire had been working badly, so that on this particular afternoon Bianca had spent two hours in the big exhibition cage trying to get the lioness into good form. But Spitfire remained sullen and refused to do one perfectly easy thing, a jump over a pedestal.

"Ask Mr. Bostock to please come here," called Bianca, finally, quite at her wit's end, with the performance hour approaching and hers the chief act. To go on with Spitfire in rebellion would never do, for the spirit of mischief spreads among lions and tigers exactly as it spreads among children. Spitfire must jump over that pedestal.

Mr. Bostock arrived presently, and at once entered the cage, carrying two whips, as is the custom. There is something in this man that impresses animals and tamers alike. It is not only that he is big and strong, and loves his animals, and does not fear them; that would scarcely account for his extraordinary prestige, which is his rather because he knows lions and tigers as only a man can who has literally spent his life with them. From father and grandfather he has inherited precious and unusual lore of the cages. He was born in a menagerie, he married the daughter of a menagerie owner, he sleeps always within a few feet of the dens, he eats with roars of lions in his ears. And his principle is, and always has been, that he will enter any cage at any time if a real need calls him – which has led to many a situation like that created now by Spitfire's disobedience.