Continually a multitude of strange scents10 invaded his nostrils11. Although he could not see through walls, he got the smells he was later to identify of lions, leopards12, monkeys, baboons13, and seals and sea-lions. All of which might have stunned14 an ordinary dog; but the effect on him was to make him very alert and at the same time very subdued15. It was as if he walked in a new and monstrously16 populous17 jungle and was unacquainted with its ways and denizens18.
As he was entering the arena19, he shied off to the side more stiff-leggedly than ever, bristled all along his neck and back, and growled20 deep and low in his throat. For, emerging from the arena, came five elephants. Small elephants they were, but to him they were the hugest of monsters, in his mind comparable only with the cow-whale of which he had caught fleeting21 glimpses when she destroyed the schooner22 Mary Turner. But the elephants took no notice of him, each with its trunk clutching the tail of the one in front of it as it had been taught to do in making an exit.
Into the arena, he came, the bears following on his heels. It was a sawdust circle the size of a circus ring, contained inside a square building that was roofed over with glass. But there were no seats about the ring, since spectators were not tolerated. Only Harris Collins and his assistants, and buyers and sellers of animals and men in the profession, were ever permitted to behold24 how animals were tormented25 into the performance of tricks to make the public open its mouth in astonishment26 or laughter.
Michael forgot about the bears, who were quickly at work on the other side of the circle from that to which he was taken. Some men, rolling out stout27 bright-painted barrels which elephants could not crush by sitting on, attracted his attention for a moment. Next, in a pause on the part of the man who led him, he regarded with huge interest a piebald Shetland pony28. It lay on the ground. A man sat on it. And ever and anon it lifted its head from the sawdust and kissed the man. This was all Michael saw, yet he sensed something wrong about it. He knew not why, had no evidence why, but he felt cruelty and power and unfairness. What he did not see was the long pin in the man’s hand. Each time he thrust this in the pony’s shoulder, the pony, stung by the pain and reflex action, lifted its head, and the man was deftly29 ready to meet the pony’s mouth with his own mouth. To an audience the impression would be that in such fashion the pony was expressing its affection for the master.
Not a dozen feet away another Shetland, a coal-black one, was behaving as peculiarly as it was being treated. Ropes were attached to its forelegs, each rope held by an assistant, who jerked on the same stoutly30 when a third man, standing31 in front of the pony, tapped it on the knees with a short, stiff whip of rattan32. Whereupon the pony went down on its knees in the sawdust in a genuflection33 to the man with the whip. The pony did not like it, sometimes so successfully resisting with spread, taut35 legs and mutinous36 head-tossings, as to overcome the jerk of the ropes, and, at the same time wheeling, to fall heavily on its side or to uprear as the pull on the ropes was relaxed. But always it was lined up again to face the man who rapped its knees with the rattan. It was being taught merely how to kneel in the way that is ever a delight to the audiences who see only the results of the schooling37 and never dream of the manner of the schooling. For, as Michael was quickly sensing, knowledge was here learned by pain. In short, this was the college of pain, this Cedarwild Animal School.
Harris Collins himself nodded the dark youth-god up to him, and turned an inquiring and estimating gaze on Michael.
“The Del Mar23 dog, sir,” said the youth-god.
Collins’s eyes brightened, and he looked Michael over more carefully.
“Do you know what he can do?” he queried38.
The youth shook his head.
“Harry39 was a keen one,” Collins went on, apparently40 to the youth-god but mostly for his own benefit, being given to thinking aloud. “He picked this dog as a winner. And now what can he do? That’s the question. Poor Harry’s gone, and we don’t know what he can do.—Take off the chain.”
Released Michael regarded the master-god and waited for what might happen. A squall of pain from one of the bears across the ring hinted to him what he might expect.
“Come here,” Collins commanded in his cold, hard tones.
Michael came and stood before him.
“Lie down!”
Michael lay down, although he did it slowly, with advertised reluctance41.
“Damned thoroughbred!” Collins sneered42 at him. “Won’t put any pep into your motions, eh? Well, we’ll take care of that.—Get up!—Lie down!—Get up!—Lie down!—Get up!”
His commands were staccato, like revolver shots or the cracks of whips, and Michael obeyed them in his same slow, reluctant way.
“Understands English, at any rate,” said Collins.
“Wonder if he can turn the double flip43,” he added, expressing the golden dream of all dog-trainers. “Come on, we’ll try him for a flip. Put the chain on him. Come over here, Jimmy. Put another lead on him.”
Another reform-school graduate youth obeyed, snapping a girth about Michael’s loins, to which was attached a thin rope.
“Line him up,” Collins commanded. “Ready?—Go!”
And the most amazing, astounding44 indignity45 was wreaked46 upon Michael. At the word “Go!”, simultaneously47, the chain on his collar jerked him up and back in the air, the rope on his hindquarters jerked that portion of him under, forward, and up, and the still short stick in Collins’s hand hit him under the lower jaw49. Had he had any previous experience with the manoeuvre50, he would have saved himself part of the pain at least by springing and whirling backward in the air. As it was, he felt as if being torn and wrenched51 apart while at the same time the blow under his jaw stung him and almost dazed him. And, at the same time, whirled violently into the air, he fell on the back of his head in the sawdust.
Out of the sawdust he soared in rage, neck-hair erect52, throat a-snarl, teeth bared to bite, and he would have sunk his teeth into the flesh of the master-god had he not been the slave of cunning formula. The two youths knew their work. One tightened53 the lead ahead, the other to the rear, and Michael snarled54 and bristled his impotent wrath55. Nothing could he do, neither advance, nor retreat, nor whirl sideways. The youth in front by the chain prevented him from attacking the youth behind, and the youth behind, with the rope, prevented him from attacking the youth in front, and both prevented him from attacking Collins, whom he knew incontrovertibly to be the master of evil and hurt.
Michael’s wrath was as superlative as was his helplessness. He could only bristle6 and tear his vocal56 chords with his rage. But it was a very ancient and boresome experience to Collins. He was even taking advantage of the moment to glance across the arena and size up what the bears were doing.
“Oh, you thoroughbred,” he sneered at Michael, returning his attention to him. “Slack him! Let go!”
The instant his bonds were released, Michael soared at Collins, and Collins, timing57 and distancing with the accuracy of long years, kicked him under the jaw and whirled him back and down into the sawdust.
“Hold him!” Collins ordered. “Line him out!”
And the two youths, pulling in opposite directions with chain and rope, stretched him into helplessness.
Collins glanced across the ring to the entrance, where two teams of heavy draft-horses were entering, followed by a woman dressed to over-dressedness in the last word of a stylish58 street-costume.
“I fancy he’s never done any flipping,” Collins remarked, coming back to the problem of Michael for a moment. “Take off your lead, Jimmy, and go over and help Smith.—Johnny, hold him to one side there and mind your legs. Here comes Miss Marie for her first lesson, and that mutt of a husband of hers can’t handle her.”
Michael did not understand the scene that followed, which he witnessed, for the youth led him over to look on at the arranging of the woman and the four horses. Yet, from her conduct, he sensed that she, too, was captive and ill-treated. In truth, she was herself being trained unwillingly59 to do a trick. She had carried herself bravely right to the moment of the ordeal60, but the sight of the four horses, ranged two and two opposing her, with the thing patent that she was to hold in her hands the hooks on the double-trees and form the link that connected the two spans which were to pull in opposite directions—at the sight of this her courage failed her and she shrank back,
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