LIONS ’N’ TIGERS ’N’ EVERYTHING
CHAPTER I
INSIDE THE TRAINING DEN
I REMEMBER, rather distinctly, the first time I ever went into the steel arena. I was to meet three lions and an equal number of tigers, all full grown, and unintroduced, so far, to any one but their original trainer. Naturally, I believed I knew beforehand just about what would happen.
Outside the arena, on one side, would be three or four men with long iron rods, the points of which were heated white hot,—sufficient to halt any beast in the attack. On the other side would be an equal number of attendants, equipped with an invention which I never had seen, but which I knew all about, a thing called an “electric prod rod,” coupled up with the electric light wires and capable of spitting thousands of volts of electricity at the lion or tiger which might seek to devour me. I, personally, would have two revolvers, one loaded with blank cartridges, for use during the ordinary course of the visit and to cow the beasts into a knowledge that I was their superior; the other equipped with steel-jacketed bullets in case of a real emergency.
There was a certain amount of foundation for my beliefs. Back in childhood days, when I had been a runaway clown with a small, tatterdemalion circus, the menagerie had consisted of one lion, vicious to the extreme and permanently blinded by blows from a leaden-tipped whip, and three scarred and scurvy-appearing leopards which hated humans with enthusiastic passion, and which eventually accomplished their much desired ambition of killing the trainer who had beaten them daily for years. From that menagerie experience I knew that all animals were beaten unmercifully, that they were burned and tortured and shot, and that the training of any jungle animal could be carried out in only one way—that of breaking the spirit of the beast and holding it in a constant subjection of fear. But—
Only one man was in the menagerie house of the circus winter quarters when I entered—the trainer. The steel arena stood, already erected, in the center of the big building, but I looked in vain for the attendants with the electric prod rods, and the men with the white-hot irons. As for the trainer himself, I failed to notice any bulges in his pockets which might denote revolvers; in fact, he carried nothing except two cheap, innocent-appearing buggy whips. One of these he handed me in nonchalant style, then motioned toward the arena.
“All right,” he ordered, pulling back the steel door, “get in.”
“Get in?” Everything was all wrong, and I knew it. “Where are the animal men?”
“Over at the cookhouse, eating dinner. I’ll let the cats into the chute. Go ahead inside so I can strap the door.”
“But—”