The punk grunted and raised its trunk. Over at the side wall that mysterious thing raised its trunk also. Kas fidgeted. So did the shadow. The big ears of Kas distended in fright. Over there a pair of black ears moved in unison. Everything that Kas did was immediately aped by that thing on the wall. It was too much.
A squeal, a snort, then suddenly the crowded tent saw a tandem team of elephants pitch through the gay dividing curtain and swing into the hippodrome track at full speed, the rose-bedecked cart careening behind them on one wabbling wheel, and behind this the entire elephant herd, following excitedly and without a reason save the fact that Kas and Mo were leading the way. A moment later the cart hit a ring curb, while the bespangled Lucia Zora dived gracefully and far through the air to a dazed position on a pile of canvas, and the runaway elephant parade went on!
Around the hippodrome track they thundered, two squealing baby elephants in the lead, ten excited, bewildered adult beasts in the rear, and the whole shouting, panting menagerie force trailing vainly in their dust. The first curve came and the punks left their cart leaning in drunken, awry fashion where it had collided with a center-pole. The second, and they tangled in their flower-decorated harness, but they went on! A third curve, a fourth, then straight through the dividing curtain they plunged again, the rest of the herd after them, and back to their places in the picket line! Meanwhile out there in the main tent an amused crowd stared again at an empty hippodrome track, not knowing whether the whole thing had been an accident or some new form of elephant race!
Naturally it is an impossibility for any man or set of men to maintain an unbroken record of halting panics. Their charges are too big, too possessed with temperament, too prone to become frightened at the most puerile things for a keeper always to outguess them and outmaneuver them. However, the number of panics on the part of the various elephant herds in which damage is caused or the big brutes actually succeed in getting away is so far over-shadowed by the attempts at revolt which are broken up in their inception that there is not an opportunity for comparison. Hardly a day passes among the various circuses that at least one elephant does not decide to pit his will against that of the man in charge. But actual panics, with consequent damage, happen extremely seldom. In fact, strange as it may seem, the actual breakaways of any extent in circus history are so few that they number less than a score. When it is considered that there are fully fifty circuses in America which possess elephants, some idea may be gained of the efficacy of those men who manage the herds, who day after day, outguess and outgeneral their charges—the keepers of the bulls. But one hears little of these clashes of will. In the life of the keeper of the bulls his failures become public property; his successes are reflected in his pay envelope only, and the crowd often goes home without even the thrill of knowing that an elephantine revolution was nipped in the making.
For instance, few persons in Berkeley, California, remember an elephant stampede in that city. The very persons who saw it probably would be willing to take oath that nothing of the kind ever happened.
Yet there was a stampede, and one that for at least five minutes threatened to be extremely serious.
Berkeley, in the circus dictionary, is a “rah-rah” town, a feared thing to a menagerie department. It means a college, and the traditional enmity that has grown up between tent shows and student bodies through long years of fights and troubles occasioned by the overexuberance of youth, and the disturbances that almost invariably follow the attendance at a performance of a large body of students with their class yells, their chain steps and snake dances. Circuses are composed of high-strung persons who risk their lives as a part of their daily work, and of equally high-strung horses and other animals. Disturbances during the performances are not to their liking.
But on this particular morning in Berkeley things apparently were going exceeding well.
The parade had started on time from the lot, and now was traversing the longest and most crowded street of the whole route. The bands were blaring happily. The bull section, numbering some twelve animals, was shuffling along the asphalt in peace and contentment.
Suddenly from around a corner there swung into line with the parade a lock-step crew of some three hundred students, their feet stamping the pavement in unison, their lips chanting a monotonous college song, joining the procession directly behind the bull section. The elephant keepers spurred up their horses and attempted to stop the demonstration. The college men simply grinned at them and tramped steadily on. Time after time the bull-men gave warning of what the result of the monotonous chant and still more monotonous tramp-tramp-tramp of hundreds of stamping feet might be. The parade marshal looked around wildly for police. They were somewhere else. He strove to block the marching line with his horse. They circled him and went on, still beside the shuffling bull line.