Floto was in the position of a cornered criminal. He had disobeyed every law of the mistress of the herd, and now he defied her. He did not even wait for Old Mom to approach him. Head lowered, trunk tightly curled, he swung forward to the attack, butted her out of the way and plunged through the side wall, out into the sparsely peopled circus lot, an outlaw at last.
Wagons tumbled out of his way as he crashed into them. Ticket boxes turned to matchwood when he caught them and crushed them with swift stamping blows of his heavy forefeet. Ropes parted like strings before his plowing progress. A workman crossed his path; the elephant caught him in his trunk and threw him thirty feet into an irrigation ditch. Back to the menagerie he went, to butt every elephant that faced him, to overturn cages, to seize frightened, screaming ponies and break their backs. Then they called for the rifles.
Only thirty-thirties were in the ticket wagon, equipped with leaden bullets. But the animal men felt that enough shots from them might suffice; at least they might be able to hold the maddened beast at bay until a rushing automobile, already sent townwards, could return with army rifles. Hurriedly the guns were distributed and the magazines filled. Then as fast as hands could work the levers thirty shots were fired at the head of the outlaw, every one striking its mark.
But the bullets did little more than pierce the heavy flesh; some of them dropped to the ground without even breaking the thick armor of hide that covered the elephant’s skull.
He stood and took the shots, one after another, hardly seeming to notice their impact. Then suddenly, as though bewildered, as though seeking a reason for it all, he whirled for a moment in aimless circles, then headed straight for the empty big top. The bullets had not entered the animal’s thick skull, but something akin to a thought had. The stinging of the speeding lead in some way seemed to convey an idea to the brute that the humans who had commanded him were now striving to force him to do a certain thing, and in a hazy moment of obedience he hurried to its execution as swiftly as possible, the only thing he knew!
Into the center ring he rushed, to halt, a single elephant in the middle of a deserted circus tent. There, alone, sans the music, sans the crowds, sans the brilliance and the brightness which usually accompanied the performance, Floto the outlaw, the blood streaming from thirty bullet holes, without guidance, without even a cue, went through every figure of his act, while at the connections the men of the circus stood and watched, unable to cope with him, unable to kill him, unable to conquer him; watched while he waltzed about the ring, while he knelt over an imaginary trainer, while he walked on his hind hoofs; and while, with a sudden change of thought, he crashed across the stages, tore down a section of seats, and then, bursting through the side wall, ran for the open country.
All that night they trailed him, a trail of broken fences, of smashed chicken yards, of wide swaths through growing crops! The next morning they found Floto a bare half-mile from town, where he evidently was circling back to the circus. But he still was the outlaw, still the renegade. He sighted the armed men and trumpeted. Then with a swift movement he turned toward a telegraph pole and wrapped his trunk about it. There was a sharp crackle. Wires spit and sang as they popped. Floto had snapped the pole clean at its base and, swinging it even as an angered man would swing a club, had headed straight toward his hunters! There they killed him, with three swift volleys of steel-jacketed bullets, even as he charged them, Floto who had feared discipline enough to become a renegade!
From all of which may be gathered that the life of the keeper of the bulls is far from a bored existence.
Nor is it always a matter of a spasmodic breakaway or a single bad animal that must be feared. There is one instance, a great many years ago, of a herd that was incorrigible not only for a day, but a season.
But to the story: There had been a change in the men commanding the herd, a sudden change, and one which the elephants did not like. At least, they gave evidence of a displeasure that was not only keen but lasting. The show, as was usual, opened its season in the Coliseum, in Chicago, and according to the ordinary custom held its rehearsals for three days before the beginning of the regular performance.