The Indian jungles were showing Skag deep secrets about wild animals—knowledge beyond his hopes. Some things that he thought he knew in the old days as a circus-trainer were beginning to look curious and obsolete, but much still held good, even became more and more significant. The things he had known intuitively did not diminish. These had to do with mysterious talents of his own, and dated back to the moment he stood for the first time before one of the "big cat" cages at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. That was his initiation-day in a craft in which he had since gone very far as white men go—even into the endless fascination of the cobra-craft.
Skag was meeting now from time to time in his jungle work some of the big hunters of India, men whose lives were a-seethe with tales of adventure. When they talked, however, Skag slowly but surely grasped the fact that what they had was "outside stuff." They knew trails, defensive and fighting habits, species and calls; they knew a great collection of detached facts about animals but it was all like what one would see in a strange city—watching from outside its wall. There was a certain boundary of observation which they never passed. All that Skag cared to know was across, on the inner side of the wall.
As for the many little hunters, they were tame; only their bags were "wild." They never even approached the boundary. Skag reflected much on these affairs. It dawned on him at last, that when you go out with the idea of killing a creature, you may get its attitude toward death, but you won't learn about how it regards life.
The more you give, the more you get from any relation. This is not only common knowledge among school-teachers, but among stock-raisers and rose-growers. Almost every man has had experience with a real teacher, at least once in his life—possibly only a few weeks or even days, but a bit of real teaching—when something within opened and answered as never before. It was like an extension of consciousness. If you look back you'll find that you loved that teacher—at least, liked that one differently, very deep.
Skag wanted a great deal. He wanted more from the jungle doubtless than was ever formulated in a white man's mind before. He wanted to know what certain holy men know; men who dare to walk to and fro in the jungles without arms, apparently without fear. He wanted to know what the priests of Hanuman know about monkeys; and what mahouts of famous elephants like Neela Deo and Mithi Baba and Gunpat Rao of the Chief Commissioner's stockades, know about elephants.
At this point one reflection was irresistible. The priests of Hanuman gave all they had—care, patience, tenderness, even their lives, to the monkey people. There were no two ways about the mahouts; they loved the elephants reverently; even regarding them as beings more exalted than men. As for the holy men—the sign manual of their order was love for all creatures. No, there was no getting away from the fact that you must give yourself to a thing if you want to know it. . . . Skag would come up breathless out of this contemplation—only to find it was the easiest thing he did—to love wild animals. . . .
Skag had reason to hold high his trust in animals. He had entered the big cat cages countless times and always had himself and the animals in hand. He had made good in the tiger pit-trap and certainly the loose tiger near the monkey glen didn't charge. All this might have established the idea that all animals were bound to answer his love for them.
But India was teaching him otherwise.
In the hills back of Poona he had met a murderer. That cat-scream at the last chilled him to the very centre of things. Cheetahs were malignant; no two ways about that. Skag hadn't failed. He never was better. There was no fear nor any lack of concentration in his work upon the cheetah beast. Any tiger he knew would have answered to his cool force, but the cheetah didn't.
It was the same with the big snake in the grass jungle. Skag had met fear there—something of monstrous proportion, more powerful than will, harder to deal with by a wide margin than any plain adjustment to death. It stayed with him. It was more formidable than pain. He had talked with Cadman about a peculiar inadequacy he felt in dealing with the snake—as if his force did not penetrate. Cadman knew too much to hoot at Skag's dilemma. The more a man knows, the more he can believe.