Finn The Wolfhound Part 11

"Well, say," said the boss, with warm admiration, "if he ain't two ends an' the middle of a jim-dandy rustler from 'way back, you can search me! Say, Sam, cut along an' find the Professor. Tell him I'd like to see him right here."

The great barred cage, with its three divisions, was now enclosed, with various other cages and properties of the circus, within a high canvas wall in the centre of the camp. The circus was to open that night, and much remained to be done in the way of preparing a ring in the big main tent, and so forth. A number of piebald horses stood in different parts of the enclosure, nosing idly at the dusty ground, and paying not the slightest heed either to the scent of the different wild creatures, or to the roaring snarls and growls that issued continuously from Killer's cage. Familiarity had bred indifference in them to things which would have sent a horse from outside half crazy with fear.

The Professor arrived with Sam, after a few minutes. He wore knee boots, a vivid red shirt, and a much soiled old leather coat which reached almost to his boots. From his right wrist there dangled a long quilt, or cutting whip, of rhinoceros-hide. Born in the neighbourhood of Pretoria, the Professor had been through most phases of the showman's business in South Africa and, during the past half-dozen years, in Australia. In one sense he was a cruel man; but in the worst possible sense of the word he was not cruel.

That is to say, it gave him no particular gratification to inflict pain; but he would inflict it to any extent at all, in the pursuit of his ends. He was not afflicted with the loathsome disease of wanton cruelty, but there was no pity in his composition, and practically no sentiment. He was reckoned an able tamer of wild beasts. By stirring up the tiger, as the Professor approached, the boss provoked a striking exhibition of savage strength and ferocity in Finn.

"Say, Professor," he said, with a smile, "what d'ye think of the latest? How does the Giant Irish Wolf strike you, as an addition to the domestic fireside? Sweet thing, ain't he? Couldn't you make him do some sentimental stunts with the Java love-birds, now?"

The Professor inspected the furiously raging Finn with considerable interest.

"You'll not manage much taming with this fellow, Professor, will ye?" asked the boss, craftily aiming at putting the lion-tamer on his mettle. "You'll hardly manage the Professor among his pets act in this cage, eh?"

"I'd like to know what's goin' to stop me, boss," said the Professor doughtily. "I guess you've forgotten the fact that Professor Claude Damarel was the man who tamed the Tasmanian Wolf, Satan; and the Tasmanian Wolf is about the fiercest brute in the world to tackle, next to the Tasmanian Devil; an' I had one o' them pretty near beat in Auckland, till he went an' died on me. Tame this Giant Irishman--you bet your sweet life I will; an' have him cavortin' through a hoop inside of a month--or maybe a week--if I'm not kept busy wastin' my time over groom's work."

"Right-ho, Professor!" said the boss, good-humouredly. "You shall have a groom of your own, right here an' now. I'll promote Sam to the job, with half-a-dollar rise. I'll find a feller in the town here for your job, Sam. Enterprise goes with me every time, an'

brings its own reward--sure thing. But I'd like to be on hand when you tackle the Giant Wolf, Professor. You might want help."

"Help! Me want help! You wait here two minutes, boss, an' I'll show you."

The boss grinned over the success of his tactics in rousing the Professor's pride, and strolled round among the horses for five minutes or so till the tamer returned with Sam, carrying a brazier full of live coals, and an iron rod with a rough leather handle at one end of it. The other end of the iron rod was buried among the live coals. At sight of it the Killer crouched down in the far corner of his cage with a snarling whine, half covering his face with his huge paws.

"Now I'll show you how much help I need in taming, boss," said the Professor.

Grasping the leather handle of his now red-hot rod, the Professor deftly opened the gate of Finn's cage, far enough to admit of his own swift entrance; the gate being instantly slammed to behind him by Sam, and bolted. Finn was lying crouched in the far corner of the cage, and if the light there had been good, the tamer would surely have seen by the expression on the Wolfhound's intelligent face that he was no wild beast. On the other hand, froth still clung to Finn's jaws, the hair on his shoulders was still more or less erect, and a few minutes before this time he had been raging like a whirlwind.

For a moment or two the Professor glared steadily at Finn. He undoubtedly had pluck, seeing that he believed the Wolfhound to be as ferocious and deadly a beast as any tiger. Then, slowly, Finn rose from his crouching position, prepared to come forward and to treat his visitor as a friend, even as a possible rescuer from that place of horrid durance. The Professor's plan was all mapped out in his mind, and he did not waver in its execution. Had he been given to wavering he would long ago have been killed by some wild creature. In the instant of Finn's move towards him the Professor took a quick step forward and, with a growling shout of "Down, Wolf!" smote Finn fairly across the head with the red-hot end of his iron bar, so that pungent smoke arose. One portion of the red-hot surface of the iron caught Finn's muzzle, causing him exquisite pain; pain of a sort he had never known before. At the moment of the blow, a terrific snarling roar came from the tiger's cage. Half blinded, wholly maddened, dimly connecting this strange new agony that bit into him with the tiger's roar, Finn sprang at the Professor with a snarl that was itself almost a roar. The red-hot bar met him in mid-air, biting deep into the soft skin of his lips, furrowing his beautiful neck, and stinging the tip of one silken ear. The pain was terrible; the smell of his own burnt flesh and hair was maddening; the deadly implacability of the attack, coming from a man, too, was baffling beyond description. Finn howled, and sank abruptly upon his haunches, giving the Professor time for a flying glance of pride in the direction of the admiring John L.

Rutherford.

And now, had he been really a wild beast, Finn would probably have remained cowering as far as possible from that terrible bar of fire. Even as it was, he might have done this if the Professor had not made the mistake of raising the bar again, with a suddenly threatening motion. Finn had greater reasoning power, and greater strength of will, than a wild beast. He was robbed of all restraint by his surroundings and by the Professor's absolute and crushing reversal of all his preconceived notions of the relations between man and hound. The snarl of the tiger in his ears, the smell of his own burnt flesh in his nostrils, the pitilessness of the Professor's wholly unexpected attack, filled him with a tumultuous fury of warring instincts which generations of inherited docility were powerless to overcome. But, through it all, he was more capable of thought than a really wild beast, and, as the hot iron was lifted the third time, he leaped in under it like lightning, and with a roar of defiance brought its wielder to the ground, and planted both fore-feet upon his chest, while the iron bar fell clattering from the man's hand between the bars of the cage.

Be it remembered that Finn stood a foot higher at the shoulder than the average wolf, and weighed fully twice as much, being long and strong in proportion to his height and weight. The Professor was momentarily expecting to feel Finn's great jaws about his throat, and his two arms were crossed below his chin for protection of that most vulnerable spot. The tiger was now furiously clawing at the part.i.tion a few inches from Finn's nose, and emitting a series of the most blood-curdling snarls and roars.

"Draw him off with a stick!" shouted the Professor; who, even in his present sorry plight, was concerned most with the injury to his pride. Sam jabbed viciously at Finn's face with a long stake, through the bars, and as Finn withdrew slightly, the Professor wriggled cleverly to his feet, in a crouching posture, and reached the gate of the cage. Finn growled threateningly, but made no move forward, being thankful to see the retreat of his enemy. In another instant the Professor was outside the cage, and the gate securely bolted. He was bruised, but bore no mark of scratch or bite, and so far was able to boast; having no knowledge of the fact that Finn had not thought of biting him, but merely of overpowering him, as a means of evading his hot iron. This the Wolfhound had done easily.

He could have killed the man with almost equal ease, had that been his intention.

"Well, he sure is a rustler from 'way back, Professor, every single time," remarked the boss.

"You'll see him hop through a hoop when I say so, inside of a week," replied the tamer, sourly, as he brushed the dust from his coat. "As it is, you'll notice that he didn't dare to bite or scratch. Don't you fear but what I'll tame the beauty all right, Giant Wolf or no Giant Wolf. I've handled worse'n him."

And a couple of days before this, the younger Miss Sandbrook had been resting her carefully dressed curls against Finn's head.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XV

THE MAKING OF A WILD BEAST

The transformation begun in Finn by the night he had spent in a rocking train, caged between a tiger and two bears, was enormously accentuated and confirmed by his encounter with the Professor. If zoologists had deliberately set themselves the task of converting an Irish Wolfhound into a wild beast, they could hardly have taken any more effective measures than those which had been adopted by pure chance with Finn, from the time at which he reached Sam's hands; and it is probable that no zoologist with any humanity in him would have made progress so extraordinarily rapid. The mere fact of being caged behind iron bars for the first time in his life, and that between a roaring, snarling tiger and two grunting little bears, strongly odoriferous of the wild, affected Finn in somewhat the same manner that a highly excitable and nervous man of quite untrained intellect might be affected by being flung into a cell, surrounded by raving maniacs. If such a man, after a dozen hours in his cell, were approached by some one whom he had every reason to regard as a friend and a rescuer, and beaten cruelly with a weapon possessed of strange and altogether horrible qualities--supernatural qualities, so far as he could tell--it is fair to suppose that he would be as much transformed by the ordeal as Finn was by his ordeal.

Shortly after the episode of the red-hot iron, Finn's cage was again visited by Sam and the Professor, the former being laden with a big, blood-stained basket. From this basket the Professor took a large chunk of raw flesh, and pushed it through the bars into Finn's cage. A bone was also thrust through the bars, and a fixed iron pan near the gate was filled from outside with water. The Professor eyed Finn curiously while he performed these operations, and was surprised that the Giant Wolf, as they called him, did not spring forward upon the food.

"I've put the fear of G.o.d into him all right, Sam," said the Professor. "He's not going to touch his grub while we're here. Like all wolves, he's mighty frightened of traps; and I guess he reckons there's a trap attaching to this meat. Watch how Killer tackles his."

Killer was already ravening furiously at the bars of his cage, his yellow eyes ablaze as he watched the meat his soul desired being thrust into Finn's cage. The tiger's roars kept Finn's hackles up, and his fangs bared in a fierce snarl; so that the Professor was struck afresh with the savageness of the latest addition to the menagerie under his care. Killer's meat barely reached the floor of his cage before he had s.n.a.t.c.hed and carried it to the rear, where he tore it savagely, while maintaining an incessant growling snarl.

But he dropped the meat as though it burned, and crouched fearfully in the opposite corner of his den, when--by way of display for Sam's benefit--the Professor picked up his iron bar and threatened the tiger with it. Now Finn, on the other hand, when he saw the cruel bar raised, sprang forward with a growling roar of defiance, fore-feet outstretched, bristling back curved for the leap, and white fangs flashing.

"Too sulky to eat it, but mighty concerned when he thought I was goin' to take his meat from him," commented the Professor, in explanation to Sam. As a matter of fact, Finn had not thought of the meat. His present feeling was that he had fallen among a lot of mad wild beasts, some of whom, by curious chance, had the appearance of men folk. If one among them should lift an iron bar, and more especially if the maddest and most hated among them, the Professor, should lift the bar, why then, as Finn saw it, his one chance for life was to fight; to strike hard and swiftly.

"We'll have to keep these two always caged together," said the Professor, with a careless glance at Finn and the tiger. "Old Killer works him up in great style. I guess he'll fetch the public all the time, while he can hear old Killer at his antics. He certainly is the finest-lookin' beast I ever saw in the wolf line, and he's as strong and heavy as a horse. I guess your number would 'ave been up for sure, Sam, if you'd been in my shoes a while back, when he got me down. What I don't like about the beggar is you can't reckon on him; he don't seem to have the same ways as most of 'em. He don't fly at ye right away; he doesn't even jump for his grub, you see. He seems to lie back an' consider. It's a bad thing that, for he's hefty enough, anyway, without stopping to think out his wickedness like a man. He's goin' to be a rough, hard case to tame, Sam, that Giant Wolf of yours; but he's come to a hard-case tamer, too, and don't you forget it. He's got to bend or break, and you can gamble clear down to the b.u.t.t of your sack on that, my son.

Come on now, and I'll show you how the others are fed. Just fill old Killer's water-dish first."

It was now thirty hours since Finn had tasted food, and three days since he had eaten a proper meal. If his experiences of the past four-and-twenty hours had been in every other respect distressing, they had at least robbed him of grief about the Master. His outraged physical senses, and the tremendous strain placed upon his nervous system, effectually shut grief out from his mind. Finn was accustomed to have meals served to him in spotless enamelled dishes, and it had always been food of which a man might have partaken: well-cooked meats, bread, vegetables, and gravy, nicely cut and mixed. Now for a long time the condition of pa.s.sionate protest and irritability produced in him by all that he had gone through, and by Killer's continuous growling, prevented his touching the meat which lay near the bars of his cage. But hunger triumphed after a while, and with a quick, rather furtive movement, but with lips drawn back and every sign exposed of readiness to defend his action, Finn lifted the big chunk of meat from its place by the bars, and carried it into a corner at the back of the cage, where he tore it into fragments, and ate it, of necessity, very much as a wolf eats, the blood of the raw meat trickling meanwhile about his jaws. To drink, Finn had to place his head close to those bars which most nearly adjoined the front of the tiger's cage. But drink was necessary to him now, and so, with his nose all furrowed, his fangs bared, and a formidable low snarl issuing from his throat, he slowly approached the water-pan, and lapped his fill, pausing to snarl aloud at the tiger between each three or four laps of his tongue. But Killer had fed full, and crunched his bone to splinters and eaten that; so now he was preparing himself to sleep.

If Finn could have followed Killer's example and slept it would have helped him immensely, for his overwrought system needed rest more badly than anything else just then. But this was impossible as yet for the sensitive Wolfhound. The two bears in the next cage were playing together fubsily, and the tiger's breathing while he slept was a maddening kind of cross between a purr and a snore; maddening, that is, to one who found the creature's mere proximity incredibly distasteful. This hatred of the Killer's neighbourhood was no whim, no personal fastidiousness on Finn's part. It went much deeper than that. For example, so far, the hair on Finn's back would not a.s.sume its natural position; it still stood half erect, and harsh and stiff as fine wire; by which the tension of his nerves may be imagined. No, Finn could not sleep.

The hours of the day dragged slowly by, and Finn began to suffer in new ways. He had never been confined for any length of time before, and strict cleanliness was an instinct with him.

At length, as the hot afternoon drew to its close, a number of men came to the cages, and horses were hitched on to the heavy wagon which supported them, at a level of less than three feet from the ground. Killer woke with a start and, with his tail, angrily flogged the part.i.tion which divided him from Finn, while delivering himself of a snarling yawn. Finn leapt to his feet, answering the tiger's snarl viciously, himself looking to the full as savage as any of the wild kindred. The wagon moved with a jerk, Killer rolled against his side of the part.i.tion and growled ferociously; Finn sprang at the part.i.tion as though he thought his great weight would carry him through it, and his jaws snapped at the air as he sprang.

The men roared with laughter at him, and this accentuated his feeling that they were all mad wild beasts together. Presently, Finn's cage, with others, was ranged along the side of a canvas-covered pa.s.sage way by which the public were to approach the main tent, where that night's performance was to be given. This double row of cages was arranged here with a view to impressing the public; a kind of foretaste of the glories they were to behold within. The Southern Cross circus had patent turnstiles fixed at both ends of the main tent, those at one end admitting only of ingress, those at the other end admitting only of egress.

It was shortly after this that Finn became conscious of a curious grinding small sound at the back of his cage. Presently a sharp, bright point of steel entered the cage from behind, just above the level of Finn's head, as he sat on his haunches. The steel wormed its way into the cage to a length of fully six inches, and then it reached the side of Killer's cage, pointing diagonally, and bored slowly through that. The auger was well greased, and made only a very slight sound, so slight indeed that Killer was not aware of it. He was not so highly strung as Finn at this time.

This auger-hole was an idea of Sam's, for which he hoped to derive credit from the boss. He had noted carefully the remark of the Professor about keeping the Giant Wolf close to the tiger, in order to lend additional fierceness to his demeanour. And so, with the thoughtlessly cruel cunning of a schoolboy, he had devised a means of improving upon this. He took a thin iron rod, and covered the end of it with soft, porous sacking, which he moistened with the blood of raw meat. Then, by thrusting this between the bars of Finn's cage, and jabbing violently at the Wolfhound with it for several minutes, he endeavoured to impregnate the sacking on the rod with a smell of Finn. Then he invited John L. Rutherford to take up a stand in front of the cages, as though he were a member of the general public, and to whistle, by way of signalling that he was ready. Directly Sam heard the whistle, he being now behind the cages, he thrust his sacking-covered rod through the auger-hole he had made from Finn's cage into the tiger's, and there rattled it to and fro to attract the Killer's attention. Killer not only heard and saw the intruding object, but smelt it, and sprang at it violently, with a rasping, savage snarl which challenged the Giant Wolf to come forward or be for ever accursed for a coward. The rod was withdrawn on the instant, and Finn's whole great bulk crashed against the part.i.tion, as he answered Killer with a roar of defiance. The great Wolfhound stood erect on his hind-feet, snapping at the air with foaming jaws, and tearing impotently at the iron-sheathed part.i.tion with his powerful claws. The boss applauded vigorously, and gave Sam a shilling for beer.

"You keep that up while the people are coming in, Sam, an' by gosh we'll have 'em in fits. The Giant's a sure star performer, every time. He's worth two or three of the Killer, when he prances round on his tail that way. It was quite a bright notion o' yours, Sam, that auger-hole."

It must have been nearly two hours later, when the public was being admitted in a regular stream to the big tent, and Sam had succeeded in working the tiger and the Wolfhound into a perfect frenzy of impotent rage, of snarling, foaming, roaring fury, that a faint odour crossed Finn's nostrils, and a faint sound fell upon his ears, through all the din and tumult of the conflict with his unseen enemy. In that moment, and as though he had been shot, Finn dropped from his erect position, and bounded to the front bars of his cage, with a sudden, appealing whine, very unlike the formidable cries with which he had been rending the pent air of his prison for the last quarter of an hour. He had heard a few words spoken in a woman's voice, and those words were:--

"I cannot bear to look at them; I never do. Let us hurry straight in."

In a pa.s.sion of anxiety, and grief, and love, and remorse for not having been on the look out, Finn poured out his very soul in a succession of long-drawn whines, plaintive and insistent as a 'cello's wailings, while his powerful fore-paws tugged and scratched ineffectually at the solid iron bars of his cage. The woman whose voice he heard was the Mistress of the Kennels, and the man to whom she spoke, who walked beside her, looking obstinately at her and not at the cages, was the Master. Something seemed to crack in poor Finn's breast, as the two humans whom he loved disappeared from his view within the great tent. He did not know that they would not pa.s.s that way again, because the audience left the place by the opposite end of the tent. But he gave no thought to the future. Here, in the midst of his uttermost misery and humiliation, the Master, the light of his life, had pa.s.sed within a few feet of him, and pa.s.sed without a glance, without a word. For long, Finn gazed miserably out between the bars, sniffing hopelessly at the air through which his friends had pa.s.sed. Then, slowly, he retired to the furthermost corner of his cage, and curled down there, with his muzzle between his paws, and big drops of bitter sadness trickling out from beneath his overhanging brows.

And not all the ferocity of Killer, nor all the ingenuity of Sam with his sacking-covered rod, availed to draw Finn from his corner again that night. It seemed as though his heart had cracked, and every other emotion than grief trickled out from it in the form of tears. It was the saddest moment of Finn's life till then; and it was a bitter kind of sadness, too. Not one little look; not one glance for Finn in the midst of his torment!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XVI

MARTYRDOM

It may be that a good deal of the wisdom and philosophy of mankind is born of grief and suffering. It is certain that a good deal of philosophy came to Finn as the aftermath of that evening upon which he retired, heart-broken, to the farthest corner of his cage, after seeing the Master and the Mistress of the Kennels pa.s.s him without a word or a glance. His mind did not deal in niceties. He did not tell himself that if the Master had only guessed at his presence there, all would have been different. He was conscious only of the apparently brutal fact that the Master had walked past his cage and ignored him; left him there in his horrible confinement. He bore no malice, for there was not any malice in his nature; which is not at all the same thing as saying that he was incapable of wreaking vengeance or administering punishment. He simply was smitten to the very heart with grief and sorrow. And so he lay, all through that night, silent, sorrowful, and blind to his surroundings.