AS the season became older the hatred toward Cameron grew sharper. Men of every description had come and gone since I had joined the circus in Louisiana. My salary was increased to seven dollars a week and board. I earned about the same amount running errands for the Baby Buzzard, the Moss-Haired Girl, and Finnerty and Jack. The Baby Buzzard gave me four half-dollars each week.
For many days I thought of the Strong Woman. I linked her up with the Lion Tamer and recalled the expression I often saw on her face as he passed her on the lot walking, graceful like a panther. Death again haunted me as in my childhood. These two—one buried in Louisiana, the other in Arkansas—did they know what we were doing? I wondered who jerked the Strong Woman’s grouch bag from about her throat, and if Anton would ever hear of her death.
The old trailer, who had written the verses when the Lion Tamer died, was no longer with us. He had refused to follow the circus through Arkansas. We had played three days in Little Rock. I last saw him in a saloon near the Iron Mountain railroad. He had been drunk three days and was just trying to sober up. Jock and I had stepped in for a drink. He sat, looking disconsolate, with his elbows on a beer-stained table.
As we walked over to him, he said, “Won’t you buy me a drink, boys? My nerves are all gone, my head aches awful an’ my mouth feels like a Chinese family’s just moved out.”
The words pleased Jock and he laughed heartily. Loungers in the saloon turned to look at us.
“You old reprobate, that’s worth a half pint.” Jock placed the coin on the bar. The bartender held a bottle and asked sharply, “What do you want, rye or bourbon?”
“I don’t give a damn,” the old man answered impatiently, grabbing at the bottle, removing the cork and placing it to his mouth. We watched the old man drink it like water. Jock gave him a quarter with, “Ain’t you trailin’ us any more?”
“Not no more, no siree. I don’t trail no circus in Arkansas. The God damn rubes down there ain’t begun to be civilized. Whenever I hit Little Rock I jist turn round and go back no matter where I’m headin’.”
As we left, the old trailer handed us each a poem printed on yellow paper.
“It’s a little thing I wrote the other day. I like it too. It’s all about booze.”
Jock crunched the paper in his hand. I looked at my copy as we walked toward the circus lot.
It was Edgar Allan Poe’s “Raven.” The first line had been changed from
Once upon a midnight dreary
to
One summer morning bright and cheery,
While I pondered weak and weary …
The poem was called “A Drunkard’s Fate,” and was signed by the old trailer.
We encountered a rainy week in the heart of Arkansas. Our nerves, for the most part, worn threadbare from long contact with one another, now grew more taut as one dreary day followed another down the wet road of time. Even the animals became moody and sulky. Jock, full of morphine, swore terribly at the horses, until his “habit” had worn off.
As our bunks were full of vermin, or “crummy” in the vernacular of the circus, we slept in the circus wagons and other places on warm nights. Now that the air was chilled with rain we were forced to our vermin-infested bunks. My own fortunes were to change later when Whiteface became a clown. He was allowed a little tent to himself. I shared it with him.
Mike Anderson, who had succeeded Denna Wyoming as lion tamer, took us one day in a body before Cameron. He met us affably, even benignantly, with, “Well, boys.”
“We’re tired of floppin’ in the lousy bunks, Mr. Cameron,” Mike said suddenly.
“Why men,” Cameron returned quickly, “this is surprising. Lice and rubes are part of a circus.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t want either of ’em in my bunk,” sneered Anderson.
Just then the Baby Buzzard approached.
“I suppose you want me an’ the other women to clean ’em for you,” she snapped.
“Naw we don’t. We want ’em all burned up an’ new ones put in.”
The adroit Cameron soon placated the feelings of all his callers but Anderson. He stood sullenly by while Cameron said with soft voice, “You know how it is, men, keeping a circus clean is a hard job.”
“Ringlin’s do it,” put in Anderson.
“But look at the many localities they have; they got everything convenient. Next year, if this rain stops, I’ll have a much finer circus an’ it’ll be like a little home for all of us.”
As we walked away Anderson confided to me, “Tomorrow’s pay-day. I think I’ll blow the outfit.”
The next day Cameron explained to all who would listen the hardships of a circus owner’s life, as he reluctantly paid us.
Anderson was paid in full. He also borrowed twenty dollars from Cameron, who wished to keep him in good humor. Men who could handle animals of the cat tribe were scarce so late in the season.
Cameron had offered Jock more wages to take charge of the “Big Cats” than he was receiving for taking care of the horses. Knowing always the condition of his nerves, he refused.
Bad Bill had been separated from the other lions on account of the growing fierceness of his disposition. Anderson had placed him in a cage next to Ben Royal, a Bengal tiger.
I had often speculated on whether or not Ben Royal could whip Bad Bill. He was at least forty or fifty pounds lighter. I had remembered reading in a history of Rome, as a child, that five lions had always been sent into the arena against four tigers. That seemed proof to me that the tiger was the lion’s master. I had once talked about it to Denna Wyoming. “Bad Bill,” said he, “can lick anything that walks or swims in the world.” Anderson, then the chief assistant trainer laughed out loud when I told him about it.
“Ben Royal kin tear Bill’s heart out in three minutes,” was his comment. The idea of a fight between Bad Bill and Ben Royal afterward fascinated Anderson. He would often refer to it. And once, after I had talked to him about the ancient combats in Rome, “That’d be a battle, huh! We oughta git old Cameron to stage one for us.”
It was Bad Bill whom Denna Wyoming had feared most of all. Anderson had shared his fear. Jock also hated and feared him. Though he was not directly responsible for Denna’s death, both men distrusted him as Wyoming had done. Jock had often called Bad Bill a traitor. He seemed to hold it against him that Wyoming had once saved his life with huge mustard plasers. In some way he resented the fact that the dumb king of beasts was ungrateful. That day Anderson and Jock talked a long time.
All night the rain fell drearily and, in spite of the parafin, soaked the tents. The next morning, before breakfast, an alarm sounded over our canvas world. Anderson was nowhere to be found. The rope which held the partition which separated Ben Royal and Bad Bill had been cut. Many of us had heard a lion roar in the night but had paid no further attention. Bad Bill was found, his throat torn, his stomach ripped open, and part of his carcass eaten. Ben Royal, with bloody jaws, dozed near him.
“Can you beat it?” laughed Jock to me. “Anderson sure as hell turned Ben loose on Bill. The son of a gun wanted to turn him loose on Cameron.”
Cameron was grief-stricken. “Two thousand dollars gone to hell,” was his dismal moan for some days.
The tiger was afterward billed as “Ben, the Lion Killer.” A stirring tale of his combat was written and placed on his cage. Anderson was never found again.
“Anderson knew Ben ’ud kill Bill,” Goosey afterward told me. “The lion has everything buffaloed but the tiger. When I was wit’ Wallace I seen a tiger kill two lions quicker’n you could say ‘have a drink.’
“The lions seen the tiger comin’ an’ roared loud as thunder but it gave a lunge wit’ its mouth wide open and caught the one lion right under the throat an’ before it got thru’ gurglin’ it copped the other lion. They had to turn a big hose on him to git him outta the cage. He sure went snarlin’!”
Goosey never tired of talking about animals.
“I seen a half lion and half tiger once,” he told me. “But they coulden go no further wit’ it; they can’t have little ones; they either come straight lions or straight tigers the second time.
“A tiger kin outjump a lion too. I seen ’em jump over sixty feet. All’s a lion kin do is ’bout forty-five. But they don’t like to jump, it hurts their feet. They’re jist as careful as a housecat about their paws.”
Goosey was placed in charge of the “big cats” until another trainer could be found.
Cameron never forgot the twenty dollars he had advanced Anderson. He used it as an excuse when asked for money during the remainder of the season.