Part 5 (1/2)
MAKING A STAR LION AND AN INTERRUPTED TEMPERANCE MEETING
”You were not in this part of the country when New York was in an uproar for two days over the escape of one of my lions,” said the Proprietor to the Stranger as they joined the Press Agent. ”I suppose that ninety per cent. of the people who remember it think that it was all a fake, but I can a.s.sure you that I put in the most strenuous forty-eight hours of my career while he was loose, and it pretty nearly decided me to give up the show business. It was my first experience at running an independent show, and after great persuasion I had induced my father to let me bring some boxing kangaroos, two young lions and Wallace, a fine big brute about fifteen years old, from our English establishment to the States.
Wallace was already a famous--or infamous--lion in England, where he had the score of three trainers to his credit. He had received the name of 'The Mankiller' over there, and they were rather relieved to have me get him out of the country.
”His last victim was a Frenchman, one of the best-known trainers in the business, and he went into the cage to subdue Wallace on a wager. He won, and a remarkable performance it was, but I won't take the time to tell you about that now. He made just one little mistake: his vanity got the better of him when he turned his back on the lion to bow to the audience after remaining in the cage for ten minutes. As I said, he won the bet, and it about paid the funeral expenses of what was left of him.
After that the only man who could go near Wallace was a half-breed American Indian from up near Cape Cod; Broncho Boccacio, he called himself. I don't know what the other half of him was, and I don't remember how he happened to be with our English show, but all sorts and conditions of men drift into the animal training business. At any rate, he was the only man who could do anything with Wallace, and that wasn't much. He would get into the cage and chase him around a bit and then jump out quick--always backward after seeing what happened to the Frenchman. I brought him along to take especial charge of the brute. It took a couple of days to get the animals through the customs, and in the meantime I cast about for quarters and finally rented a stable on Eighteenth Street to keep them in until I should secure an engagement.”
He took a pencil from his pocket and drew a plan on the white table top.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _”There was a loose lion downstairs and a nurse and two children in the loft.”_]
”The stable was arranged in this way: here in the front was the carriage house with these narrow stairs at the side leading up to the loft. On each side of the door was a window facing on the street, and back of the carriage room was the stable proper--two stalls and a loose-box. On one side of the stable was a saloon and on the other a carpenter shop, so I didn't expect much complaint from my neighbors, as my men patronized one, while I ordered the carpenter to build a traveling cage for Wallace which would slide on wheels, as our English cages were too heavy to handle in a country where labor is as high as it is here. I moved the lions up to the stable to let them rest a bit after the voyage and started to look for an engagement. It was a hard row to hoe, as I was not known in this country, and the best I could do was a booking at a dime museum for a month, and I had to take a lowish price at that, but I ordered a big nine sheet poster and trusted to luck to make more out of them later.
”The lions were in three cages in the stable, and in one of the stalls I had a trotting horse which had been purchased for my brother in England, and which I kept there until I should have an opportunity to s.h.i.+p it to the other side. The kangaroos were in the loft, and a couple of days after they were all settled my two little girls came over from the hotel with me one morning and went up there with the nurse to play with them while I went into the carpenter shop next door to settle for the new cage, which had just been delivered. Broncho, as soon as he struck his native soil, had discovered a camp of other Indians on the Bowery and spent most of his time in their encampment, leaving a c.o.c.kney Englishman in charge of the lions and the horse. I intended to wait until he arrived before s.h.i.+fting Wallace to the new cage, but the Englishman thought he would show his cleverness and attempted to do it alone without waiting for us. He threw a piece of meat into the new cage and then rolled it up to the old one, and when the doors were opposite each other he opened them. Of course Wallace made a spring for the meat in the new cage, but he struck the edge of the door, and as the c.o.c.kney had neglected to block the wheels the cage rolled away and the keeper gave a yell and bolted for the stairs. There was a loose lion downstairs--and a bad one at that--and the nurse and two children in the loft.
”The first I knew of it was from the nurse, who had grabbed the children and stood with them in the door which had been used to pa.s.s the hay in, yelling 'Fire!' and 'Murder!' but I knew that there was h.e.l.l to pay as soon as I reached the street, by the sound which came from the stable.
We got a ladder from the carpenter shop and hustled the nurse and children down to the street, and then I went up to the loft, while the nurse and the c.o.c.kney held the small door from the stable to the street, which could not be fastened from the outside until the carpenter spiked some plank over it.
”A look into the stable convinced me that I did not want to go down the stairs, for with one blow Wallace had converted a thousand-dollar trotting horse into two dollars' worth of lion meat, and he was crouched on the body, which he had dragged from the stall, clawing at its throat and drinking the blood. The place looked like a shambles, and the growls which came from Wallace as the other lions threw themselves against the bars of their cages in their efforts to get out and join in the feast were redoubled when he caught sight of my head through the trap-door. I slammed it down and drew the kangaroo cage on top of it and then went down to the street to see that the windows and doors were securely boarded up. A great crowd was gathering and I was afraid that the police would shoot the brute, for I saw the possibilities of an advertis.e.m.e.nt which would more than pay for the expensive meal which Wallace was making from the trotting horse.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _”His vanity got the better of him when he turned his back on the lion, to bow to the audience.”_]
”Just as I reached the street, Broncho strolled up. As I said, he was a queer-looking guy; his skin was copper-colored and he had piercing black eyes and long, fuzzy black hair which fell down to his shoulders. His nose was hooked and something about his face always reminded me of a bird of prey. He was only a half-breed, but when I told him what had occurred he was all Indian and he drew a long knife and started for the c.o.c.kney, who gave only one look at the expression on Broncho's face and then started for Harlem, touching only the high spots until he was quite out of sight. Broncho didn't chase him; he just looked after him with a smile on his face, glad to see him disappear, as there had been more or less bad blood between them for a long time. Then he came to me and laughed at the idea of danger and offered to go into the stable and put Wallace back in the cage. I knew that it would be impossible until the lion had gorged himself on horse meat, and now that the damage was done I was in no hurry to allay the excitement until the police and reporters arrived. We didn't have to wait long, for the crowd had grown until the street was blocked, and, of course, the reporters asked more than a thousand questions. When I had worked the sensation up pretty well I consented to let Broncho take his training rod and go down, and I went with him carrying a club and a pitchfork. Things commenced to happen right away, for Wallace didn't wait for the call of time, but sailed right into us, and when I saw that he was getting the better of Broncho I made a bluff at going back to the carca.s.s of the horse. Wallace bounded back to protect it and crouched on it, snarling viciously, but the delay gave me a chance to help Broncho up the stairway. There was not enough of his trousers left to wad a gun, and while I was bandaging up a deep claw wound in his thigh that advertis.e.m.e.nt seemed less and less important to me, and I would have given a good deal to have Wallace safely behind the bars of his cage again. He was contracted for four weeks anyway, and it takes a pretty big sensation to be remembered for more than thirty days in New York.
”Well, we fussed about all day, trying to figure out some way to get the beggar back in his cage, and I got an earache listening to advice from people who had never seen a lion, but who considered themselves experts.
At sunset Wallace still held the fort and the streets were blocked in all directions, for the afternoon papers were out with extras with scare-heads. The boards over the windows made the interior of the stable so dark that no one could see into it, but the roars which came from it gave the spectators all the thrills they were ent.i.tled to and caused a stampede every few minutes. We tried to drive Wallace into the cage with a stream of water from the fire plug, but he only shook his head and growled at it, so we gave it up and waited for daylight. There were about forty policemen and a crowd of reporters about the place all night, and I was getting nervous for fear some fool would shoot the lion, whose value was increasing every minute, so I kept awake and did a heap of thinking.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _”Broncho was only a half-breed.”_]
”I knew that Wallace would fight for his 'kill' as long as any of the meat was left, so we rigged up a tackle to try and draw the carca.s.s out.
We were all ready at daylight and the crowd was bigger than ever. Say, if you want to count the idle people in New York just get up a free show at any hour of the day or night and they will all come. There must have been over a thousand loafing about the street all night. We were just getting ready to make a try for the horse when the idlers outside gave a cheer, and I saw an express wagon loaded with nets and ropes and all sorts of animal catching stuff drive up. Tody Hamilton, Barnum's press agent, had caught on to the possibilities of an advertis.e.m.e.nt, and sent to the winter quarters at Bridgeport for some of their animal men to come down and capture a loose lion. They supposed it was in Central Park, and when they found it was in a stable the job looked easy to them. One of them, a man named McDonald, had been with our English show, and when he heard that it was Wallace they were to tackle his enthusiasm seemed to melt. He told the others a few anecdotes of the lion, and two of them went to find the c.o.c.kney, I guess, for we never saw them again.
”We managed to throw a slip noose around the carca.s.s from the stairs, and when we pa.s.sed the end of the rope out of the window there must have been five hundred men pulling on it from the way that horse's body slid across the floor. The four of us stood around the trap-door to beat Wallace back, and when he realized that he was losing his prey it kept us busy.
”Say, a dead horse seems to have more legs than a centipede when you try to drag it through a narrow s.p.a.ce, and they all stick out in different directions. Of course, this one stuck and then there was more trouble, for when I took an axe to dismember it, a cop threatened to arrest me for cutting up a horse in the city limits. It took three hours to satisfy the red-tape requirements and get a permit from the Board of Health, and then I had a long, sickening job, for we had to haul up what was left of the poor beast in fragments, and all the time Wallace was snapping at them or rus.h.i.+ng at us. We gave him several nasty cracks over the snout, the only place where a lion seems to be sensitive to pain, but it only made him uglier than ever and I knew that there was a pretty fight ahead of us. It was a case of 'Perdicaris alive or Raisouli dead' with me, for the police were getting impatient, and I knew they would shoot him if we did not get him caged before night.
”We drew lots to see who should be the first to go down, and I think that McDonald stacked the straws, for Broncho won--or lost--I was second, the other Barnum man third and McDonald last; but he made good after we got down there, and it was what the President would have called a 'crowded hour.' If Wallace hadn't been full of horse meat, which made him a trifle slow, I think he would have chased the bunch of us out, and as it was he gave us all we wanted to do. We used blank cartridges, Roman candles, training rods and whips, and I learned afterward that the crowd outside thought we were all being torn to pieces, but we finally conquered and it was a singed and battered lion which jumped back into the den and gave me a chance to slam the door. The noise of the clicking lock sounded good to me, and I went up the stairs with a lighter heart, in spite of tattered clothes and a scratched hand and bruised body. I knew that I had a small fortune in the beast, but I nearly cried when I went into the saloon to freshen up, and the first thing I saw was the poster with the announcement that Wallace would be shown at the dime museum. I knew that it would make the reporters, who had been writing columns of s.p.a.ce, suspect that it was all a fake and prearranged. The manager was afraid that I would renege on my contract after all the free advertising, but he didn't know me.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _”We didn't have any regular snake charmer, but Merritt made himself up for a Hindoo fakir.”_]
”Sure enough, the reporters came for me in a body while I was still tired and dirty from the fight and worn out with anxiety and loss of sleep. They accused me of having put up a job on them, but I guess the sight of my condition convinced them of my sincerity, for only one paper even hinted at any crookedness, and that proved the best advertis.e.m.e.nt in the whole business.
”It was the _Sun_ which came out in an article about Wallace, saying that he was toothless and decrepit from old age, and that there had never been the slightest danger from him. If the reporter who wrote it had gone into the stable with us, I don't think he would have written the article. I did my own announcing in those days and I always started off with the announcement, 'Ladies and gentlemen! If you see it in the _Sun_, it's so, and the _Sun_ says that Wallace is played out and toothless from old age.' Then I would make a move to the front of the cage, and Wallace, who had a special hatred for me, would spring at the bars and show as pretty a set of fangs as you would wish to see and I was always sure of a laugh.