by H. V. Elkin
Maroney became somber. “I am sorry, Eric.” He was embarrassed.
“I’ll be goin’,” Cutler said and started out.
“No, wait,” Hansen said. “Wait, Cutler. I don’t mean to be rude.”
Cutler turned. “No offense taken.”
“Cutler,” Hansen said. “I know who you are. Don’t run off. Maybe it’d help to get my mind off it for a while.”
Maroney said, “John knows much about animals.”
“So I hear,” Hansen said.
Cutler gestured around the menagerie tent. “Not foreign animals like these. Now, if it was range horses, wolves, coyotes, bears ...”
A soft, feminine voice came from the entrance to the big top. “Eric?”
Cutler turned and saw the beautiful lady in the ballet outfit.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Excuse me.”
Maroney introduced her. “This is the lady who works with the horses, Molly Barrie. John Cutler, Molly, a visiting celebrity.”
Cutler tipped his hat. “Miss Barrie.”
She nodded and gave him a shy smile. She started to say something to the visiting celebrity, but seemed confused and tongue-tied. This puzzled Maroney and Hansen. Molly did not understand it herself. Cutler pretended not to notice.
“Did you have something on your mind?” Hansen asked her.
“Oh!” she said, remembering. “Yes.”
“Well?”
“What?”
“What was it, Molly?”
“Oh! Yes! About the act. I wanted to talk to you about today’s performance.”
Hansen nodded. “We will go ahead with it.”
“Do you think we should? Anna’s been ...”
“I know how Anna has been.”
“And when she’s out of the cage like that, well, there’s more danger to the spectators.”
Maroney explained to Cutler. “That tiger is Anna. She has been trained to ride a horse, but we have to do it outside the cage so we will have enough space.”
Hansen said, “We have to do it. We can’t let up on the routine. You can’t give in to a tiger, not even once, or you’ve lost the whole show.”
“We can’t afford to endanger anyone’s life,” Maroney said.
“Except our own,” Hansen corrected him.
“Except our own,” Maroney repeated. “That goes without saying.”
“Just instruct the men with the forks to be on their toes,” Hansen said. “That’s all we can do. If we have to, she can be shot. But we have to do the act exactly as we’ve always done, or before long there won’t be any act.”
“Well,” Maroney said, “if I did not trust the judgment of my people, there would be no Maroney Circus. Come Molly, Mr. Cutler wants to talk to Eric.”
Molly smiled at Cutler and, for a moment, the worry disappeared from her face.
“Molly?” Maroney had to remind her they were leaving. Then she turned and followed him into the big top.
“Now she’s acting strangely,” Hansen said. “It’s bad enough with the animals, but if a performer doesn’t keep her head ...” He let the thought trail off, then turned to Cutler. “Fred says you wanted to see me about something?”
“I don’t want to bother you if this is a bad time ...”
“No, no. Forget what I said before. We. are professionals. What is it?”
“Fred told me you had something to do with the circus stoppin’ here.”
“True. Normally we would have bypassed a place like this.” Hansen had his hands in his pockets and was shifting from foot to foot. “It started last year when I happened to go into Bean’s saloon. He expressed interest in the circus visiting Langtry then. Of course, at the time, we already had our schedule mapped out for the year. But I told Bean I’d see what I could do about putting Langtry on this year’s schedule.”
“It’s a small place,” Cutler observed.
“True. But Bean’s got to thinking of himself as some kind of entrepreneur. Maybe you heard about his stealing the Fitzsimmons-Maher prizefight from El Paso.”
“I heard they wouldn’t let it happen in El Paso because it was against the law.”
“Well, that’s right. Anyway, Bean had a bridge built over the Rio Grande which is right in his backyard, you might say, and people could walk over into Mexico to watch the fight where the law didn’t apply. So after that, it wasn’t hard to convince Maroney that we ought to take the circus to Langtry, too. We had assurances from Bean that there’d be a good audience, and after the prizefight thing, we had to believe him. So here we are.”
Cutler had not been looking to hear any of this. But he knew, when a situation was touchy like this one because of Hansen’s concern about the cats, it was best to let a man say what he wanted to. When Cutler had been a lawman he learned people were more likely to tell him what he wanted to know after the words got started, sort of like priming a pump. But then there had always been something important at stake, like the arrest of a criminal. Hansen was not accused of anything, but he acted as though he had been. Cutler thought it was strange that Hansen, in his talking to get his mind off the performance that was coming up, was a lot like a guilty man who used words like smoke to hide his guilt. There was something else, too. Hansen now and then made a point of looking directly into your eyes. He did it on purpose, like something he forced on himself, the kind of thing a dishonest man might to do convince you he was honest. Yes, if Cutler did not know that this was a man worried about a show, he might think Hansen a fugitive from justice. He would probably behave very differently after the show.
“Eric, did you see Bean yet, since you got here this time?”
“Who said I did?”
“Nobody. I just figured, since you had something to do with makin’ the arrangements for the show bein’ here, you might’ve seen him.”
“No, I didn’t. We pulled in last night, but I didn’t go into town. I was here all night . . . because of the animals.”
“Then you wouldn’t know if there was a man named Mike McKay with Bean this year.”
“No. How would I?”
Cutler nodded and walked out of the menagerie tent. He thought it amazing how much a man could seem to be lying about one thing when he was really just worried about something else.
At Maroney’s invitation, Cutler brought his rig onto the circus lot where he fed his own animals. Then he left the Airedale to guard the wagon from the seat, and he looked around the circus while waiting for Bean to appear for the show. Back in the menagerie tent, he stood and looked at the tiger called Anna in her cage. The Bengal was certainly restless and was prowling about within the small enclosure.
Cutler had never seen a Bengal tiger before but he had had experience with other kinds of wild cats, notably a cougar in the Big Bend country and a jaguar down around Sonora. Cats like those could move soundlessly within a few feet of their prey. Then they would be sensed and had to depend on speed to get close enough for the kill. They were smelled of course. But Cutler sometimes thought it was more than that. Sometimes animals seemed to give off energy that was felt by other animals, a communication that had nothing to do with words. He had seen it in the way his mules responded to each other to pull the wagon as a perfect team. And cats could give off some kind of energy that would startle other animals at a distance.
As he watched Anna prowling around her cage, Cutler got a strong feeling that something similar was happening here. He thought that if there was a general restlessness among the animals, it was something that was being generated by Anna, that she was the source of the general discontent. If the circus got rid of Anna, the circus would get rid of its problem. Unless the problem was not merely inside the tiger. If something outside was causing the disturbance, it could as easily direct itself to the second tiger in Anna’s absence. In any case, the situation was potentially dangerous, as it often was when men confined wild animals to cages. Out in the open spaces the animal came from there was room for that energy to dispel itself.
Here it was contained within a small space, threatening to explode. An unfortunate situation but not Cutler’s problem.
He turned to go, then felt a chill on the back of his neck. He spun around, instinctively putting his hand to the butt of his six-gun. But he did not draw. The tiger was still behind the bars of the cage, staring at Cutler, staring with an odd expression of recognition. Stranger still, Cutler had the sensation that this moment had happened before. There was something familiar about it all. Whatever it was, it was something he shared, for a brief moment, with the tiger.
Fanfare.
Inside the big top, the organ played a rousing march, accompanied by chimes and bells. The people who were passing through the menagerie tent—adults and children alike—quickened their pace, unconsciously responding to the music. At the entrance a man in a blue uniform like that worn by the members of the band announced in a rhythmic speech, “Hurry, hurry, hurry, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! The big show is about to begin!”
Roy Bean had kept his promise. There were a couple hundred people there that day moving through the menagerie tent into the big top. Cutler stood outside and watched for Bean to appear. He figured he would recognize the judge, but he did not. When all of the audience seemed to be inside, Cutler shrugged and went in himself. He stood at the big top entrance and looked around at the crowd seated on benches around a single ring.
“Ticket, sir?” The man who had been selling tickets outside rushed up behind a young cowboy who had walked in without paying.
“I’m Sam Bean,” the cowboy said, patting the six-gun in his holster, “and here’s my pass.”
The ticket man considered a moment, then decided to let the matter pass, probably figuring he could get help in collecting the price of admission after the show. At the moment, all the other circus folk were busy with the show about to begin.
The cowboy turned and moved into the tent. Sam Bean was a lanky youth. His ears stuck out at the side of his head. He had small eyes and a tight little mouth, the mean look of a killer, Cutler thought. Then again, he might just be a kid who had been spoiled by his father. Cutler moved into the kid’s path.
“Sam Bean?” he asked.
Sam looked at Cutler. “That’s what I said.” He looked ready to go for his gun if necessary. “You want to see my pass?”
“I’m John Cutler.”
Sam thought about that a minute. “Howdy.”
“Your father here?”
Sam pointed to an old man sitting in the middle of the benches. “Right over there. But if you’ve got business with him, you’d better let it wait ’til after the show.”
“I’ll do that.”
Sam walked on to take a seat near his father. Cutler took a seat and prepared to wait out the show.
During the parade, which was a repetition of the one Cutler had seen earlier, he did not pay much attention. For him, the real show was Bean. The judge did not exactly look the way he had been described. He must have gotten cleaned up for the occasion. And he was wearing a Prince Albert coat and a plug hat. He sat straight and proud, watching the show as though he owned it.
But as the show progressed, Cutler got more interested, partly caught up in the excitement of the others who had come to see it.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Maroney announced from the center of the ring, “the Great Maroney Circus is proud to present for your entertainment and edification the beautiful and talented Miss Molly Barrie, descended from a long line of great English equestrians, performing unusual acts of daring and skill never before seen in this country. Miss Molly Barrie!”
The band played a fanfare, and Molly entered, delicately posed bareback on the white horse. The horse pranced into the ring and ran around it several times. Then Molly stood suddenly on its back, so expertly that it looked as though she had been pulled erect by wires. Bean stood to applaud, and the others followed suit.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Maroney announced. “You have seen nothing yet. Now watch carefully.”
Cutler had never seen anything like it in his life, not since he saw what a Comanche could do on an unsaddled horse, and that Indian would not have bothered to learn some of the tricks Molly performed.
She turned a backward somersault on the horse’s back, landing without the slightest uncertainty or wavering. Then she went face down on its back, put her arms around its neck, swung off to the left, around the neck and remounted on the right. She stood again and rode around the ring to the applause from the crowd.
A clown tossed her a bugle, and she blew three notes on it while still standing on the horse that moved around the ring at a full gallop. On the signal, the other five horses entered the ring and pranced around behind the one Molly rode, nose to tail, forming a closed ring of horses.
Molly played another note on the bugle, and the horses sidestepped so that they were moving around on an angle, each horse’s head next to the left haunch of the preceding horse. Molly stepped from the white horse to the back of the next horse, then the next, until she returned to the starting point. Then she did a forward somersault off the horse, landing on the ground outside the ring as the horses continued to prance around in their circle.
Bean rose to applaud again, and again so did the others. Cutler had thought Molly beautiful when he met her before the show, but now she was radiant as she basked in the approbation of the crowd, her arms upraised to catch it all.
Glowing with exertion and pleasure, she returned to the ring and, from the ground, put the horses through some other paces. At one point, the band played different tempos of music, and the horses stepped in time to each number.
At the conclusion of her act, Molly returned to the back of the white horse and did a series of somersaults and pirouettes from one horse to another, until she once more came to the ground to receive the applause of the audience. She blew on the bugle and the horses left the ring and exited, Molly dancing off behind them. She glanced at Cutler, stumbled, regained her balance, then finished her graceful exit.
The two clowns came on and seemed to amuse the adults as much as the kids. Cutler did not think they were very funny, but he assumed something had to be going on while some men erected a cage around the ring and filled it with platforms and other paraphernalia.
Maroney had an introduction for Eric Hansen that suggested the trainer was God’s gift to the world and asked the audience to consider how lucky they were that he was with them today when he might as easily be performing for the great crowned heads of Europe. Then Hansen ran in. He was wearing the outfit Cutler had seen him in before. Now he had a pistol on his hip, a whip in one hand and a chair in the other. He acknowledged the applause for what he was about to do, then entered the cage inside the ring. He looked nervous.
A wagon was wheeled up to the back opening, and the two lions leapt from it into the cage. The beasts prowled about as Hansen snapped his whip over their heads, until he persuaded them to take their perches on two tall pedestals.
Then another wagon was in place, and a tiger entered the ring. She got immediately onto her pedestal and exchanged snarls with the lion next to her.
The third wagon was in place. Hansen paused for a moment as though he were thinking, then nodded slightly to the men by the wagon who opened the wagon door to let Anna in the cage. But Anna did not come as readily as the other tiger. She hesitated in the wagon opening, looking as though she neither wished to enter the cage nor go back into her wagon. The men had to prod her from behind with metal-pointed sticks to encourage her into the cage.
Once inside, she resisted getting onto her perch. She skulked around the edge of the cage, snarling each time Hansen cracked his whip near her. Then she leapt at Hansen who fended her off with the chair. As she saw the four chair legs pointed at her, she seemed to become confused and was diverted from her purpose. Finally she leapt up onto her perch but, unlike the other animals, she kept snarling once she was there.
Hansen never took his eyes off her as he wiped some sweat from
his forehead. He removed the pistol from its holster and held it in his right hand with the chair.
The tigers stayed on their pedestals, as one of the lions was made to come down and walk atop a barrel from one side of the ring to the other. Then, as Hansen snapped his whip over the lion’s head, it turned on the barrel and walked it back. Anna crouched as though prepared to spring on the lion. Hansen snapped his whip at her and she sat back up with a growl of anger.
As the performance went on, Anna was kept on her perch. Cutler thought she would be required to do more than that ordinarily, but Hansen was taking the safer way out. How did this jibe with what he had said earlier about the importance of putting animals through their paces and not letting them get away with anything? Hansen must be in serious trouble in that cage to back down on a principle in which he believed so deeply.
The other tiger was made to perform, though. At one point, she walked along a rope. Or it probably looked like a rope to most of the audience. Cutler could see it was a two-by-four piece of lumber with half a strand of rope, cut lengthwise, fastened to its outside edge.
Then Hansen had the two lions at ground level. They ran around the ring, jumping through hoops and over barricades. At this point Anna crouched again. This time she did not sit up when Hansen cracked his whip in front of her nose. In an instant she leapt past the whip and onto the back of one of the lions. She seemed stuck there as she held on with her claws and sank her teeth into the lion’s neck. The second lion leapt at Anna, forcing her from the first lion’s back. The other tiger stayed on her perch and looked on as the two lions battled Anna and she fought back.
As Hansen worked to separate them and regain order, it became very clear that the audience was getting more of a show than had ever been rehearsed. The trainer was using the chair and whip and firing the gun in front of the cats’ faces. It was the latter which finally encouraged the lions back to their perches, but Anna stayed at ground level resisting Hansen. Some men moved in around the outside of the cage with those metal-tipped sticks and feeding forks. Cutler estimated that Hansen’s gun must be just about empty. Anyway, a bullet from a revolver that size would probably not kill a tiger like Anna, only enrage it into a greater fury.
