Tiger's Chance

by H. V. Elkin

  Then Cutler saw Molly and Apache on the ridge. Molly raised the six-gun in the air as she looked behind her.

  “No!” Cutler hissed. “Not now!”

  “She gonna shoot?” the other man whispered. “This is a hell of a time to have company.”

  They watched Molly with the gun raised and they held their breath. Finally, she lowered the gun and looked back toward the tiger on the boulder several yards beneath her.

  “Phew!” the cage driver blew out some wind. “That was close.”

  “Some riders must’ve turned off,” Cutler said. “Hope they stay off.”

  It looked as if Anna had spotted the circling horses. The sight of that familiar movement and the sound of the music must have touched a memory which was not unpleasant, for she began to leave the safety of her hill and move with catlike grace down toward the show horse.

  “Down!” Cutler ordered, and both men ducked their heads behind the canvas. Cutler took out his sheath knife and cut two holes in the canvas so both men could see. With the dust being stirred up by the horse, it was like looking through a curtain, and they did not see Anna until she was within a few yards of the pedestal.

  “Get ready,” he said.

  Anna was not moving now. She had stopped in a crouch, as though she was thinking it over. But the horse kept running as though she was not there, and the music was persistent.

  It happened in an instant, so quickly that, with the dust screen, it seemed the tiger did not move at all. Only that one moment she was crouched on the ground and, in the next moment, magically appeared on the pedestal above the horse. She crouched now atop the pedestal and looked down, allowing the horse to pass by twice without a rider. The third time she pounced and landed on the platform saddle where she sat and rode around the circle.

  Cutler could see the wheel was loosening from so many gyrations and, in a moment, the horse might be dragging it and carrying the tiger out of reach.

  “Next pass,” he said.

  The driver nodded, his lasso ready.

  “Now!”

  Two loops of rope spun out over the canvas, one first, the other close behind, and both landed around the tiger’s neck as she rode the horse past the canvas. As the men stood and the lassos tightened, Anna was jolted from her perch to the ground. The music stopped, and the horse stopped circling when it got back to the pedestal.

  Cutler and the driver played out their ropes, moving away from each other as Anna, in a mad flurry, regained her footing and looked for someone or something to attack. As she tried to move toward one of her tormentors, the other held her back. Several times she swerved from one side to the other, looking for the freedom to attack, but always restrained from the other direction.

  “Can you hold on?” Cutler yelled.

  “Don’t know,” the driver answered. “Don’t know how long.”

  The music started up again but with a different tune, and the sound moved toward them. At first it was drowned out by the enraged animal, and then it could be heard.

  “Well, she better give up before we do,” Cutler said.

  The driver gritted his teeth and held on for all he was worth. He was a strong man, all right, but no man could hold out forever against the angry power of such a tiger. Still, Cutler and the driver had one thing going for them. It was either hold on or be killed. In such a situation, men feel strength they never knew they had surging up from some place inside them they never knew was there.

  Besides, it was the rope holding Anna that had her attention, and she wanted to attack the man who held that rope. But the offending rope kept changing. First it was on one side and when she whirled toward it, the enemy was on the other side. The tiger, normally single-minded in her determination to attack in one direction, now out of her element and in her unnatural state of mind, could not make up her mind.

  As the music got nearer, this too served to confuse Anna. And finally, just at the moment Cutler thought the driver was about to give out, Anna crouched, snarled and stopped fighting. Both men kept their lines taut and caught their breath. Cutler could see that one of the driver’s bare hands was bleeding. Cutler wondered if the man would be able to hang on until the musicians got there, but he was not about to insult the man by asking a second time.

  The driver grinned. “Feel like the monkey with his hand caught in the jar.”

  “Won’t be long now,” Cutler encouraged him. “Keep talkin’, but like you was talkin’ to a baby, kind of low and quiet.”

  The driver nodded and as the music got nearer, the two men got to know each other better. At least, they learned some facts about each other they did not know before. But Cutler already knew the man from the way he handled himself. He knew that the driver was one of those men made out of tough material. Like some of the heroes in the stories Cutler’s father used to tell, the kid who let a fox gnaw him to death before he would discredit himself by letting anyone know he hid it under his coat, or the man who ran himself to death taking news of a victory from one part of Greece to another. This man was the type who would give everything he had, probably even his life, before he would shame himself in front of Cutler. Their conversation was mainly to reassure the tiger, and if you only heard them without seeing them, you would never guess they had over four hundred pounds of trouble between them. They sounded like two cowboys who met on the trail and paused briefly to pass the time of day.

  Then the musicians were there, or the flute and chimes were. They paused near the pedestal by the armored horse and continued to play their soothing tune, one that might stir a circus memory for the tiger. In a moment, the drummer came without his drum but with a pound of meat. The drummer hesitated when he actually saw what, up to now, he had only been able to imagine, the two men with a tiger at the end of the ropes they held. He looked to Cutler and Cutler nodded. The drummer tossed the meat near Anna.

  At first, Anna ignored it. She only curled her lips up and hissed. If she refused to eat, which was very possible under these conditions, the men knew they were still in a Jot of trouble. But the music continued to play, and Cutler and the driver kept up their quiet talking. Finally, her two-day-old hunger getting the better of other basic instincts, Anna accepted the meat and devoured it quickly. Now maybe her condition was not so intolerable for her, if being held by two ropes meant food. She sat up and looked around for more. The drummer produced another hunk of meat and, holding it out, began to back up toward the open cage nearby. Cutler and the driver closed ranks slightly and both of them tugged on their ropes as they moved toward opposite sides of the cage. Anna crept forward cautiously with the meat moving in front of her, the two men persuading her in that direction and with the music encouraging her from the rear. She got within ten yards of the cage, then sat back on her haunches and resisted. The drummer threw the meat into the cage and ran around to the back. Maintaining tension on the rope, Cutler threw the slack end to the far side of the cage. The drummer pulled it through the bars and wrapped it around one of the bars so he would be able to hold it. Then the driver threw his rope into the cage, and by the time he had done so, Cutler was next to the drummer, fishing the driver’s rope through the bars and keeping it taut. The driver ran around to relieve the drummer. Together, he and Cutler began tugging firmly on the ropes. Anna inched forward but hesitated again, and she looked as if she was about to begin a fresh resistance. Seeing this, Cutler and the driver planted their feet firmly and held on.

  Then, before anyone knew she was there, Molly had ridden up on Apache and now stood behind Anna, in dangerous proximity to the tiger.

  “Get back!” Cutler yelled.

  But Molly did not move. Instead she stood there and fired the gun into the air, once, twice. Anna leapt forward toward the cage with such suddenness that Cutler almost lost his footing as the rope went slack and the driver sat back on his rear. The tiger was inside, and the drummer clanged the cage door shut.

  It was over.

  For a moment, none of them moved. Even Anna wa
s frozen inside the cage. Then Anna took the meat.

  And the victorious laughter of the hunters reverberated off the horseshoe hill. Cutler let them have their moment of celebration as they whooped and danced around and threw dust on each other. For them, the battle had been won. For Cutler, it meant that now he could go after what he called the real rogue. He chuckled to himself as the noise of celebration blotted out the sound of distant thunder in the sky.

  Chapter Nine

  The celebration continued on the circus lot, multiplied in noise by the greater number of people who might now be able to keep their jobs. Cutler watched them all carefully. All seemed sincerely grateful, all but Hansen. Maybe his pained smile only hid chagrin about Cutler finishing what should have been Hansen’s job. His poorly concealed misgivings did not necessarily mean he was the black sheep of the circus. But then they heard Bean was coming. Then Hansen’s face went white. He excused himself, but did not leave fast enough, for Bean blocked the exit from the menagerie tent when Hansen started out of it.

  Bean nodded to Hansen, his white eyebrows lowered, and Hansen backed up. The people parted, making a path between Bean and the tiger cage. Like a king on a red carpet, Bean strode to the cage and stared at Anna who was lying in the far corner and blinking back. Bean nodded slowly, judiciously, then turned to the others.

  “I’ll make the arrangements with the railroad,” he said. “You can be out of here sometime tomorrow.” He cast a meaningful look at Hansen. “Sometimes tomorrow,” he repeated. “I’m a man of my word. I like men who keep their word.”

  “Thank you, Judge,” Maroney said. “And the money you promised to cover one day’s lost receipts?”

  Bean coughed and pretended not to hear.

  “The money, Judge?” Maroney asked.

  “How much would that be?” Bean asked.

  “About forty dollars, sir. That would help keep us in business until our income resumes in the next town.”

  “Forty dollars.” Bean rolled the words around in his mouth as ;f they were distasteful. “Forty dollars. Well, let’s see. There’s them six sheep I lost. I figure they’re worth thirty. Suppose I could charge you for a license on top of that, but I ain’t that kind of man. I’ll meet your train tomorrow with the ten dollars, if you figure you can keep that tiger caged that long.”

  “But Judge,” Maroney said. “That could end us.”

  “Well, I hate to see a man go broke,” Bean said. “But you figure you’re in tough shape, do you?”

  “It is not good, sir.”

  Bean scratched his belly a moment. “Well, I don’t know. You figure on sellin’, do you?”

  Any smiles that had been left now faded.

  “Selling, Judge?”

  “Can’t say I’m all that interested. But if the price wasn’t too bad, maybe. We could dicker about it if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Oh, I might not be interested anyway. Can’t say. It’d depend on the rest of you. There’d have to be some conditions, naturally.”

  Maroney hung his head. “Naturally.”

  “You can sell me the tent and the animals, all right, but that wouldn’t be no good without the people, would it?” He cast a quick look at Molly. “All the performers’d have to sign contracts for a year or two. Then we might be able to talk turkey.”

  “I can’t sell my circus, Judge. It is my life.”

  “Well, you might not have to leave it. We’ll see. Might keep you on to run it for me. You’re the kind of man that can take orders, ain’t you?”

  “I will have to think about this.”

  “Sure, you sleep on it, Maroney. Let me know tomorrow. You can either come into Langtry to talk business or you can get on the train and ride out. Leave it up to you, I will. You talk it over,” he looked at Molly again, “with your people, and you decide which way it is. Course, if you decide to sell, I’ll add the ten dollars to the price we agree on. That’s fair, ain’t it?” He nodded in answer to his own question and started out. “Hang on to that tiger now you got her, you hear?”

  After he was gone, Maroney looked around at the others. His forehead was wrinkled, his eyes moist, and he suddenly looked ten years older.

  “Fred,” Molly said, “you’ve let me make a living doing what I wanted to do most. I’ve got some diamonds saved up.”

  Maroney managed a smile. “No, Molly. I would sell to Bean before I would touch the retirements of any of you. But I am deeply grateful for the offer.” He looked around at the others. “How do the rest of you feel?”

  Hansen spoke, not looking Maroney in the eye but at the whip in his hands. “Fred, it might not be so bad to sell if it keeps the show together.”

  Maroney nodded. “You may be right, Eric.”

  “What difference does it make who owns the circus? We can still go about our business, can’t we? Only difference is we’d have a little more security. If things got tough again, Bean would be responsible for the debts.”

  Maroney looked at Cutler. “That would help assure the payment of your fee, John. You have a stake in this, too. What do you say?”

  “My fee gets paid often enough that I ain’t poor,” Cutler said. “I can wait for it ’til Hell freezes over. You go ahead and decide what you’re gonna do as though you didn’t owe me money. Like I said before, I wasn’t catchin’ the tiger to put you out of business.”

  That seemed to give Maroney back some of his old spirit. “Ladies and gentlemen, there is still a chance. But if we take it, we will be on the edge of bankruptcy for some time. If we take the chance that business will be good in the next town, we will all have to do without salaries for a while and tighten our belts. So which will it be? Do we take the chance, or do we sell out?”

  The cage driver spoke. “Fred, you know it wasn’t any easy thing for an old cowhand like me to have to join a circus. But now that I did, I got to say I ain’t sorry. The reason I ain’t sorry is you’re one of the best damned men I ever worked for. I’d rather take my chances with you, than wind up workin’ for Bean or anyone else. I get half a meal a day, and I’ll be satisfied. Won’t be no worse than havin’ to ride the grub line in the winter, and I’ve done my share of that before. I say we hang on until we can’t hang on no longer, and then we hang on some more.”

  Maroney looked as if he wanted to hug the man, but if he did, he restrained himself. In a moment, he heard the cheers and applause of agreement around him. He took a handkerchief from his hip pocket and blew his nose.

  Hansen was walking out of the tent.

  At night there was the low rumble of thunder again, but it seemed farther off now, as though God had been merely teasing the parched desert of Pecos country. As the sound subsided, Red sat up straight on the wagon seat and growled a warning as though he was answering the thunder or imitating it. But it was not the sound of distant rain that alerted the Airedale. He sat stiffly looking into the darkness in front of him and not at the sky. Whatever he sensed was out there, it looked like a standoff between him and it. Red remained rigid, waiting for something that was not happening.

  There were sounds inside the wagon, but they did not disturb the dog. They were the more familiar sounds of one or two bodies turning in sleep. There was the low murmur of a woman’s voice and more movement.

  Then, as though in response to the sounds inside the wagon, footsteps were heard in the night without thunder, and they were moving away. Red looked off into the darkness a moment, then warily settled back down.

  The footsteps went into the menagerie tent and paused near the opening. “Anybody here?” the voice asked and received no answer. How foolish they all were, with their hope for the future and the tiger captured, to have relaxed their guard. Everyone was sleeping in ignorant peace. And if they were not sleeping, like those who made the sounds inside Cutler’s wagon, they were otherwise preoccupied, any thought of danger having given way to other feelings.

  The footsteps went directly to Anna’s cage. A hand reac
hed out and unlocked the door, and the door squeaked wide open. Then the cold steel of a gun barrel poked through the door and touched the perspiring face of the intruder. The intruder froze and, as his eyes widened and he became accustomed to the dark, he saw the cold look of a tiger staring at him, but it was not coming from a tiger. It was coming from Cutler.

  “You look surprised, Eric,” Cutler said. “That’s funny, ‘cause I’m not.”

  Hansen did not move, but he said, “I just came to see if Anna was all right.”

  “Oh, she is,” Cutler said. “We saw to that by puttin’ her in a different cage after you walked off today. Was you openin’ the door to take her for a walk?”

  A silence. Then Hansen asked, “What do you want, Cutler?”

  “The story, Eric. How you come to start tamin’ animals. But I figure we’d better go tell it where it’s not wasted on just me. You circus people, you like to have the biggest audience you can get, don’t you?”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, Maroney’d want to hear it, I reckon. Might be good to take it to court, too, and tell it in front of Roy Bean.”

  “No!”

  “What’s the matter? Bean don’t know the story already, does he?”

  “John?” Molly’s voice, her figured silhouetted in the tent opening. She was holding a lantern.

  “Yeah,” Cutler said, “but you know I ain’t alone.”

  “Okay, Cutler,” Hansen said. “You win.”

  “Then turn around slow and start walkin’ out. Just ahead for that lantern light.”

  “Okay,” Hansen said, turned slowly, and then suddenly his hand reached out to the cage door and slammed it shut, forcing Cutler’s arm up and causing him to shoot through the canvas roof.