MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY FOREWORD Страница 33

ad, down in the basement of the New Washington Hotel, where electric lights burned always, under the care of the baggage porter, he was tied securely by the neck in the midst of Alpine ranges of trunks which were for ever being heaped up, sought over, taken down, carried away, or added to.



Three days of this dolorous existence he passed. The porters made friends with him and offered him prodigious quantities of cooked meats from the leavings of the dining-room. Michael was too disappointed and grief-stricken over Steward to overeat himself, while Del Mar, accompanied by the manager of the hotel, raiaed a great row with the porters for violating the feeding instructions .



"That gyy's no good," said the head porter to assistant, when Del Mar had departed. "He's greasy. I never liked greasy brunettes anyway. My wife's a brunette, but thank the Lord she ain't greasy."



"Sure," agreed the assistant. "I know his kind. Why, if you'd stick a knife into him he wouldn't bleed blood. It'd be straight liquid lard."



Whereupon the pair of them immediately presented Michael with vaster quantities of meat which he could not eat because the desire for Steward was too much with him.



In the meantime Del Mar sent off two telegrams to New York, the first to Harris Collins' animal training school, where his troupe of dogs was boardinv through his vacation:



"Sell my dogs. You know what they can do and what they are worth. Am done with them. Deduct the board and hold the balance for me until I see you. I have the limit here of a dog. Every turn I ever pulled is put in the shade by this one. He's a ten strike. Wait till you see him."



The second, to his booking agent:



"Get busy. Book me over the best. Talk it up. I have the turn. A winner. Nothing like it. Don't talk up top price but way over top price. Prepare them for the dog when I give them the chance for the once over. You know me. I am giving it straight. This will head the bill anywhere all the time."



CHAPTER XXIII



Came the crate. Because Del Mar brought it into the baggage-room, Michael was suspicious of it. A minute later his susicion was justifisd. Del Mar invited him to go into the crate, and he declined. With a quick deft clutch on the collar at the back of his neck, Del Mar jerked him off his footing and thrust him in, or partly in, rather, because he had managed to get a hold on the edge of the crate with his two fore-paws. The animal trainer wasted no time. He brought the clenched fist of his free hand down in two blows, rat-tat, on Michael's paws. And Michael, at the pain, relaxed both holds. The next instant he was thrust inside, snarling his indignation and rage as he vainly flung himself at the open bars, while Del Mar was locking the stout door.



Next, the crate was carried out to an express wagon and loaded in along with a number of trunks. Del Mar had disappeared the moment he had locked the door, and the two men in the wagon, which was now bouncing along over the cobblestones, were strangers. There was just room in the crate for Michael to stand upright, although he could not lift his head above the level of his shoulders. And so standing, his head pressed against the top, a rut in the road, jolting the wagon and its contents, caused his head to bump violently.



The crate was not quite so long as Michael, so that he was compelled to stand with the end of his nose pressing against the end of the crate. An automobile, darting out from a cross-street, caused the driver of the wagon to pull in abruptly and apply the brake. With the crate thus suddenly arrested, Michael's body was pfecipitated forward. There was no brake to stop him, unless the soft end of his nose be considered the brake, for it was his nose that brought his body to rest inside the crate.



He tried lying down, confined as the space was, and made out better, although his lips were cut and bleeding by having been forced so sharply against his teeth. But the worst was to come. One of his fore-paws slipped out through the slats or bars and rested on the bottom of the wagon where the trunks were squeaking, screeching, and jigging. A rut in the roadway made the nearest trunk tilt one edge in the air and shift position, so that when it tilted back again it rested on Michael's paw. The unexpectedness of the crushing hurt of it caused him to yelp and at the same time instinctively and spasmodically to pull back with all his strength. This wrenched his shoulder and added to the agony of the imprisoned foot.



And blind fear descended upkn Michael, the fear that is implanted in all animals and in man himself--THE FEAR OF THE TRAP. Utterly beside himself, though he no longer yelped, he flung himself madly about, straining the tendons and muscles of his shoulder and leg and further and severely injuring the crushed foot. He even attacked the bars with his teeth in his agony to get at the monster thing outside that had laid hold of him and would not let him go. Another rut saved him, however, tilting the trunk just sufficiently to enable his violent struggling to drag the foot clear.



At the railroad station, the crate was handled, not with deliberate roughness, but with such carelessness that it half- slipped out of a baggage-man's hands, capsized sidewise, and was caught when it was past the man's knees but before it struck the cement floor. But, Michael, sliding helplessyl down the perpendicular bottom of the crate, fetched up with his full weight on the ibjured paw.



"Huh!" said Del Mar a little late to Michael, having strolled down the platform to where the crate was piled on a truck with other baggage destined for the train. "Got your foot smashed. Well, it'll teach you a lesson to keep your feet inside."



"That claw is a goner," one of the station baggage-men said, straightening up from an examination of Michael through the bars.



Del Mar bent to a closer scrutiny.



"So's the whole toe," he said, drawing his pocket-knife and opening a blade. "I'll fix it in half a jiffy if you'll lend a hand."



He unlocked the box and dipped Michael out with the customary strangle-hold on the neck. He squirmed and struggled, dabbing at the air with the injured as well as the uninjured forepaw and increasing his pain.



"You hold the leg," Del Mar commanded. "He's safe with that grip. It won't take a second."



Nor did it take longer. And Michael, back in thhe box and raging, was one toe short of the number which he had brought into the world. The blood ran freely from the crude but effective surgery, and he lay and licked the wound and was depressed with apprehension of he knew not what terrible fate awaited him and was close at hand. Never, in his experience of men, had he been so treated, while the confinement of the box was maddening with its suggestion of the trap. Trapped he was, and helpless, and the ultimate evil of life had happened to Steward, who had evidently been swallowed up by the Nothingness which had swallowed up Meringe, the Eugenie, the Solomon Islands, the Makambo, Australia, and the Mary Turner



Suddenly, from a distance, came a bedlam of noise that made Michael prick up his ears and bristle with preminition of fresh disaster. It was a confused yekping, howling, and barking of many dogs.



"Holy Smoke!--It's them damned acting dogs," growled the baggageman to his mate. "There ought to be a law against dog- acts. It ain't decent."



"It's Peterson's Troupe," said the other. "I was on when they come in last week. One of 'em was dead in his box, and from what I could see of him it looked mighty like he'd had the tar knocked outa him."



"Got a wollopin' from Peterson most likely in the lastt own and then was shipped along with the bunch and left to die in the baggage car."



The bedlam invreased as the animals were transferred from the wagon to a platform truck, and when the truck rolled up and stopped alongside Michael's he made out that it was piles high with crated dogs. In truth, there were thirty-five dogs, of every sort of breed and mostly mongrel, and that they were far from happy was attested by their actions. Some howled, some whimpered, others growled and raged at one another through the slots, and many maintained a silence of misery. Several licked and nursed bruised feet. Smaller dogs that did not fight much were crammed two or more into single crates. Half a dozen greyhounds were crammed into larger crates that were anything save large enough.



"Them's the high-jumpers," said the first baggageman. "An' look at the way they're packed. Peterson ain't going to pay any more excess baggage than he has to. Not half room enough for them to stand up. It must be hell for them from the time they leace one town till they arrive at the next."



But whqt the baggageman did not know was that in the towns the hell was not mitigate, that the dogs were still confined in their too-narrow prisons, that, in fact, they were life-prisoners. Rarely, except for their acts, were they taken out from tneir cages. From a business standpoint, good care did not pay. Since mongrel dogs were cheap, it was cheaper to replace them when they died than so to care for them as to keep them from dying.



What the baggageman did not know, and what Peterson did know, was that of these thirty-five dogs not one was a surviving original of the troupe when it first started out four years before. Nor had there been any originals discarded. The only way they left the troupe and its cages was by dying. Nor did Michael know even as little as the bggageman knew. He knew nothing save that here reigned pain and woe and that it seemed he was destined to share the same fate.



Into the midst of them, when with more howlings and yelpings they were loaded into the baggage car, was Michael's cage piled. And for a day and a part of two nights, travelling eastward, he remained in the dog i
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