Son of Power | Page 2

all put back. Skag was out in the world now, making it exactly to suit himself. He was in charge of himself in many ways. A glass of water and a sandwich would do for a long time, if necessary. . . . The West pulled him. Awhile in the mountains, he lived with a prospector; there was a period in the desert when he came to know lizards; then there were years of the circus, when he was out with the Cloud Brothers, animal men of the commercial type. Ten queer, hard years for the boy--as hard almost as for the animals.
Back in Chicago the caged creatures had been kept better--as well as beasts belonging to the outdoors could be imprisoned, but the Cloud Brothers didn't have fine senses like their charges. They tried to make wild animals live in a place ventilated for men. There was a bad death-percentage and none of the big cats were in show form, until the Clouds began to take Skag's word for the main thing wrong. It wasn't the hard life, nor the coops, nor the travel, but the steady day in and day out lack of fresh air. Skag knew what the animals suffered, because it all but murdered him on hot nights. Of course, there are tainted-flesh things like hyenas that live best on foul air, foul everything, but "white" animals of jungle and forest are high and cleanly beasts. When well and in their prime, even their coats are incapable of most kinds of dirt, because of a natural oily gloss.
At nineteen, Skag was in charge of the packing, moving and feeding of all the big cats, including pumas, panthers, leopards. He was in and out of the cages possibly more than was necessary. He learned that there are two ways to manage a wild animal--the "rough-neck" way with a club, and the fancy way with your own equilibrium; all of which comes in more to the point later.
He was interested at the time, but not really acquainted with the camels and elephants. He often chatted with Prussak, the Arab, who loathed camels to the shallow depths of his soul, but got as much out of them as most men could. Skag dreamed of a better way still, even with camels. Often on train-trips, at first, he talked with old Alec Binz, whose characteristic task was to chain and unchain the hind leg of the old "gunmetal" elephant, Phedra, who bossed her sire and the little Cloud herd, as much with the flap of an ear as anything else. . . .
No, old Alec must not be forgotten, nor his sandalwood chest with its little rose-jar in the corner, making everything smell so strangely sweet that it hurt. A girl of India had given Alec the jar twenty years before. The spirit of a real rose-jar never dies; and something of the girl's spirit was around it, too, as Alec talked softly. All this was unreservedly good to Skag--thrilling as certain few books and the top drawer that had been his mother's. . . . But something way back of that, utterly his own deep heart-business, was connected with the rose-jar. It was breathless like opening a telegram--its first scent after days or weeks. If you find any meaning to the way Skag expressed it, you are welcome:
"It makes you think of things you don't know--"
"But you will," Alec had once answered.
The more you knew, the more you favoured that old man of the circus company,--little gold ring in his ear and such tales of India!
It was Alec who led Skag into the fancy way of dealing with animals, but of course the boy was peculiar, inasmuch as he believed it all at once. Skag never ceased to think of it until it was his; he actually put it into practice. Alec might have told a dozen American trainers and have gotten no more than a yawp for his pains. This is one of the things Alec said:
"If you can get on top of the menagerie in your own insides, Skagee--the tigers and apes, the serpents and monkeys, in your own insides--you'll never get in bad with the Cloud Brothers wild animal show."
There wasn't a day or night for years that Skag didn't think of that saying. It was his secret theme. So far as he could see, it worked out. Of course, he found out many things for himself--one of which was that there is a smell about a man who is afraid, that the animals get it and become afraid, too. Alec agreed to this, but added that there is a smell about most men, when they are not afraid.
For hours they talked together about India--tiger hunts and the big Grass Jungle country in the Bund el