Chapter VIII: In the Steel Arena

“Congo”, a giant Koolakamba of the ape family, had been on a rampage for hours. And with Congo that meant trouble. Seven feet tall, measuring from his funny, crooked feet to his upraised, twisted hands; with great, canine tusks that could rip and tear like the thrust of a sabre, Congo was something to regard with care when he revolted against the confinement of his heavy, steel-barred cage, and roared forth his ultimatums of rebellion.

And he was on a rampage. Twice he had knocked over his three-ton cage, only to raise it again with a sweep of one great arm as the whip of the trainer cut about his face and neck. The heavy log chain which encircled his throat strained and clanked. Finally, as the whip cut deeper, one broad, black hand went swiftly upward, caught the whip and jerked it from the trainer’s hand. The loose lips parted from ugly incisors. One crunch of the jaws and the whip had become only a shapeless mass. Then, small eyes gleaming maliciously, black hands weaving slowly before the bulging chest, Congo strained harder than ever at his chain, the bellowing roars sounding louder and louder in the approaching mania of absolute revolt. The trainer whirled.

“Hasn’t Mrs. Wright shown up yet?” he asked anxiously.

“Not yet—wait a minute—think she’s just coming in the door.”

“Good!”

The trainer turned from his charge as the form of a woman showed in the door of the winter quarters where Congo was being housed for a month before the opening of the circus season. He smiled weakly and waved a hand.

“Do you mind trying to do something with him?” he asked. “Mr. Wright went downtown and—I guess he’s scared of me.”

“Of course he is.” A black-haired, black-eyed woman, the wife of the man who had reared Congo from a tiny “punk”, who had cared for the beast ever since the day it was purchased from the captain of a Cape Lopez freighter, came hurriedly forward. Congo howled at her as he had howled and roared at the trainer. But she paid no attention. He snarled. But a moment later he was cooing with apelike delight. The woman had gone straight to his cage, put an arm about his neck, and was stroking his face as one would stroke the face of a baby! Congo was mollified,—and by a woman!

“That was the whole trouble,” she said, as chairs were brought forward, and the big ape seated himself beside her with one arm about her neck, “he was just frightened. He didn’t know you, and he was scared. See? He’s not afraid of me. Congo—give me a big hug! There, that’s it.”

The tremendous arm, its muscles capable of raising three tons in leverage from the ground, grasped tight at the shoulders of the woman. The heavy, ugly lips pursed. A cooing sound came from them, then, like some big, ugly boy, the seven-foot ape laid his head on the shoulder of his mistress, sighed, and was content,—because he no longer was afraid. In that lies the secret of animal training; in that lies the explanation of the fact that in many an instance a woman can tame a wild beast when a man has failed; a woman can subjugate an arena full of lions or tigers or leopards when the entrance of a man might mean a combined assault and the horrible moments which come when the caged jungle beasts realize their superiority. For it is the truth—hard as it may be to swallow—that it is not the person within the steel arena who is afraid, but the beast! The cat animals, the chimpanzee, the elephant all have fear in their hearts. And the gentleness of womankind can best soothe this fear and allay it. Hence the fact that nearly every circus which travels here and there about the country through the summer months has one woman who performs in the steel arena, who is heralded as “the lady of the iron nerves” and “a person born without fear”, when the truth of the matter is merely the fact that she knows enough to gain the confidence of the beasts under her care, and to assure them that they are friends, that there is nothing to fear on either side!

A realm apart in the circus world is that of the woman who trains the “cats” or feline beasts which perform in the big, steel arena, the large, lubberly elephants, or ostriches, or even the grunting, slow-thinking, piglike hippopotamus. She occupies an entirely different sphere from that of the equestrienne, the contortionist, or the acrobat. Her mode of life, her work, her dangers—even her entry into the circus world—all are different. She is made, not born; she is herself trained, even as the animals under her supervision are trained, and her mental equipment must be far greater than that of the woman who swings on the high trapeze, or does a “perch act” during the “mixed aerial number” of the circus. They need know only the laws of equilibrium and of health and strength.

I stood one day during the training season, watching the efforts of a woman animal trainer, as she sought to force a leopard to its pedestal. Time after time she touched it with the whip, not viciously, not cruelly, but merely with sufficient force to tell it that she was in command and that she wanted a certain thing accomplished. The leopard hissed and roared. Its ugly teeth bared and it fought the whip with vicious, boxerlike thrusts of its claw-studded paws as though it were a living enemy. For fifteen minutes the contest continued, while the leopard grew more and more intractable. At last, the woman curled her whip, stood thoughtful a moment and then, with a sudden resolve, dropped her weapon, and, one hand extended, began to move ever so slowly toward the hissing, crouching beast.

Literally inch by inch she made the journey, while the leopard weaved and twisted before her, hissing, growling, evidently awaiting the first untoward move by the trainer before it leaped in attack. But that move did not come. At last they were separated by only a few feet,—then even this space narrowed. A hand went out and touched the cringing coat of the feline beast, while it writhed and yowled, too surprised either to attack or to run. For a long moment after that, the woman did not move. Then, slowly, gently, she began to caress the beast, patting it, tickling it behind the ears, stroking its fur as one would stroke some giant house cat. The growling ceased. The glare left the eyes. The woman moved even closer. Another moment, while the hand played gently about the beast’s head. Then—

“Tony!”

She had moved away and was calling to the menagerie superintendent. That person hurried forward.

“Anything wrong?” he asked, peering between the bars of the arena, as he watched her open the door which would allow the spotted cat to return to its cage. She nodded.

“Plenty. No wonder I couldn’t work the poor thing. It’s got an ulcerated tooth!”

The leopard went back into its cage, to receive the rough but well-intentioned services of the menagerie men as they first lashed it, then gave the injections of cocaine which would deaden the pain until the refractory tooth could be pulled, and its agony alleviated. The woman turned to me.

“You’ve got to know more than how to whip an animal to be a trainer,” she explained, with a laugh. “I thought something was wrong from the way that cat was acting. But I couldn’t tell what it was until I got close. Then I saw the swelling in the jaw—and touched it. Did you notice how it winced? After that it was easy.”

“I didn’t know—”

“That they had aches and pains? Why not? A horse has them, doesn’t it? Or a house dog? Why shouldn’t a jungle animal? Perhaps it’s because I’m around them more than I am domestic animals, but there are times when I believe they are nearer human beings when it comes to ailments than even our pets. Just for instance—”

She led the way down the line of permanent cages to where a three-months-old lion cub was yowling at the bars. A leather collar was around its neck, while a small chain hung near by. She opened the cage door and brought the yowling beast forth, then attached the chain.

“Come along, Honey,” she urged. “Time for your walk. Never get over your troubles unless you walk them off. There,” she cajoled, as the limping, yowling little puff of fur settled on its haunches and sat crying pitifully, “I know it hurts—but that’s what I’m trying to get rid of for you. Come along!”

I noticed the cub then; its legs were stiff and knotty! every step seemed one of agony. The trainer nodded.

“Rheumatism,” came her explanation. “It’s an inbred, the child of a brother and sister. The same rules apply to it that apply to human beings. A child under these circumstances would be weak and sickly. So are animals. It’s rare for one of them ever to amount to anything, but we’ve got to try to salvage what we can. This one could hardly move two weeks ago. Now it can walk all the way around the menagerie house.”

“After all,” she said, as we strolled along, the cub lion thumping painfully in our wake, “it’s a great deal like teaching school,—this animal-training business. Perhaps the simile appeals more to me for the simple reason that I once was a school-teacher. A far jump? Not at all. I dealt then with human children and taught them readin’, writin’, and ’rithmetic. Here I deal with animal children and teach them to jump through a hoop, or leap over hurdles. And all the time I am struck by the similarity of my problems.”

“For instance, in the schoolroom you must figure out your pupils. There are the ones who are afraid of you, simply because you are a teacher, and you can’t give them any advancement until you can conquer that fear. It is the same in the steel arena. Now and then you will find an animal that has been mistreated on some other circus, and who has been started out under a cruel trainer, who believed in beating the beast half to death to obtain his results. Naturally, when that animal faces you, it is a lunatic through fear. It believes your main object is to try to kill it, and naturally it intends to fight back with every bit of strength and power it possesses. And not until you can assure that beast that your idea is kindliness—coupled with firmness—and that its lot will be easy so long as it does what is required of it, can you really begin to train it. Isn’t that a parallel for the child who has been beaten for not getting his lessons, who has been bullied, and who has been taught that his instructor is an ogre instead of a friend?”

“Then, too, there are the defectives, just like this cub I’m leading around. However, this is a mild case. Here.” We stopped in front of a cage, and the trainer moved close to the bars. The result was a wild, screeching roar from the lion within. A leap, and the beast had sought the farthest corner, huddling there, hissing, its eyes gleaming, its jaws wide and threatening.

“Acts like a crazy person—with hallucinations,” I said.

“That’s because he _is_ crazy,” came the answer. “Crazy as any lunatic that ever was confined in an asylum. He’s an inbred too; it went to his mind. You can see absolute terror in his every action. He hasn’t enough brain-balance to be taught that he is safe in the company of humans. Therefore it’s impossible to train him. He’s only a menagerie lion, and he’ll never be anything else. He’d kill a trainer the minute he was let loose in the arena, not because he’s naturally a murderer, but because he would fully believe that his life was in danger unless he could slay his enemy before that enemy could slay him. So you see,” and there was a little laugh, “when we work an act in the steel arena, it’s a good deal like the last day of school. We pick our pupils to provide the entertainment.”

And the next time you’re around the circus, seek out some one among the animal men and ask him why all the caged beasts aren’t workers. He may not give the reason with the same discernment as the ex-school-teacher. But the theory behind it will be just the same.

Strange that a school-teacher should turn animal trainer? Not at all. Inquire into the past of Lucia Zora, billed as “the bravest woman in the world”, and you’ll find that at one time she was a member of the Russian Ballet. Ask Mrs. Henry Boucher about the days of her past, and she’ll tell you that she was a seventeen-year-old girl assistant to the wardrobe woman of a small circus before she went into the business of training elephants. Mlle. Adgie, one of the most famous of woman animal trainers, occupied a position far remote from lions and tigers before she took up the life of the steel arena. In a wild animal circus which winters on the Pacific Coast is Mabel Stark, whose act is that of wrestling a tiger. Six hundred pounds it weighs; yet every day, within the arena, she struggles with it as one would struggle with a human being; she mauls it about, slaps it, throws it from her, dances around the arena with it, and goes through the every motion of a rough-and-tumble bout. Nor is it some toothless, aged old beast that has neither the strength nor the inclination to object. The only time it ever missed a performance was when a careless animal man placed another tiger in the same den with it. One leap, a crunching attack,—and the other beast was dead! With any other animals it is a murderer. With Miss Stark it is only a playful cat, ready to do her bidding. Yet Miss Stark can count on her fingers the years she has been training animals. Before that she had never been nearer them than the ordinary spectator.

All this in support of the statement that the woman animal trainer is made and not born, as is the case with the usual performer of the circus. You will find in the equestrienne the descendant of a long line of riders. Her mother before her was a rider, and her grandmother, even back to the fourth and fifth generation. She is trained to the “rosinback”, as the ring horse is called, from the moment she is large enough to sit upon it. From her birth she is destined to become a rider; her thoughts are never elsewhere. It is the same with the acrobat. Stroll into the “big top” of the circus following the matinée performance, and you will find every ring clustered with fathers and mothers teaching their offspring the tricks and stunts which have given them a living beneath the canvas tents of the circus, training them from youth that the children may take their places and carry on the family name when they are gone. But with the animal trainer, all is different. She steps into the game in maturity; she trains for it as one would take a college course for some profession.

Usually it comes about through marriage. A girl of the circus, or even of the outside world, marries one of the menagerie men and travels with the show. She knows nothing of acrobatics, she is unable to accomplish the trapeze or riding feats which require bodily training from childhood, and yet she has the ambition to do something more than merely to ride in parade, or to form a part of the “grand, glittering and magnificent introductory spectacle.” And so she naturally turns to the menagerie, where her husband perhaps works. She learns the habits of the animals, their ailments, their idiosyncrasies. And, sooner or later, the day inevitably arrives when she begs her husband for the privilege of going into the arena with him when he works one of the various animal acts. The thrill has gotten into her blood. Once within the arena, she seldom leaves. In fact, soon after that first visit, the husband turns his attention to the general work of the menagerie, the care of the animals, the inspection of the cages, and the hundred and one other duties which he has been forced to neglect while he “worked” the animals. Some one else has taken his place; some one who seems to have far greater success than he; some one whom the animals obey with an implicit sort of faith, and who is far less nervous, far less fidgety and far less regardful of the possible dangers of the arena than ever he had been. There are many business men who say that their wives can drive the family car far better in the congested traffic of a city than they; their minds are free for that one purpose, they concentrate upon it, while the man may be attempting to figure out a business deal and listen for the whistle of the traffic cop at the same moment. It is the same with a woman in the animal arena. Once within the steel bars, the world goes by without a thought from her. The entire concentration of mind is upon those beasts, and the animals seem to know it. In the circus, it is the animal act performed by a woman that gets the greatest applause, and mostly because it is deserved.

Gentleness, too, is one of the reasons why animals are trained more swiftly by the feminine occupants of the arena, for it is through the conquering of fear that the beast itself is conquered. When an animal learns that, while it may be the subject of an overlord in the form of a trainer, it has nothing to fear in the way of bodily harm, it can be counted upon as a working animal, and not before. So long as the animal lives in fear, so long is it dangerous. But when that fear is gone—

“I’m all right now,” said the wife of Captain Ricardo, an animal trainer, one day as she stood in an arena with a new lion which was in the third week of its instructions, “I’ve got him eating out of my hand!”

“Literally, or figuratively?” I asked.

“Judge for yourself,” came her answer, as a strip of meat was tossed to her by an attendant from without. Then slowly she went forward toward the half-cringing beast, balancing itself upon a property “barrel.” She held forth the meat. The lion hesitated, turned as though to run, swung slowly back again, and with mincing jaws reached out for the food. The hand of the woman was not eight inches from the beast’s fangs, but that hand was unharmed. The lion had realized that this person was not an enemy, but a friend; that it was being rewarded for the fulfillment of a task. The battle of training had been won.

But don’t misunderstand. Lions or tigers—or any other dangerous feline beasts—are not trained by handing them pieces of meat. It is an entirely different process; harmless, but effective. And those first days of primary training, strangely enough, are the safest of all for the woman who desires to introduce new beasts to the intricacies of a trained act.

Within the cage, the beast is tied and trussed long enough for a heavy, leather strap to be passed about its body and securely fastened. To this is attached a rope which runs outside, through the top of the arena, and there through a pulley to the hands of waiting animal men. Then the beast is allowed to go through the opened door from its den to the arena, while the woman who is to make a “working animal” of it awaits, armed only with a whip and a revolver loaded with blank cartridges,—the last resort in case of emergency, should the rope or belt break.

The first instinct of the beast is to leap—at an enemy. It obeys the call of fear and lunges, but in vain. Outside, the men have pulled on the rope leading to the leather belt. Instead of striking against the human target, the beast finds itself clawing and twisting aimlessly in midair, while the thing it fears still stands, a few feet away, unharmed, and making no move toward it.

A wait of a few seconds and it is lowered, only to leap again and to find itself once more suspended harmlessly. Again and again, until finally there comes the time when it neglects to leap, and instead, seeks refuge in running. But once more the “mechanic”, as the belt and rope are called, interferes. It stops, and hissing, awaits the approach of the enemy.

Thus the first battle has been won. Gradually, by aid of light touches with the whip, the trainer forces the animal in the direction she desires him to go. Slowly she directs him to a pedestal, and in the efforts at escape, the beast leaps upon it. The first step in training has been accomplished. The beast has found that through some strange power, which must come from the trainer herself, it is unable to attack her. Naturally, its unfunctioning brain cannot understand the mechanical principles of the rope and belt, and the men outside the arena, who pull upon it. It simply attributes this invulnerability to attack to the trainer herself and realizes a helplessness in her presence. It consequently retreats, hearing certain commands as it does so. The constant repetition of this teaches it first to mount a pedestal, then to leap over hurdles and finally to do all the things which are seen during a “cat” act in the performance of a circus.

At first it does this all through fear. But gradually, as the days pass, it finds that the woman neither molests it nor annoys it so long as it follows the rote in which it is being trained. The result is a confidence, yes, even a spirit of friendship. The hiss of a lion in the arena is not nearly as vicious as it sounds.

With elephants, of course, the proceeding is different. There, the woman who trains them merely has to improve upon instructions already given, for the great mammals usually come to this country already trained. In the first place, practically every working elephant comes from India. The African elephant, as a rule, is a vicious, sullen outlaw, unamenable to kindness or to teachings. The Indian, on the other hand, has been accustomed to human beings all its life. It has worked in the compounds of India at such tasks as carrying logs, or hauling wagons, and it understands the superiority of human kind. From there it usually is taken to some training menagerie, where it is given another course of instructions in the primary things required by a circus, this usually happening in Germany. After that, it arrives in America; and the training which follows is usually only an elaboration of the rudiments it already has learned. But at that, it’s a good, hard job. If you don’t believe it, select for yourself some day a nice herd of, say, ten elephants, weighing from one to three tons apiece, and try to do the things that you’ve seen the woman trainer do in the circus,—such as swinging on the trunks of two of them, upraised some ten feet above the ground, while the rest of the herd forms a tableau in the background. And at the same time, smile and make a few bows to the audience. It isn’t so terribly easy!

Nor is the task of any animal trainer, man or woman, a simple job. There are many things to know, many things which require constant vigilance, neglect of which may bring death! An animal with an ulcerated tooth is not the same tractable beast as when in good health and humor. I once saw a woman escape from the arena after the last blank cartridge had been fired from her revolver straight into the eyes of an attacking Bengal tiger, causing it to halt and wheel, not three feet from her. And in that instant of indecision she whirled through the steel gate and was safe. It was puzzling: the fact that the most faithful, the hardest working tiger of all her group should suddenly “go bad” and rebel against her every effort to make it obey her commands. In truth, it was a mystery to every one, until the tiger had been taken back to its cage, strapped, and a minute examination made of its teeth and feet. In the latter was the cause found. A claw had turned and was growing straight into the flesh. The foot was swollen and sore. Well, perhaps at some time in your life you’ve had an ingrowing toe nail? That was what was wrong with the tiger, on a larger scale, of course. And it made him just ugly enough to want to kill somebody. He nearly succeeded.

Indigestion, too much feeding, under-feeding, lack of rest, exposure during some run of the circus in the early months of fall, when the wind whips along the train and chills the animals unless the dens are properly covered; excess of heat on hot days, bad water,—all these things may have their effect within the steel arena. More than that, the emotions must be taken into consideration, even to gratitude.

On one of the traveling carnivals of the country is an animal act which contains one leopard that is by far the best performer of the whole group. The woman who displays the act, the wife of its owner, can do as she pleases with that one cat. If it doesn’t obey the command to mount its pedestal, she neither whips it nor rails at it. She simply walks swiftly and firmly to it, seizes it by the nape of the neck and _lifts_ it into place. If it growls at her, she cuffs it with her open hand and scolds it as one would scold a house cat. She knows that nothing she can do can displace the affection in the heart of that great, spotted feline beast. And of course, there is a story behind it.

It was in the autumn, and the carnival was rounding out its season in the south, only to be caught in a “norther”, one of those sudden descents of ice-cold rain which freezes the moment it strikes the ground. The train was on the move before the dens could be shrouded in canvas and filled with straw to give the necessary warmth to the jungle animals, and one of the leopards, an intractable, hateful beast that had absolutely refused to respond to every effort at subjugation, had become chilled,—with the inevitable result of pneumonia. The owner went rather disconsolately to his wife.

“Going to lose that Beauty cat,” he announced. “Pneumonia.”

Woman nature came to the surface.

“But aren’t you doing anything for it?”

“That cat? I should say not; it’d tear you to pieces the minute you went into the cage.”

“Not if it’s sick—I shouldn’t think—” Then there was a pause. “I’m going to try it, anyway.”

Against the protestations of her husband, she made her preparations. Cloths were cut. Liniments and hot packs were made ready. Then, surrounded by men with feeding forks, flanked by her husband with a revolver, she made her entrance into the cage. The leopard hissed at her and sought to rise. Impossible—the ravages of fever and of disease prevented. Closer the woman went and applied the packs. As the befanged mouth was opened, she poured medicine down the red throat. The leopard did not resist,—through sheer inability to summon the necessary strength. It was the beginning of a week’s vigil.

Gradually the cat came to know that this person who stayed beside him day and night was there for the purpose of relief. There was comfort in the heat of those packs; the medications allayed the pain and brought easier breathing. The time came when the eyes of the beast followed her as she left the cage and watched for her until she returned. Recovery set in, but with it there was no recurrence of the hissing and roaring and rebellion against the association of a human. One day the husband came beside the cage to find the great, emaciated cat asleep, its head pillowed in the lap of the woman. Health came at last, and with it the announcement from the wife that she intended to train the hitherto untrainable beast. Into the arena they went. Five minutes later, she had tossed aside her whip and was directing the beast by hand, lifting it to the pedestals and down again, or catching it by the loose skin of its neck and guiding it from one side of the arena to the other. That was four years ago. And in all that time, not one hiss of anger has ever come from that leopard’s throat!