by H. V. Elkin
When Joe spoke, he was modest and unassuming, a sharp contrast to the cockiness of the young man he had trained and who had spoken with such youthful assurance. But after a minute on his feet, Joe seemed to become inspired, and the things he said then were permanently etched in Maroney’s memory.
“A cat,” he said, “lives only now. It is like an elephant in that way. A cat does not know it is a beautiful animal and it does not look in a mirror. A cat is beautiful partly because it isn’t self-conscious in the way people can be.” He paused, collecting his thoughts. Maroney saw Hansen’s eyes dart to the side, perhaps to see if anyone was looking at him, perhaps wondering if anyone thought Joe’s words a reflection on him.
“I have learned much from the cat,” Joe went on. “The cat has taught me how to train it. I had to learn to go outside myself and be as sensitive to outside things as the cat—in order to meet it on its own ground—which was that space between us. I can say these things now because I’m leaving, and I won’t have to be around to hear you joke about it. Our consciousness—the cat’s and my own—met each other halfway, and from that came a respect for each other.” He paused and cleared his throat.
“The same thing that made my act work is what makes the circus work. We have all been carefully trained to live with each other. And we have developed certain rules that no one ever had to write down. But the rules were just a result of our attitudes . . . the way we, too, go out to meet each other. That has developed a community of people, individuals who always think of others, not so much of themselves. That’s the only reason, and a very big one, why I leave you with regret. And yet, at the same time, I’m happy to go when that way of living still exists, before it changes, and to be able to remember it that way.”
Maroney realized that Joe had been trying to tell them all something he could not say directly. The very code he talked about kept him from telling what threatened it. He was implying there was, in fact, a threat in their midst. And apparently that threat was Hansen. In some way, Hansen’s example had prompted Joe to leave the life he loved so much, so he could still remember it the way it was when it was best.
So after that, Maroney had kept a close watch on Hansen. But, now that he was fully in charge of the act, Hansen seemed content and outgoing. It was Hansen who had gotten Molly to consider combining the tiger and the horse act, and that was one of the most successful moments in the show today. So Maroney had relaxed his vigil to some extent, deciding that Hansen was not going to be a problem after all. Probably not. The fact that the seats next to Hansen in the mess tent were often the last to be filled—did that represent a problem? Maybe a certain coldness was necessary to be a successful cat trainer. Still, there was something calculating about the young man, something you couldn’t really put your finger on. For all his uncertainties about that, Maroney was very certain that if there was one person in the circus who was going to have an enemy, it would be Eric Hansen.
These are the things Maroney decided not to reveal to Molly that night as they walked around the lot in the moonlight and listened to coyotes singing to each other.
“No,” he said to the question she seemed to ask a long time ago. “No, I guess it is not so possible for Eric to have an enemy.”
She looked up at him with a troubled smile. And he knew she read his secret thoughts. He also knew that neither of them was going to mention it.
A lot of answers were waiting at Langtry. And that is where the circus and Cutler were going.
Chapter Three
The coyotes Maroney and Molly heard were answered in the distance by other coyotes. And beyond those were others that Maroney and Molly could not hear. These were answered by still more even farther away. Somewhere amidst this chain of dog songs Cutler was having trouble going to sleep. He had slept to coyote tunes before and could not understand why they kept him awake tonight. Iris’s words came back to him and the coyote howls seemed to trail off and connect beyond his hearing with something he could not see and might do better to avoid. Ever since Cutler had been bitten by a rattlesnake, then suffered for months afterwards with premonitions of his own death, he wanted nothing more to do with forebodings. If there was something dangerous waiting for him at the end of the coyote chain, Cutler would just as soon not know until he was close enough to do something about it. And yet on nights like these, with the moon full and bright, and the ghostly howls, and without a drink to be had, dark thoughts could lurk about and creep up on you and grab you in a stranglehold before you knew they were there.
Sometimes it helped to trace premonitions to a source so they were not quite so vague. The coyotes seemed to link Cutler up with trouble. But from the coyotes’ point of view, they were linked to the moon. The moon was their source of inspiration and not some dark omen for Cutler. There. Go to sleep.
The moon stayed with Cutler all the next day and the day after as he moved along the trail to Langtry. He was moving into country that looked the way some scientists said the moon looked. There were a lot of ideas about that ball of pale light in the night sky. Some children thought it was green cheese or a smiling face. It had a different fascination for lovers. Some Indians thought of it as a god. To farmers it was a calendar to guide their planting and harvesting. Some men seemed to go crazy when it was full. The moon shone in songs improvised by cowboys riding night herd. But to the scientists who had less romance in their souls, the moon was like Pecos country.
Now in the bright sunlight, Cutler was on the moon. The Pecos landscape stretched before him in all its barren unfriendliness. He moved through the land that seemed not to want him there. Over thin, dusty, soil, past small, apathetic hills of rocky rubble. Past dry, wizened arroyos like ancient virgins. Avoiding canyons thirsty for the falling death of man and animals. A lonely, mocking breeze swept across it all, mocking because it did not cool. The sun beat down so hard it had a physical power to it, a force you could feel, and it glared on the moonscape, yelling at the traveler, “Face it, cowboy! This is all there is!” It was the kind of country that made a man look inside himself, making him careless about the dangers that lurked outside—the canyons, the barbed plants, rattlesnakes, the rocky dens which might house predators.
Then suddenly in the midst of it all was an oasis of color. Rising out of the sandy soil, a giant green tent. The green was faded but, in this environment, the color seemed brilliant. Fluttering from tent poles that punctured the peaks were red and yellow pennants. From the east came the sound of an army of pipers, a calliope. Then the parade appeared moving toward the tent.
Cutler drew closer, then sent a message from his fingertips through the reins, and the mules stopped. He absently reached to his right and stroked the giant Airedale. The bay gelding, Apache, came up on Cutler’s left and stopped. They all watched the spectacle and listened to the strange, unlikely music.
Leading the parade was a buggy drawn by a single white horse. Riding in the buggy was a man with a black mustache who wore a silk top hat, a blue cravat and a bright red cutaway coat. He was smiling.
Next was an open wagon with two clowns. The parade through town being over, they were seated and resting, but some children were running alongside and shouting to them. The clowns obligingly got up and struck a tableau, the one who wore a ridiculous yellow fringe around his neck crouching like a lion, his partner holding a small stool in one hand and a six-inch-long toy whip in the other, and looking frightened. The children howled with laughter.
This was followed by another wagon holding some blue-uniformed musicians. An organ, a flute, a drum, chimes and bells.
Then cages holding two lions and two tigers, followed by a young blond man on foot. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, jodhpur riding breeches and riding boots. He seemed preoccupied and did not respond to the children who called to him.
More cages with a gorilla, a zebra, and a giraffe whose neck stuck out through a hole in the top.
Blanketed horses. Five of them. On the first rode a beautiful, black-haired girl in a
light blue ballet outfit.
Then an elephant plodded along with a keeper on either side.
And at the rear, the calliope. Thirty-two whistles spouting musical steam as a blue-uniformed man played a keyboard.
The impact of all this bizarre color and movement and sound, appearing as it did in the middle of the harsh, unpromising landscape, was great enough to keep Cutler frozen until the parade and the music stopped. It had all the surprise of a sudden downpour on the desert. Even the animals seemed entranced. Now Cutler’s senses returned to him. He pushed his hat back, sleeved some sweat off his forehead, grinned, then signaled the mules to move toward the circus.
He stopped a few yards from the giant encampment, dropped the reins, told the dog, “Stay,” got down from the wagon and walked over to the man in the red cutaway who was giving orders to the keepers leading the elephant into the tent. That done, the man turned and smiled at Cutler.
“Howdy,” Cutler said.
“Greetings,” the man said. “You’re a little early, my friend. Show starts in a couple hours. But stay if you like. Get in early and you’ll get the best seat.”
“I was headed to Langtry.”
“Oh, well, you’re almost there, less than a mile due east from here. But no sense going there now. Langtry’s going to be coming here. At least the big folk will. Most of the little ones seem to be here already.” The man held out his hand. “I’m Frederick Maroney. People usually call me Fred unless they’re mad at me.”
Cutler shook the hand. “John Cutler.”
Maroney stopped smiling as he tried to remember something. “Cutler?”
“That’s right.”
“Why, I’ve heard about you, haven’t I?”
Cutler shrugged. “Couldn’t say.”
“Sure I have. John Cutler. Well, pleased to meet you. Say, you wouldn’t be thirsty by any chance?”
“Can’t be a man in this country who isn’t,” Cutler said.
“Well, come with me, Mr. Cutler.”
“People call me John unless they’re mad at me.”
Maroney had a loud, boisterous laugh. “Let’s go then, John.”
He led Cutler around the side of the big tent to a wagon where a woman was making lemonade. “Got any finished yet, Sarah?” Maroney asked her.
“Guess so,” she said. “Two?”
“Two’ll be fine.” He spoke loudly to Cutler for Sarah’s benefit. “There’s some rumor folks only come to the Great Maroney Circus for Sarah’s lemonade, then just stay to watch the show because they’re already here.” He took two glasses of lemonade from the smiling woman and handed one to Cutler. “Here you go, John. Sorry I can’t offer you anything stronger, but liquor and circuses don’t mix.”
Cutler drank some of the lemonade and smacked his lips. “What do I owe you?”
“No, no, on the house. I want to talk some business with you.”
Cutler raised his eyebrows. “You got a rogue animal to be caught?”
“No, no,” Maroney laughed. “Nothing like that. But then you are the John Cutler I’ve heard about, the one who’s after a grizzly.”
The glass stopped halfway to Cutler’s lips and the words came out slowly, carefully avoiding any trace of hope in their tone. “You seen him?”
Maroney looked sympathetic. “No, John, I’m sorry. Wish I could tell you yes, but I haven’t. But you are that John Cutler, correct?”
Cutler let out a sigh, a great expulsion of breath, then took a drink of the lemonade. “Yeah, afraid so.”
“Mind my asking if you’re on the trail of the grizzly right now?”
“Might be. Might not. Know better after I get to Langtry.”
“Then you’re not working on any other job right now.”
“No.”
“Very well. How’d you like to join our circus?”
It was Cutler’s turn to laugh.
“Well now, wait a minute,” Maroney said. “Don’t be hasty. You might like it.”
“What would I do?”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter, John. We’d figure something out. The point is you’re famous, and you’d be a real attraction. Besides, you’d have a big audience all over this part of the West. By the end of a season there wouldn’t be anyone left who didn’t know about that bear of yours. Chances are somebody in an audience somewhere will know where you can find that grizzly. When that happens, you can take off. I’d put it in a contract if you like. You can go off and do what you have to do anytime you want to and come back anytime you want to. I’ll be as flexible as I have to be to make you a member of our troupe. You’d be a valuable addition, and I’d consider myself lucky to have you around just anytime, even half the time. Now what do you say?”
“I don’t think so, thanks just the same.”
“Is it the pay?”
“No, it ain’t. I just don’t picture myself as any kind of showman. I’d feel dumb tryin’ to be one.”
“It’s a much more respectable profession than it used to be, John. Back in the old days when I was just getting started, people thought we were tramps, shysters and hooligans. But that was before the railroad, when all the shows were wagon shows that camped out of town and could get away in the dead of night. But now we depend on railroad schedules and we can’t outrun the telegraph.” Maroney laughed. ‘The iron horse, it has helped make us more honest.”
Cutler shook his head. “I ain’t sayin’ anything against the circus. It’s fine for them that wants it.”
Cutler had never been much of a man for entertainment. When he hunted out a bar in a strange town, he avoided the saloons with singers and dancing girls. He could tolerate, and sometimes liked, a piano player, but that was about as far as he would go. When he needed to dull the ache of his reality, whisky would do it, a dancing girl would not. He figured he was on earth to deal with his problems, not be distracted from them. Whisky dulled the pain without diverting him from his life. That was the way he wanted it.
“I wouldn’t be interested in that kind of life,” he said. “Not for myself I wouldn’t.”
“Even though it might help you find your bear quicker?” Maroney asked.
“Don’t think it would, Fred.”
“We have a very big audience when you put it all together.”
“Fred, I’ve had my problems with folks’ imaginations. Probably a show like yours just brings ’em out. I could wind up chasin’ ten times as many ghost bears as I do now. Put me up there in front of a couple hundred who come to see a circus, and I’ll bet you there’d be at least ten of ’em who think they’ve seen my rogue grizzly. They’d have seen it ‘cause they wanted to see it. No, it just wouldn’t work. Now, if you could get together all the trappers that still try to make a livin’ in the mountains—and there ain’t too many of them—and all the hunters and prospectors ... the folks who know the outdoors from livin’ in it, the folks who wouldn’t have the time or money to come to your show ... if you could do that, I’d be interested. But you can’t and nobody could. So even though gettin’ my grizzly my way may not be the best way, it’s the only way I got that makes any sense to me. Joinin’ your circus would just be gettin’ sidetracked.”
Maroney looked disappointed. “I understand, John. I am sorry it is so, but I understand. Will you stay for the show?” There was a twinkle in his eye. “It might change your mind.”
“No, I got to be gettin’ into Langtry.”
“As I say, you will only find Langtry on its way here. Who is it you seek?”
“Man named Mike McKay, Used to be a newspaper reporter in El Paso, Know if he’s there?”
Maroney shook his head. “I have only just now seen the town from the head of our parade.”
“Supposed to be workin’ for Roy Bean.”
“Well, I know you will find him there. I mean you will find him here ... for the show. The judge . . . if it was not for him, we would not have stopped in this godforsaken spot.”
“He got himself interested in shows now?
”
“It is my trainer who made the arrangements. You may want to speak to him. He may know something of this Mr. McKay.”
Maroney led Cutler back around the side of the tent toward the entrance. This opened into a smaller tent attached to the big top. Here were the animals Cutler had seen in the parade. “Our menagerie tent,” Maroney explained. “The customers come through this and are able to see the animals before the show. It is a big attraction. Most people in these parts have never before seen a gorilla, tigers, lions. To them, a giraffe is like something from a fairy tale. And they have never seen horses perform as these will. Ah, there is Eric.” He pointed to the left side where the blond man in jodhpurs stood with his back to them and faced a tiger cage. The tiger inside it was crouched in the corner and staring back at the man.
“Eric?” Maroney called to him.
The man turned. There was no expression of greeting in his face, neither for Maroney nor Cutler. He seemed extremely serious and worried.
“Eric,” Maroney brought Cutler to the man, “this is John Cutler. And, John, this is the trainer, Eric Hansen.”
Hansen shook Cutler’s hand but remained preoccupied. “This is a bad time for visitors,” he told Maroney. “No offense, Mr. Cutler.”
Maroney explained, “We have been having some problems, John, just between you and me. The animals, especially this tiger, have been restless of late. They are on edge, and Eric thinks they might be dangerous.”
“I don’t like to complain,” Hansen said. “But every show gets harder to do. I have to go alone into a cage with these cats, and they’re changing their attitudes for some reason. I feel like I don’t understand them anymore. Don’t know what they’ll do. I have to work myself up to each performance. That’s why this isn’t a good time.”