CHAPTER XXIII
Came the crate. Because Del Mar brought it into the baggage-room,Michael was suspicious of it. A minute later his suspicion wasjustified. 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 Marjerked 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 histwo forepaws. The animal trainer wasted no time. He brought theclenched fist of his free hand down in two blows, rat-tat, on Michael'spaws. And Michael, at the pain, relaxed both holds. The next instant hewas thrust inside, snarling his indignation and rage as he vainly flunghimself 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 alongwith a number of trunks. Del Mar had disappeared the moment he hadlocked the door, and the two men in the wagon, which was now bouncingalong over the cobblestones, were strangers. There was just room in thecrate for Michael to stand upright, although he could not lift his headabove the level of his shoulders. And so standing, his head pressedagainst 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 tostand with the end of his nose pressing against the end of the crate. Anautomobile, darting out from a cross-street, caused the driver of thewagon to pull in abruptly and apply the brake. With the crate thussuddenly arrested, Michael's body was precipitated forward. There was nobrake to stop him, unless the soft end of his nose be considered thebrake, for it was his nose that brought his body to rest inside thecrate.
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 sharplyagainst his teeth. But the worst was to come. One of his forepawsslipped out through the slats or bars and rested on the bottom of thewagon where the trunks were squeaking, screeching, and jigging. A rut inthe roadway made the nearest trunk tilt one edge in the air and shiftposition, 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 atthe same time instinctively and spasmodically to pull back with all hisstrength. This wrenched his shoulder and added to the agony of theimprisoned foot.
And blind fear descended upon Michael, the fear that is implanted in allanimals and in man himself--_the fear of the trap_. Utterly besidehimself, though he no longer yelped, he flung himself madly about,straining the tendons and muscles of his shoulder and leg and further andseverely injuring the crushed foot. He even attacked the bars with histeeth in his agony to get at the monster thing outside that had laid holdof him and would not let him go. Another rut saved him, however, tiltingthe trunk just sufficiently to enable his violent struggling to drag thefoot clear.
At the railroad station, the crate was handled, not with deliberateroughness, but with such carelessness that it half-slipped out of abaggageman's hands, capsized sidewise, and was caught when it was pastthe man's knees but before it struck the cement floor. But, Michael,sliding helplessly down the perpendicular bottom of the crate, fetched upwith his full weight on the injured paw.
"Huh!" said Del Mar a little later to Michael, having strolled down theplatform to where the crate was piled on a truck with other baggagedestined for the train. "Got your foot smashed. Well, it'll teach you alesson 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 ablade. "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 theinjured as well as the uninjured forepaw and increasing his pain.
"You hold the leg," Del Mar commanded. "He's safe with that grip. Itwon't take a second."
Nor did it take longer. And Michael, back in the box and raging, was onetoe short of the number which he had brought into the world. The bloodran freely from the crude but effective surgery, and he lay and lickedthe wound and was depressed with apprehension of he knew not whatterrible fate awaited him and was close at hand. Never, in hisexperience of men, had he been so treated, while the confinement of thebox was maddening with its suggestion of the trap. Trapped he was, andhelpless, and the ultimate evil of life had happened to Steward, who hadevidently been swallowed up by the Nothingness which had swallowed upMeringe, the _Eugenie_, the Solomon Islands, the _Makambo_, Australia,and the _Mary Turner_.
Suddenly, from a distance, came a bedlam of noise that made Michael prickup his ears and bristle with premonition of fresh disaster. It was aconfused yelping, howling, and barking of many dogs.
"Holy Smoke!--It's them damned acting dogs," growled the baggageman tohis 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 inlast week. One of 'em was dead in his box, and from what I could see ofhim it looked mighty like he'd had the tar knocked outa him."
"Got a wollopin' from Peterson most likely in the last town and then wasshipped along with the bunch and left to die in the baggage car."
The bedlam increased as the animals were transferred from the wagon to aplatform truck, and when the truck rolled up and stopped alongsideMichael's he made out that it was piled 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. Somehowled, some whimpered, others growled and raged at one another throughthe slots, and many maintained a silence of misery. Several licked andnursed bruised feet. Smaller dogs that did not fight much were crammedtwo or more into single crates. Half a dozen greyhounds were crammedinto larger crates that were anything save large enough.
"Them's the high-jumpers," said the first baggageman. "An' look at theway they're packed. Peterson ain't going to pay any more excess baggagethan he has to. Not half room enough for them to stand up. It must behell for them from the time they leave one town till they arrive at thenext."
But what the baggageman did not know was that in the towns the hell wasnot mitigated, that the dogs were still confined in their too-narrowprisons, that, in fact, they were life-prisoners. Rarely, except fortheir acts, were they taken out from their cages. From a businessstandpoint, good care did not pay. Since mongrel dogs were cheap, it wascheaper to replace them when they died than so to care for them as tokeep them from dying.
What the baggageman did not know, and what Peterson did know, was that ofthese thirty-five dogs not one was a surviving original of the troupewhen it first started out four years before. Nor had there been anyoriginals discarded. The only way they left the troupe and its cages wasby dying. Nor did Michael know even as little as the baggageman knew. Heknew nothing save that here reigned pain and woe and that it seemed hewas destined to share the same fate.
Into the midst of them, when with more howlings and yelpings they wereloaded into the baggage car, was Michael's cage piled. And for a day anda part of two nights, travelling eastward, he remained in the doginferno. Then they were loaded off in some large city, and Michaelcontinued on in greater quietness and comfort, although his injured footstill hurt and was bruised afresh whenever his crate was moved about inthe car.
What it was all about--why he was kept in his cramped prison in thecramped car--he did not ask himself. He accepted it as unhappiness andmisery, and had no more explanation for it than for the crushing of thepaw. Such things happened. It was life, and life had many evils. The_why_ of things never entered his head. He knew _things_ and some smallbit of the _how_ of things. What was, _was_. Water was wet, fire hot,iron hard, meat good. He accepted such things as he accepted theeverlasting miracles of the light and
of the dark, which were no miraclesto him any more than was his wire coat a miracle, or his beating heart,or his thinking brain.
In Chicago, he was loaded upon a track, carted through the roaringstreets of the vast city, and put into another baggage-car which wasquickly in motion in continuation of the eastward journey. It meant morestrange men who handled baggage, as it meant in New York, where, fromrailroad baggage-room to express wagon he was exchanged, for ever acrated prisoner and dispatched to one, Harris Collins, on Long Island.
First of all came Harris Collins and the animal hell over which he ruled.But the second event must be stated first. Michael never saw Harry DelMar again. As the other men he had known had stepped out of life, whichwas a way they had, so Harry Del Mar stepped out of Michael's purview oflife as well as out of life itself. And his stepping out was literal. Acollision on the elevated, a panic scramble of the uninjured out upon thetrestle over the street, a step on the third rail, and Harry Del Mar wasengulfed in the Nothingness which men know as death and which isnothingness in so far as such engulfed ones never reappear nor walk theways of life again.