Boston Post from Boston, Massachusetts • Page 25

THE BOSTON POST SUNDAY MAGAZINE face was close to hers, you come in on a make you a knockout all over the business? Did you figure what this mixed act of mine would look with a woman handling it, and the best man just stalling around? Huh? Did Her face lighted. mean the mean that Tom and I one side of his mouth curled sharply, Then he stood and stared. For she had said nothing; merely turned and walked away. That afternoon at rehearsal, Rajah and Capetown got more beatings than ever, and Beauty the most of all. For again she had refused to fight back.

Then the long night of rest, and----The man shut his jaws tight and walked grimly on. But the woman stopped. pardon my came quietly, I help wondering'why a person who can whip animals into doing such wonderful things the courage to chastise himself into Then she, too, went on, while Delaine, his purple lips itanding out grotesquely from his white face, swished his whip through the air and, cursing, sent the animal men for the runway. out he roared. hurry it up Nor was even Beauty spared the slash and biting cut of the bullwhip as he beat the three animals about the arena, sent them time after time through their routine tricks, and at last to the back of the horse.

Once again, tired and fretful, ugly as usual, the Bengal roared and clawed at the beside it. But still the cunning of the brain held she was only a cowed, unresponsive thing. Delaine cracked his whip. the matter with you he yelled at the cringing leopard, some pep! your But Beauty only stared at him with vacuous accepted the beating. Four days.

The dog was brought in, to cower and yelp in fright as the beasts hissed at it, to seek escape, to lay on the grotmd in terror or crawl to the feet and at to obey as the others obeyed, at last, as the days went by, to ride on the neck of the horse, forefeet on its padded head, while the great cats crouched behind. And then came the day when the arenas no longer were in place, when heavy wagons truckled out, one by one, from the winter quarters yard, when there were shouts and the cludding of heavy teams of six and eight horses; when the runways yrere used only to guide the various animals from their dens of the winter to the gilded, resplendent cages that would form their home until the snow should fly again. The call of was sounding, spring had come in eaxnest, and the circus was on the move. But the racking journey of the long trains brought no change in the actions of Beauty; it brought none of the pacing that she once had done in her big, summer den, none of the fierceness and lively defiance by which she once had been, known. At the feeding stops, the animal men found her asHisual, crouched in a corner, her eyes searching, almost piteously, for something she could not see.

Nor did that look fade until the cages were lined by the big arena tmder the canvas big top, and the runways in place for three days of rehearsal before the opening matinee. Already within the steel inclosure was a great, heavy bodied tiger, and the look of searching ceasefed. Morning. The glaring of a circus band, the thick lined curbs, the truckling of the heavy wagons and the steel throated scream of the calliope, far in the rear. Noon.

The dusty warmth of the cirucs lot, the yelping of the ballyhoo men on the kidshow platform just beyond the menagerie top, the hurrying workmen with their arms full of straw, the sweating candy butchers as they made their last preparations in the great, hollow squared counter in the center of the menagerie top. One The flooding crowds. The peanuts. The popcewm. The clustered crowds before the picket line of the to give way to a sudden thinning as an hour travelled by, and the mass flooded into the big top and to its seats.

Noise. Shouts. The sharp blast of a 'bugle and the brass-throated music of massed bands. It was the entry. The show was at the threshold of its season; already the teamsters were hitching their horses to the cages of Capetown, of Rajah, of Beauty and to tlie deeptanked den of Bumbo, the hippopotamus, that they might drag them into the bigger tent for the test that would mean slinking hearted revenge for happiness and love and peaceful security for two.

Beauty rose, and for the first time in weeks began to pace her cage. Excitement was in her the excitement of the crowds, the noise, the band blaring in the far away. She hissed as an animal man stuck a hand between the bars and sought to rumple her ears. He stared at her in a surprised manner and went on. The big top, vrith its crowds, and with a heavy shouldered man in glittering uniform waiting beside the arena gate, a new whip, leaden tipped and thicker than ever, lashing before him, a revolver shoved into the top of each high boot.

The runways. Then a scamper for the pedestals. They were in the ai-ena the crowd was not watching. Instead its attention was centred updh the smaller inclosure and the novelty of a lubberly, trick hippopotamus. A bellow came from the throat of Delaine.

Faster and faster his orders sounded as he whipped the beasts around the arena, forcing them to show fight, yelling and leaping before them to attract Came the bound of a blinded with a leopard at its throat. the attention of the crowd. It succeeded in a then the eyes of the thousands went back to the fat, amiable, barrel-jawed hippopotamus and the pretty girl who him into trotting about the arena after a lettuceleaf. Delaine cursed. Then as he snapped the whip with greater ferocity he wheeled with a sudden idea.

to cut the rest of this routine he shouted at an animal man. that horse and dog in the menagerie tent, sir. We think up. pull one more stunt. last till you get here.

Beauty! Back to your pedestal! Hear me! Back But it was not until the whip cut across her face that the animal obeyed. Deeper, deeper, the excitement was working into the blood. In her brain something was tugging against its bonds, fighting for freedom. Back oii her pedestal, she clawed at the whip and Delaine cursed her. you done that before? Cut it hear it! Stay on that pedestal.

All right. on that turntable. Beauty! The whip forced obedience as the animals took their positions on the turntable and allowed themselves to be STvmng about. Then to their pedestals. Outside the arena waited the horse and the dog; the band had ceased; the announcers were bawling lorth their proclamations-r- the crowd was watching at last.

Delaine leaped to the door and unstrapped it, before the helpers could assist. it tight, in case this nag goes nutty and tries to break he ordered as the horse and passed within. He looked out at the crowds and grimaced toward the hippopotamus arena, deserted of attention now. Then, as his whip curled about him, he whirled to his task. Up and the leopard Off that pedestal and up! Up there! A snapping crack as the whip went out; the tiger, ccmfused, had left its resting place and began to slink about the arena.

It swerved as the lash caught it, darted between the horse and the trainer, then behind while from high above, the eyes of Beauty became suddenly eager, suddenly alert and shifting. That tugging something in her brain was stronger now, and more compelling. The tiger had returned before her, writhing and snarling and fighting against the attacks of Delaine. Now he was near the horse, and the whip dropped to the ground as the trainer reached for his bootlegs. A flare of flame, then another.

on that horse! Up, Rajah! The tiger did not obey. Again the flame and four times more in quick succession. And then it was that muscles bunched, then it was that the tugging something in her brain freed itself and leaped into command. The tiger was clowing madly, twisting and roaring, clawing with all its strength, not at Delaine, but at its own eyes. Blinded! Beauty leaped! Delaine saw her spring and sought to block it.

In wain. The horse began to gallop about the arena, the dog yelping about his legs. Capetown started to sling from his pedestal. Beauty was free, to fight as she chose, and her teeth sank deep in the throat of the tiger. But only for a moment.

Then she sprang free, to scratch and tear with all her strength at the Samson-like vulnerability of her eyes. Outside the arena was a world gone mad, as the massed thousands fought and scrambled on their way down from their seats, hampering the animal men as they to force their way to the arena. Within the big a heavy shouldered, fear-ridden man screamed in the hands which worked at the straps of the door were fumbling and numb wuth terror. And fight was his alone. Once he avoided Capetowm, as, suddenly he leaped at the throat of the plunging horse and felled it, while a yelping sought security beneath the turntable.

Once tie escaped Beauty, as, bleeding from a chance blow of the claws, she turned spasmodically and tore at the first thing before her. But there was one thing that he could not accident-directed bound of a blinded tiger, struggling in vain as it sought to loosen the hold of a leopard at its throat, for Beauty bad attacked again. Five shots were left and Delaine fired them all at the two beasts which came at him in one. Beauty clinging grimly to the throat, the tiger scrambling vaguely in a frenzy of blind terror. Straight on came did it know that human flesh was before it.

Then the impact, throwing Beauty far to one side. But the claw had found flesh. In blindness, that was enough. Outside the arona, a man and a girl struggled at the them. TKen into the -iaclosure they fought their way, the girl driving the bloody jawed Capetown and the frenzied Beauty before her, the man firing bullet after bullet into the brain of the blinded Rajah as he sought to compel the great beast to lease the crumpled thing on the ground beneath it, a man and a girl striving with all their strength to save the one who had sought their failure.

A fourth bullet. A fifth. The tiger toppled. It fell. A swift movement.

The man raised the limp body of Delaine in his arms. A leap, while a girl beside him, and they were without the gate. But the man they had carried forth had ceased to breathe. Crowds. The madness of quiet.

Beauty was back in her cage again, licking at the clawmarks on her shoulders and breast, yowling softly now and then with the pain of it, but in her brain the tugging pain had ceased and there was peace. Beauty had killed a was if for her poor, dtunb mentality to distinguish between the human and the beast. Copyright, 1921. by Boston Post and Courtney Ryley Cooper. DID you strike the telegraph asked the judge of the man who was summoned for assault.

sir, I gave him a telegram to send to my girl he starts it. So, of course, I up and gave him said the patronizing member of the club, as he handed roimd the Flor de Toofas, something like a respopded one of the victims after he had taken a puff or two. is.