The Bite Of A Rattler And The Sad Fate Of Big Pete

________________________________________________
Title:     The Bite Of A Rattler And The Sad Fate Of Big Pete
Author: Francis Metcalfe [More Titles by Metcalfe]

Like the pitcher which went to the well until it met the proverbial fate, the trainer entered the lion's den once too often, and what remained of him was placed in an ambulance and taken to the hospital. After the performance for the evening was over, Baltimore, the bad lion, who had suddenly developed a craving for human flesh, had been dealt with by the Proprietor of the menagerie in a manner which would spoil his appetite for many a day to come and make him remember that trainers cannot be mangled with impunity.

Most of the lights were extinguished at Dreamland, but two men sat at the table in front of the Arena with the Proprietor, discussing the accident and listening to stories of former encounters which he related. His own body bears the scars of many a battle with his savage charges, but he has discontinued giving personal exhibitions with them in the large cage, because his wife has developed a prejudice against having him brought to her in fragments, and he has found that the training of trainers is a far more difficult task than the education of wild animals.

"Yes, any man who follows this business carries his life in his hands," he said in answer to a question from the Stranger within the gates. "You helped to care for poor Bonavita to-night, after Baltimore finished with him, so you know what a lion's jaws can do. I've seen 'em chewed up as bad as that and get over it, but they never get quite the same again. Leave the business? No; it is like the sea: a man who takes to it keeps it up until the time comes when he doesn't recover, but after a bad accident he usually takes another breed of animals.

"The worst sight I ever saw was about five years ago, when one of our performing bears turned on its trainer and seized his arm. He worried it as a terrier would a bone for a good twenty minutes before we could drive him off, and the bear died from the punishment we gave him. The man's arm isn't much use to him now, but he is crazy for me to give him another group of animals to train, which I can't do because a man needs two good pairs of limbs when he gets into the exhibition cage." He told of many accidents which had happened to himself and his employees, most of them through their own carelessness, born of constant association with their charges who never miss the opportunity which the shortest instant of forgetfulness gives them.

"I said that bear attack was the worst sight I ever saw, and it was; but something happened here last year which impressed me more because it was so mysterious. A friend of mine in Florida shipped me a box of rattlers, which he wrote had been 'attended to,' and I supposed that their poison fangs had been extracted. They were delivered just before the performance started and I ripped a board off the box and stuck my hand in, grabbing them one by one and throwing them into the den as if they were garter snakes.

"The man who took care of the snakes was out on the ballyhoo, walking around with the gander following him to advertise the show; and when he came in he looked them over and found that each one had as pretty a pair of fangs as you would wish to see. He told me about it and I confess that it gave me a gone feeling in the pit of my stomach, for I remembered how I had felt around for them in the box with my bare hands.

"I am pretty busy while a performance is going on, so I told him to let them alone until I had a chance to examine them. Ninety per cent. of the accidents which occur in a menagerie comes from the disregard of ordinary precautions or the disobedience of orders, and I had a presentiment that something was going to happen and I was keeping an extra vigilant eye on the performers in the big exhibition cage. Well, it happened, all right; but not in the way that I expected.

"The snake man instead of getting back on the ballyhoo where he belonged, stood around the snake cage, watching the new rattlers, and along came a couple of gazabos who commenced talking about them. One of them was the wise guy, who always knows about how the animals are doped so they won't bite and all that other information which isn't so. He commenced explaining how the snakes were harmless, because their teeth had been pulled, and giving a lot of misinformation about them. The snake man listened until he couldn't stand it any longer and then he stuck his hand into the cage and grabbed one of the rattlers by the neck.

"'Fangs pulled, eh?' says he, and he made the rattler open his mouth and show a perfect pair of stingers. The wise guy took one look at them and fled, and the snake man would have carried it off all right, only he was so busy calling a few choice names after him that he placed the snake back in the cage instead of throwing it in, and the rattler struck him before he could draw his hand out. He had a clown make-up on, so I couldn't tell whether he was pale or not when he came to me a few minutes later and held out his hand, but there was a queer expression on his face and I knew that my apprehensions had not been groundless.

"There were just two little red dots, no bigger than pin heads, on the back of his hand.

"'You got it, didn't you?' says I.

"'Good and plenty,' says he. 'My arm hurts me already.'

"We got busy right away and took him up to the hospital where Bonavita is now. Say, he was a very thin man and you can see that I'm no lightweight; but by midnight the right side of his body and his right arm and leg were swollen to my size, and in the morning all of the swollen part was as black as a coal. He was suffering terribly, and I tried to get hold of the Arab snake doctor but couldn't locate him, so I wired to Rochester for Rattlesnake Pete. He came down and a mighty interesting man he is, but he couldn't do anything which 'Doc' up at the hospital hadn't done, and it was five days before my man was out of danger. He was not a drinking man--I finished having drunkards around my show a good many years ago--and the whiskey took right hold of him and pulled him through. 'Doc' kept squirting some red stuff into his arm, but it was the 'red-eye' which saved him--and that reminds me."

He beckoned to the waiter and each one ordered his favorite antidote for a possible snake bite.

"Did he return to the show?" asked the Stranger, after he had rendered himself immune.

"He sure did; you couldn't keep him away, but he has never been fond of snakes since. It is the same man whom you saw putting the group of elephants through their paces to-night."

It was growing late, and the Proprietor announced that he was going to show his wife a good husband and said good-night, but the Stranger waited for the story which he saw was trembling upon his companion's lips, and induced the sleepy waiter to bring a farewell dose of snake-bite antidote. The man was unknown to him by name, but his personality promised to be interesting, for his face spoke of good living, the red of his complexion was evidently not entirely due to exposure to the sun, and the little sacs under the eyes indicated that he was apt to be the last of a convivial party to suggest breaking up.

He had listened to the Proprietor's stories with the same bored expression which Noah might wear in hearing the experiences of a survivor of the Johnstown flood, and he looked regretfully at the vacant chair, now that his turn had come.

"Snakes!" he exclaimed with a contemptuous snort. "What does the boss know about 'em? I used to own the only snake that was worth having. Ever hear of 'Big Pete'?" The Stranger confessed his ignorance, and the other settled back in his chair and lighted a fresh cigar.

"I'll tell you about him, then. You know that a snake is a queer proposition in a menagerie. They get sore mouths--canker the fakirs call it--and won't eat, and then, if you've got any investment in 'em you want to get it out mighty quick, for they are no orchids. I was pretty well on my uppers, after a bad season on the road, when a guy named Merritt came to me and said he could get a fine snake cheap, and he thought we might make some money out of him by showing him to the Rubes at the county fairs.

"What I didn't know about snakes would have filled a book, but when I saw this one I knew it was a bargain. It was the blamedest biggest snake that ever gave a wriggle, and the only reason its owners had not made a fortune was because it was never properly advertised. I used to know just how much he weighed and how long he was, but my brain got so tired figuring up the money we made out of him that I've had no memory for figures since.

"Well, as I said, I was pretty hard up, but I had this sparkler left for 'fall money,' and when I saw that snake I pushed it over my uncle's counter." He pointed to a large yellow diamond in his scarf, and the Stranger tried to make a mental calculation of a pawnbroker's valuation of it.

"Merritt managed to dig up some mazuma, and we chipped in fifty apiece and became the proud possessors of Big Pete. If I had been wise to the business I would have known there was something wrong to make him sell so cheap, but we more than got our money back out of him the first week, so we had no kick coming. The newspaper boys were good to us and gave us a lot of space, and we were playing on velvet and had Pete besides. It was such a cinch that Merritt, who looked after the snake while I did the spieling and sold tickets on the front, commenced to get worried for fear we should lose him.

"'Jim,' says he to me one morning when business was a little dull, 'I believe there's something phony about the blame snake. He won't eat and I've tempted him with the best I could get. I guess I'll run down to the Bowery and get one of those snake sharps to come up and have a look at him; I believe his teeth need filling.'

"I knew he was stuck on a girl that was doing a turn in a music hall down that way, but business was dull, so I let him go without raising a holler. The next day he comes back with a jaw-carpenter who claimed he knew all about snakes and when he gets through looking at Pete's mouth we felt pretty blue.

"'Canker!' says he. 'Your little snakelet may live a month.'

"Well, that put it up to us to get busy, so I did the spieling on the outside until my voice gave out, and Merritt lied on the inside until he was black in the face, telling the Rubes about how many sheep old Pete swallowed every week. We had a lot of rabbits and doves with him in the cage, hopping and flying around behind the thick glass front, and they were real sociable with old Pete, who never batted an eye at 'em. At the end of the month he was looking pretty thin and we were afraid he would peg out any day. It was hard luck on us, for things were coming our way and our bank rolls were getting good and plenty thick and they were all 'yellow boys,' from the case card to the wrapper. Our wads grew fatter as Pete grew thinner, and we were looking for some easy mark to unload him onto, when one morning Merritt comes running out, just as I was staving off a farmer who had heard him lie and brought around a flock of scabby sheep to sell to us for snake food.

"'Jim,' he yells, grabbing me by the shoulders and waltzing around like a whirling dervish, 'we'll make Vanderbilt and Rockefeller look like thirty cents; old Pete has swallowed every blame pigeon and rabbit in the coop.'

"It seemed too good to be true, but when I went to have a look there was not a feather nor a piece of fur to be seen and old Pete was examining all the corners of the cage to see that he hadn't overlooked a bit. He looked a whole lot better already, and Merritt and I began to discuss what we should do with all our money.

"But say, there was one thing we forgot to reckon on--the appetite he had been saving for about a year, and although the money came in faster than ever, most of it went out to the rabbit men and pigeon fanciers.

"You know that when a snake swallows an animal you can see the bulge in him for a long time, but you couldn't see any in old Pete. He was just the same size all the way from his nose to the tip of his tail, for there was no space between the animals.

"Things began to look pretty serious for us, for we had used up all the available small live stock in the surrounding country, and the Rubes got onto the fact that we were up against their game and raised the ante on us for what was left. It's like taking candy from a child to sell a gold brick to a farmer, but he everlastingly gets back at you if you have to buy any of his produce. Hungry Joe and the man who invented the green-goods game would be skinned to death if they had to buy a dozen eggs from one of 'em.

"And all the time old Pete kept a constant procession of small animals moving down his throat, regardless of expense, and if the supply ran short he would look at Merritt so reproachfully that it made him feel so bad he couldn't deliver his lecture for sobs. He worked the pathetic on him, but if I came around there was no 'Only three grains of corn, mother,' expression on his face; he would just rear up on his tail and lambaste that glass trying to get at me. I had been living pretty well during our prosperity and I guess I looked good to him, so rather than have any hard feelings about it I stuck closer than ever to the front of the house.

"We had rented a frame building in a little town up on the Hudson and were showing him off in good form. Business was rushing and we had the S. R. O. sign out all the time, but snake food was getting scarcer than boiled lobsters during the cold snap last winter. The show had closed up for night and we were trying to make dents in the front of the tavern bar with our breast bones and laying in a stock of supplies, in case old Pete should bite us.

"While we were discussing the best way to stimulate the rabbit-breeding industry, 'biff--boom--bang,' went the town bell and the barkeep commenced to peel off his coat and get into a red flannel shirt and a fireman's helmet. It was one of those towns where they have a dude volunteer fire department, which the boys all join for the socials in the winter and to look pretty on the annual parade day. Merritt and I didn't hurry any; we knew that it would take some time for the chief, who kept the town drug store, to get into his red shirt and shiny boots and select the bouquet to carry in the big end of his speaking trumpet. Pretty soon, 'Always Ready, Ever Faithful, Hose Company Number One,' which comprised the department, came down the street, all of the company shouting orders through trumpets at the two coons who were pulling the cart.

"Of course, we went along to see the 'Fighting the Flames' show, but say: the joke was on us, for it was our theater which provided it. There wasn't anything left to burn and the hose company marched proudly back. Poor old Pete was nothing but a heap of ashes and Merritt looked sorrowful.

"'Jim,' says he, 'let's copper the rabbit market before they get wise.'"

"Did you have no insurance?" asked the Stranger sympathetically.

"Not a blame cent," replied his companion as he rose to go to bed. "But I am making good money out of old Pete yet. I had him stuffed and get a hundred a week from a dime museum for him--and they furnish the feed."

[The end]
Francis Metcalfe's short story: Bite Of A Rattler And The Sad Fate Of Big Pete

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN