Son of Power

Zamin Kicomfort Dost, Zamin Ki Dost, Will Levington Comfort

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• Publié par: nishug
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 19
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, Son of Power, by
Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
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Title: Son of Power
Author: Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
Release Date: November 29, 2006 [eBook #19970]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK SON OF POWER***
E-text prepared by Al HainesSON OF POWER
by
WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT and ZAMIN KI
DOST
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1920
Copyright, 1920, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation
into Foreign Languages, Including the
Scandinavian
Copyright, 1919, by the Curtis Publishing CompanyPUBLISHER'S NOTE
Zamin Ki Dost is a title given to one who lived in
India many years—from the time when she was
little more than a child. The tale of tales would be
her own story. Her name is
WILLIMINA L. ARMSTRONG
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE GOOD GREY NERVE
II SON OF POWER
III SON OF POWER (Continued)
IV THE MONKEY GLEN
V THE MONKEY GLEN (Continued)
VI JUNGLE LAUGHTER
VII THE HUNTING CHEETAH
VIII THE MONSTER KABULI
IX THE MONSTER KABULI (Continued) X HAND-OF-A-GOD
XI ELEPHANT CONCERNS
XII BLUE BEAST
XIII NEELA DEO, KING OF ALL ELEPHANTS
XIV NEELA DEO, KING OF ALL ELEPHANTS
(Continued)
XV THE LAIR
XVI FEVER BIRDSSON OF POWER
CHAPTER I
The Good Grey Nerve
His name was Sanford Hantee, but you will hear
that only occasionally, for the boys of the back
streets called him Skag, which "got" him
somewhere at once. That was in Chicago. He was
eleven years old, when he wandered quite alone to
Lincoln Park Zoo, and the madness took him.
A silent madness. It flooded over him like a river. If
any one had noticed, it would have appeared that
Skag's eyes changed. Always he quite contained
himself, but his lips stirred to speech even less
after that. He didn't pretend to go to school the
next day; in fact, the spell wasn't broken until
nearly a week afterward, when the keeper of the
Monkey House pointed Skag out to a policeman,
saying the boy had been on the grounds the full
seven open hours for four straight days that he
knew of.
Skag wasn't a liar. He had never "skipped" school
before, but the Zoo had him utterly. He was
powerless against himself. Some bigger force,
represented by a truant officer, was necessary to
keep him away from those cages. His father got
down to business and gave him a beating—much
against that good man's heart. (Skag's father wasa Northern European who kept a fruit-store down
on Waspen street—a mildly-flavoured man and
rotund. His mother was a Mediterranean woman,
who loved and clung.)
But Skag went back to the Zoo. For three days
more he went, remained from opening to closing
time. He seemed to fall into deep absorptions—
before tigers and monkeys especially. He didn't
hear what went on around him. He did not appear
to miss his lunch. You had to touch his shoulder to
get his attention. The truant officer did this. It all
led dismally to the Reform School from which Skag
ran away.
He was gone three weeks and wouldn't have come
back then, except his heart hurt about his mother.
He felt the truth—that she was slowly dying without
him. After that for awhile he kept away from the
animals, because his mother loved and clung and
cried, when he grew silently cold with revolt against
a life not at all for him, or hot with hatred against
the Reform School. Those were ragged months in
which a less rubbery spirit might have been
maimed, but the mother died before that actually
happened. Skag was free—free the same night.
The father's real relation to him had ended with the
beating. It was too bad, for there might have been
a decent memory to build on. The fruit-dealer,
however, had been badly frightened by the truant-
officer (in the uniform of a patrolman), and he was
just civilised enough to be a little ashamed that his
boy could so far forget the world and all refinedand mild-flavoured things, as to stare through bars
at animals for seven hours a day. In the process of
that beating, hell had opened for Skag. It was
associated with the raw smell of blood and a thin
red steam, a little hotter than blood-heat. It always
came when he remembered his father. . . . But his
mother meant lilacs. The top drawer of her dresser
had been faintly magic of her. The smell came
when he remembered her. It was like the first rains
in the Lake Country.
But that was all put back. Skag was out in the
world now, making it exactly to suit himself. He was
in charge of himself in many ways. A glass of water
and a sandwich would do for a long time, if
necessary. . . . The West pulled him. Awhile in the
mountains, he lived with a prospector; there was a
period in the desert when he came to know lizards;
then there were years of the circus, when he was
out with the Cloud Brothers, animal men of the
commercial type. Ten queer, hard years for the
boy—as hard almost as for the animals.
Back in Chicago the caged creatures had been
kept better—as well as beasts belonging to the
outdoors could be imprisoned, but the Cloud
Brothers didn't have fine senses like their charges.
They tried to make wild animals live in a place
ventilated for men. There was a bad death-
percentage and none of the big cats were in show
form, until the Clouds began to take Skag's word
for the main thing wrong. It wasn't the hard life, nor
the coops, nor the travel, but the steady day in andday out lack of fresh air. Skag knew what the
animals suffered, because it all but murdered him
on hot nights. Of course, there are tainted-flesh
things like hyenas that live best on foul air, foul
everything, but "white" animals of jungle and forest
are high and cleanly beasts. When well and in their
prime, even their coats are incapable of most kinds
of dirt, because of a natural oily gloss.
At nineteen, Skag was in charge of the packing,
moving and feeding of all the big cats, including
pumas, panthers, leopards. He was in and out of
the cages possibly more than was necessary. He
learned that there are two ways to manage a wild
animal—the "rough-neck" way with a club, and the
fancy way with your own equilibrium; all of which
comes in more to the point later.
He was interested at the time, but not really
acquainted with the camels and elephants. He
often chatted with Prussak, the Arab, who loathed
camels to the shallow depths of his soul, but got as
much out of them as most men could. Skag
dreamed of a better way still, even with camels.
Often on train-trips, at first, he talked with old Alec
Binz, whose characteristic task was to chain and
unchain the hind leg of the old "gunmetal"
elephant, Phedra, who bossed her sire and the
little Cloud herd, as much with the flap of an ear as
anything else. . . .
No, old Alec must not be forgotten, nor his
sandalwood chest with its little rose-jar in the
corner, making everything smell so strangely sweetthat it hurt. A girl of India had given Alec the jar
twenty years before. The spirit of a real rose-jar
never dies; and something of the girl's spirit was
around it, too, as Alec talked softly. All this was
unreservedly good to Skag—thrilling as certain few
books and the top drawer that had been his
mother's. . . . But something way back of that,
utterly his own deep heart-business, was
connected with the rose-jar. It was breathless like
opening a telegram—its first scent after days or
weeks. If you find any meaning to the way Skag
expressed it, you are welcome:
"It makes you think of things you don't know—"
"But you will," Alec had once answered.
The more you knew, the more you favoured that
old man of the circus company,—little gold ring in
his ear and such tales of India!
It was Alec who led Skag into the fancy way of
dealing with animals, but of course the boy was
peculiar, inasmuch as he believed it all at once.
Skag never ceased to think of it until it was his; he
actually put it into practice. Alec might have told a
dozen American trainers and have gotten no more
than a yawp for his pains. This is one of the things
Alec said:
"If you can get on top of the menagerie in your own
insides, Skagee—the tigers and apes, the serpents
and monkeys, in your own insides—you'll never get
in bad with the Cloud Brothers wild animal show."