Harle Oren Cummins

“ He forced himself back into the tomb, but his heart fluttered strangely, as he knelt beside the last box. He did not stop to remove the screws, but drove the hammer under the cover, and twisted and wrenched the boards off furiously. The coffin lid withstood his efforts for some time, for the fastenings were strong; but at last they, too, gave way. He reached down for the throat again, dreading lest he should find some new horror. His hand touched a moist face, and the man in the coffin stirred and groaned.
“Lie still, damn you!” he shrieked, and seized the man brutally by the throat. ”

“ The side show was thus left a little short of first-class freaks. So Stetson, with his customary ingenuity, had arranged for an entirely new sensation,—Bosko, a human snake-eater,—and the attraction, which was only an experiment at first, was now one of the best drawing cards.
Like all other good things in this world, however, it had its disadvantages. Bosko had to be watched constantly. Twice he had smuggled the little black bottle which was his constant companion, when not before the public, into the pen with him. ”

“ Without a moment’s hesitation, Waters reached for his revolver, and leveling it at the moaning figure, fired full at its breast.
The Fool, chuckling to himself behind the sheet, thrust his hand upon his heart, and apparently plucking something from the folds of cloth, he tossed back toward the bed a bullet.
The Man Who Knew Not Fear reached for the heavy little object that he had felt strike the bed-clothes, and his hand touching the bit of lead, he picked it up curiously, then realizing what it was that he held, he sat up stiffly in bed, and tried to raise his arm again. ”

“ Now what I have to propose to you, Jean Lescaut, is this,—to-morrow at noon you are to go to the electric chair where 1800 volts of electricity will be sent through your body. At eleven o’clock to-morrow I will come to your cell and put you into an hypnotic sleep. You will go to the chair, show all the symptoms and effects of a person electrocuted, and you will apparently be dead. In reality, however, you will only be asleep. ”

“ I have doctored many men in my time, and I have seen some sights that are not nice to think about; but never have I seen such nameless horror, such uncontrollable fear, as looked at me from the eyes of that man.
He stood there for a minute gibbering and making strange noises like a beast; and then jumping from the bed, he ran to a piece of canvas standing against the wall and covered by a thick drapery. He pulled the cover aside a little way and peeped fearfully behind. Then, in a very paroxysm of terror, he ran shrieking and screaming to the bed. ”

“ As Stetson said, though, the freaks were always complaining about one another, so little attention was paid to the grumbling in the side-show tent.
The management couldn’t afford to offend Bobo, for there was no denying that the wild man was the star attraction. He was doing better work than he ever had done before. He didn’t wait for the manager to come to him to begin acting; but as soon as the crowd appeared, he was growling and tearing away at the bars of his cage. ”

“ Then taking the remaining stump, Bosko drew back the skin as if peeling a banana, and buried her teeth in the still quivering flesh.
Most of the spectators turned away at this point and left the platform. Several looked rather white and seemed not to feel particularly well. Others, however, of a stronger constitution, or of lesser sensibilities, stayed on, anxious to see if the show was a “fake,” and if the mouthful would be spit out.
Meanwhile Stetson at the foot of the platform, was shouting, “Go where they all go, see what they all see. ”

“ When I came to myself I was lying half across the slab of slate, and the room was filled with a sickening stench, an odor of burning flesh. I looked for the writhing form which I had last seen on the table; but those wires, with their deadly current, which I tried to tear away as I fainted, must have been directed back by a Higher Hand, for there remained on the slab only a charred and cinder-like mass.
And the man who had made a man could not explain, for he was crawling about on the floor, counting the nails in the boards and laughing wildly. ”

“ Then a strange thing happened. Into the disordered brain of the man, a short time before racked by fever, there came the thought that he had been chosen by God to be the instrument to punish the iniquity which had come to his knowledge.
He returned to the captain, and demanded a raise of fifteen dollars a month in his pay, claiming he did not know the kind of a job he was undertaking when he had signed. O, he was cunning, this fever stricken assistant engineer. He knew how to allay suspicion.
The raise of pay was granted, for Jenifer Vass did not like the look in the man’s eyes. ”

“ The predictions of the sewing-club gossips were more than fulfilled, for La Petite Mabelle ran away one fine day before the year was up, leaving Sloan with a two-months-old baby boy, and a little note of farewell. La Petite Mabelle told him in melodramatic sentences, covering two sheets of note paper, that the attractions of the old life, with its cheap finery and grease paint, were too strong for her. She could never remain in Sioux City, where nobody called on her, Stewart himself seemed ashamed of her, and where there was nothing going on. ”

“ The Prophet was having an argument with the waiter over the payment of his bill. I saw him thrust his hand in his pockets, searching desperately for a coin, but in vain.
Hoping that perhaps I might learn something of the man’s story, I arose, and, sitting down opposite him, I threw out a few coins, telling the waiter to take out the payment of my friend’s bill, and to bring us a bottle of Vie de Anise.
Do you think he was offended? You do not know the action of that insidious poison. Honor, ambition, everything, are but as baubles to the devotee of absinthe. ”

“ The next day Bosko was too ill to leave his bed, and a week later he died, still fighting his foes, and wailing piteously, “Take ’em away; I can’t eat ’em all. There’s too many of ’em, and they’re too big. There’s hundreds of ’em. Take ’em away, I say. They’re in my hair, they’re choking me.”
The snake-eating attraction had to be discontinued after that, for though Stetson made some very flattering offers to several of the colored cooks, hostlers, and helpers connected with the show, no one seemed to aspire to the position. ”

“ His nerves were completely shattered. He could scarcely sit still for a minute; and his hand shook so, as he raised the glass to his lips, that the green liquor spilled and ran over on to the sawdust floor. At last, as it was nearly time for the place to close, I asked him point-blank to tell me the story of his life.
He looked at me strangely. I do not know, it may have been the drink, but someway he did not look like the man I had sat down with a few hours before. The tired, weary look had completely disappeared, his face was flushed, and his eyes were as bright as a child’s. ”

“ However, there are several bodies in the vault over in the cemetery yonder, and I am willing to wager that no one here dares walk over and knock three times on the iron door.”
“It seems to me,” answered Captain Van Patten, carelessly, “that you civilians have a very primitive idea of courage. If you will make a wager that would tempt a man to leave this most delicious punch, and such delightful company, I will venture to go over and bring back a souvenir from your terrible tomb. ”

“ Bradley told me that it took him three years to determine the distances at which the wires had to be placed, and he alone knew the principle on which the whole mechanism depends.
“No one has ever been able to duplicate the diaphragm. It is a curious alloy of copper, zinc, and some other metal; but what that third metal is, no one can determine.”
Churchill had finished his strange story; and now he leaned back in his chair, his face gray and set. Outside the noise of a great city waking to another day’s life could be heard, and somewhere in the house I heard a clock slowly strike five. ”

“ It is my hope, therefore, that the current which would destroy a living man will bring this thing to life.”
We bore that naked body, not a corpse, and yet so terribly like, into the electric laboratory, and laid it on a slab of slate. Just at the base of its brain we scraped a little bare spot not larger than a pea, and, as I live, a drop of blood oozed out. On the right wrist, just over the pulse, we made another abrasion, and to these spots we brought the positive and negative wires from off the mains of the street current outside. ”

“ He unlocked the tomb, and stepped inside, but it was some time before he could make out in the inky darkness where what he was seeking lay. There were three wooden boxes resting on iron bars set into the cement wall. All were of about the same length, and there was nothing by which to distinguish one from the other, as he felt them over.
“It’s a wonder he wouldn’t have told me there was a party of them here. How’s a man to know who’s who?” said the captain to himself, and he gave a slight shiver. “Well, here goes for luck, anyway,” and he began to unscrew the lid from the nearest coffin box. ”

“ But the wild man never paid any attention to him; and when one day Poole Brothers tried to take him out of his cage by force, [42] one man was killed and Stetson himself seriously injured, so that had to be given up.
All that winter the side show connected with Poole Brothers’ Royal Roman Hippodrome and Three Ring Circus played to packed houses; and probably no one paid any particular attention to a sad-faced Irish woman of middle age who spent most of the time standing in front of the cage of Bobo, the wild man, weeping silently. ”

“ Fate has seemed to be against my getting any of that wine, until to-day. I have tried for years to get one small bottle, but never yet have tasted it. Pantinelli was a rich old banker in Genoa, who owned a vineyard on the sunny slopes of the Riviera di Ponente. He never sold his wine, but presented it to his friends; and as he was a cousin of Luigi di Folengo, of whose hatred for me I have already told you, he, naturally, never included me in his list of beneficiaries. ”

“ Bobo ran to the door of his cage and seized the bars, shaking them as he did when the show was on.
“Why in hell can’t you leave me alone?” he screamed. “What do you care where I sleep? Don’t I do my work? And don’t I earn my pay? Then what you kicking about? Git along, and leave me alone; I’m sleepy.”
Stetson looked at the two Poole brothers, one of whom made a sign, and the three men withdrew.
“Looks as if we’d have the genuine article, instead of a fake, in a week or two more,” observed the elder Poole to the manager. ”

“ Captain Van Patten, a West Point graduate, who had done some things worthy of mention, and won the bars on his shoulder straps at San Juan Hill, had just made a statement regarding the courage of a recent great naval commander.
“You may talk about the courage that prompts men to do bold deeds in the bright [154] sunshine, with hundreds of men cheering and fighting beside them, but the man who has the real courage, is the one who, on a dark night like this, dares to walk by himself into a lonely graveyard, and sit on a newly made grave.” ”

“ He was always glad when he came to Bobo, partly because he was the last freak to describe, and partly because the wild man always acted his part so well.
The crowd rushed from in front of the platform [35] on which the Ossified Man had been exhibited.
“Don’t get so near there, boy,” shouted one of the attendants to a venturesome youth; “the wild man is liable to grab you. He killed a man that way last week.”
Stetson began his lurid tale of the fierce struggle which had taken place when the wild man was captured, and the crowd of country people listened open mouthed. ”

“ The public, however, clamored for a snake-eater. They had heard such blood-curdling reports of the freak which had passed through Vermont and New Hampshire, that many were the complaints made to the management for not bringing out their whole show.
The circus, being, above all things, an institution catering to the public’s wishes, made heroic efforts. Stetson was sent on a special trip to New York, and spent most of the time slumming. ”

“ Murphy was quickly dispatched to the little trap-door in the bottom of the cage, and the smoking immediately ceased.
To be sure, it took more and more whiskey every day to get Bosko “keyed up” to that state when he would consent to go on with the part; but whiskey was cheap, especially the brand furnished by Poole Brothers, so there was no kick from the powers above. They realized that this particular impersonator of Bosko couldn’t last very long—a quart of raw whiskey a day is a terrible strain for any man’s nerves, even a negro’s; so they “indulged” the snake-eater. ”

“ You know enough chemistry to realize that everything—water, air, food, all things which we use in every-day life—are merely combinations of certain simple elements. As you have seen me, by means of an electric current, decompose a jar of pure water into its two component parts,—two molecules of hydrogen to every molecule of oxygen,—so you can bring these same elements together in the gaseous state ”

“ Bosko, that’s her last name; and she eats live snakes,—rattlesnakes, copperheads, yellow backs, and Gila monsters. That’s what she eats, that’s what she lives on,” shouted the manager.
The country people, anxious as ever to throw away the money so hardly wrung from their stubborn hill farms, crowded each other in their eagerness to be first on the platform. The box-like pen was about ten feet long by four feet wide, and soon between thirty and forty people had crowded about the rail, and were peering open-mouthed over the edge. ”