watching him. And that, of course, added to Mr. Indrasil's load.
The circus began eyeing the silk-shirted figure nervously as he
passed, and I knew they were all thinking the same thing I was:
He's going to crack wide open, and when he does ---
When he did, God alone knew what would happen.
The hot spell went on, and temperatures were climbing well into
the nineties every day. It seemed as if the rain gods were mocking
us. Every town we left would receive the showers of blessing.
Every town we entered was hot, parched, sizzling.
And one night, on the road between Kansas City and Green Bluff, I
saw something that upset me more than anything else.
It was hot -- abominably hot. It was no good even trying to sleep. I
rolled about on my cot like a man in a fever-delirium, chasing the
sandman but never quite catching him. Finally I got up, pulled on
my pants, and went outside.
We had pulled off into a small field and drawn into a circle. Myself
and two other roustabouts had unloaded the cats so they could
catch whatever breeze there might be. The cages were there now,
painted dull silver by the swollen Kansas moon, and a tall figure in
white whipcord breeches was standing by the biggest of them. Mr.
Indrasil.
He was baiting Green Terror with a long, pointed pike. The big cat
was padding silently around the cage, trying to avoid the sharp tip.
And the frightening thing was, when the staff did punch into the
tiger's flesh, it did not roar in pain and anger as it should have. It
maintained an ominous silence, more terrifying to the person who
knows cats than the loudest of roars.
It had gotten to Mr. Indrasil, too. 'Quiet bastard, aren't you?' He
grunted. Powerful arms flexed, and the iron shaft slid forward.
Green Terror flinched, and his eyes rolled horribly. But he did not
make a sound. 'Yowl!' Mr. Indrasil hissed. 'Go ahead and yowl,
you monster Yowl!' And he drove his spear deep into the tiger's
flank.
Then I saw something odd. It seemed that a shadow moved in the
darkness under one of the far wagons, and the moonlight seemed to
glint on staring eyes -- green eyes.
A cool wind passed silently through the clearing, lifting dust and
rumpling my hair.
Mr. Indrasil looked up, and there was a queer listening expression
on his face. Suddenly he dropped the bar, turned, and strode back
to his trailer.
I stared again at the far wagon, but the shadow was gone. Green
Tiger stood motionlessly at the bars of his cage, staring at Mr.
Indrasil's trailer. And the thought came to me that it hated Mr.
Indrasil not because he was cruel or vicious, for the tiger respects
these qualities in its own animalistic way, but rather because he
was a deviate from even the tiger's savage norm. He was a rogue.
That's the only way I can put it. Mr. Indrasil was not only a human
tiger, but a rogue tiger as well.
