The most-hated word in the English language to the circus people is "mud." Although the advance agent always examines the circus lot with the greatest care before renting it, yet he cannot always tell whether certain soil will develop mud or not under heavy rain. So it occasionally happens that the circus finds itself literally "up to the hubs" in mud after the night show. Then there is nothing to do but to turn to, as only circus people know how, and drag the wagons by main strength to solid ground.
The last resort after the horses have failed is the elephants. These great creatures are very much at home in the mud, as they wallow in it in their wild state. Their great padded feet also do not sink in the mud as do the sharp hoofs of the horses, so the elephants can always do the trick after even six horses have failed.
Every circus carries several large elephant-harnesses, and the patient pachyderms are always ready to haul the heavy wagons to safety.
This is often very annoying to the teamsters, who are justly proud of their fine horses. So it happens that there is often much rivalry between the elephant-drivers and handlers and the teamsters, for the elephant partisans usually laugh at the teamsters when the beasts pull the wagons to safe ground.
Thus it happened that Sahib Anderson and one of the oldest teamsters got to "jollying" each other as to the relative merits of elephants and horses on a dead pull.
Finally the rivalry and the arguments became so heated that Mr. Anderson offered to bet the teamster five hundred dollars that little Joie, as he called him, could outpull four of the circus's best horses. The teamsters were wild at such a dare and quickly raised a purse of five hundred dollars to cover the five hundred that the Sahib had put up.
Thus it came about that Joie, who had no idea of the great stake at risk, and who only knew that his master Ali seemed much excited, was led out to a vacant lot near the circus ground, and the smallest of the elephant-harnesses put upon him. Four of the circus horses were waiting with their tails to his. They were as fine a lot of draft-horses as could well be imagined. Not too heavy, about twelve hundred each, but each horse was all muscle, and in the pink of condition.
Mr. Anderson was in great spirits and laughed and joked as they made ready for the test, but Ali was very anxious when he looked at the eager, restive horses, each ready to spring into the harness at the word. He was afraid they would pull Joie off his feet, and get the start before he realized what was wanted of him.
So Ali talked to Joie and tried to get into his mind what was wanted. He carefully adjusted the harness, and slapped Joie's cheeks, and tweaked his ears.
Then he stepped forward in front of Joie and beckoned him forward for a step. He repeated this process several times, each time putting his very soul into his voice in a heartfelt entreaty to Joie to pull. When he was sure that Joie fully understood they made ready for the test.
This was not Joie's first attempt at pulling, for he had often helped with the wagons, when they had been set, but he had never figured in any such contest as this before.
Finally everything was in readiness, and Sahib Anderson, who was acting as starter, cried, "Go!"
The two drivers of the four-horse team had been flicking the horses with their whips while the preparations had been going on, so that when the word was finally given they were fairly dancing in their harnesses.
At the word to pull, the two heavy whips descended upon the horses and they sprang like tigers into their collars.
The well-trained draft-horses bent low to the ground and strained with all their strength upon their harnesses. The great muscles on their shoulders and hips could be seen to writhe under their skins, while the evener squeaked with the strain. Dirt and turf flew beneath the hoofs of the four frantically straining horses.
Joie and Ali were swept off then* feet by the suddenness of the attack. They had not expected such a whirlwind beginning. So Joie was slowly, inch by inch, drawn backward about two feet, or one-fifth of the entire pull which was ten feet. The supporters of the horses who had gathered to see the great pull shouted themselves hoarse, and Ali grew desperate.
Then a bright idea came to Sahib Anderson. "Shout 'whoa' to him, Ali, shout 'whoa.'"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Joie, whoa, Joie!" cried Ali, dancing up and down before his bewildered friend.
The great breast-collar was cutting into Joie's chest so that he thought it would cut through his skin. He had hauled upon heavy wagons before, but never had a wagon acted like this one. Wagons had never tried to pull him backward.
Finally the desperately straining Joie got it into his head that Ali wanted him to whoa, so he braced his sturdy legs like four small trees and the backward swing of the four horses was stopped as suddenly as though they had come up against the rock of Gibraltar.
"That's the stuff, Ali. That's the trick!" shouted the Sahib. "Now hold them. Just let them pull their heads off; then we will show them."
The teamsters called to their horses, and again the heavy whips fell. The desperate horses bent to earth and strained to the last ounce of their strength, but they could not stir Joie another inch. The crowd who had favored the horses began to look serious, while the elephant-sympathizers went wild.
Sweat came out upon the flanks of the horses and they began to slip and to give back upon the traces, just as a team will when they realize they are up against a dead set.
"Now you have got 'em, Ali!" cried Mr. Anderson. "Tell Joie to go to it. We'll show them! We'll let them see what they are up against."
"Get up, Joie, get up!" cried Ali. Then he went in front of Joie and called to him in his most persuasive voice.
"Joie, come to Ali. Oh, come, Joie, come to Ali!"
The straining elephant looked at him dumbly. Then the words seemed to penetrate to his hard-working mind, although the great strain seemed to make him partly deaf.
His master wanted him to come to him. How could he with such a load pulling on him? But Ali said "Come!" and Joie would come to the last ounce of his great strength, for he loved Ali more than all the rest of the world.
He began swaying slowly from side to side, first an inch or two and then three or four, his mighty frame feeling out the load with each sway. A quiver was seen to run through him, as though he called upon his full power. Then, very slightly at first, but as the seconds passed, more and more perceptibly, the elephant moved forward.
The teamsters shouted themselves hoarse and plied their whips but it was no use. Ali was calling, "Come, Joie!" and Joie would come if it killed him.
Then one of the horses slipped and the others began to lose heart. From that point Joie walked them slowly back, not only ten feet but twenty, while the elephant-supporters shouted and threw up their hats.
When the pull was over, the head teamster came to Ali and shook his hand, and slapped Joie's sides.
"I wouldn't have believed it," he said. "That elephant is some horse after all."
But the great surprise to Ali came when Mr. Anderson placed the fat pocketbook containing five hundred dollars in his hand. "You keep it, Ali," he said. "Joie and you have earned it."
The second wager won by Joie was gained in quite a different way from the first. Then it had been a test of mere strength, but this time it was endurance and fleetness. One would not naturally associate fleetness with any animal so ponderous as an elephant, but when one also takes into consideration the quality of endurance, that is a different question.
One winter when the circus was in its headquarters near Pasadena, California, Sahib Anderson and Ali were in the stables looking at the horses. They had come at the invitation of one Ben Abi, a Bedouin horseman of great renown. He had invited Ali and the Sahib to the stables to see his beautiful Arab mare, Black Araby.
As the three animal-admirers stood by the beautiful horse, the Sahib remarked casually, "Yes, she is a wonderful horse, the most beautiful one I ever saw. I doubt if there is a finer horse anywhere."
"She is not only that, but she is the fleetest animal in the whole world," said Ben Abi with feeling.
"Yes," returned Mr. Anderson. "She probably would be for a short distance, or half-a-day's run, but I am wondering if one of the smaller elephants would not beat her in a long run."
Ben Abi's eyes snapped, and he rubbed his hands together gleefully.
"No, Mr. Anderson, the animal does not live that can outrun Black Araby for a short distance or long. I will wager you five hundred dollars on Black Araby for fifty miles."
"Make it a hundred miles and I will take you."
"The bet is on," said Ben Abi simply. "We will start in the morning."
And that was how Joie got his special bath that afternoon instead of a week later. This was not a simple dousing with a bucket of water, or a sprinkling with a hose, but a real bath, such as all the elephants get every four months. Joie was first soaped with fifty pounds of the best soap; he was lathered until he looked like a mountain of soap-bubbles and cream. When that had dried, he was sandpapered, so as to get off all the grit and loose skin. Then he was oiled with fifty pounds of the best olive-oil. That was to put him in the very best nature, as Sahib Anderson said. The Sahib understood a great many things.
Promptly at sunrise on the following morning the start was made. It was not very spectacular as a race, judging from the start. Ben Abi mounted upon his shining Black Araby, and dressed in his resplendent Bedouin riding-dress, cantered away at a fast pace, while Ali, mounted upon Joie, went at a steady pace of perhaps nine miles an hour. Ali was seated upon a blanket on Joie's back, the howdah having been discarded.
"You talk to him and sing to him and keep up his spirits. Just make him think it is a picnic all the way," said the Sahib. "If you can keep his mind off the fact that he is making a long journey he will keep up that pace all the way. Don't be discouraged if Ben Abi makes the first fifty miles five miles ahead of you. He probably will. But we will beat him on the last ten miles, or perhaps the last five.
"Good luck, boy. God keep you."
Thus Ali and Joie started on the first lap of the long, hard run for the purse of five hundred dollars.
The course was across a desert of perhaps twenty miles, along a little-used road, then over a mountain trail for ten miles, and up a valley on the farther side for twenty more, to the little town of Prago. This was the first leg, and the second was to return along the same course.
When Ali reached the outskirts of the town and turned into the desert trail he could barely see Ben Abi and Black Araby. They were probably three miles away, but Ali was not discouraged. This was not a race to the swift, but to the strong, the stout-hearted, to those who kept plodding and did not lose heart.
Once they were well upon the desert trail, Ali began talking to Joie. Now if there was anything in the world that Joie liked better than all else it was to have Ali talk to him, and pet him. So Ali talked and talked.
"Oh, Joie, old boy, the best old elephant in the world. We'll show that old Araby, ha, Joie! We'll show them, won't we, Joie?"
As he talked he slapped Joie's sides and tweaked his ears. Then Joie, at Ali's bidding, reached around with his trunk and took his master on his head. Here Ali could better converse with his friend.
When he had prattled away for half an hour, partly in English and partly in elephant talk, Ali began to sing. He sang in his native tongue, the folk-songs of the Malay land. He sang the song of the Malay mother to her sleeping babe, as she rocks it upon her knee. He sang the song of the Malay boatman as he rows upon the great river. . He sang of the Malay hunter as he goes away into the jungle. He sang of spirits good and bad, and of the stars and the moon and the winds in far-away Malay land. His voice was low and sweet, and it sounded more like the winds in the bamboo-tops, or like the murmuring waters of a great river than a human voice.
Somehow he and Joie were carried back to the Malay land. To the land of the plains and the great jungles, to the blue sky and the rice-fields. So for the time they were not Ali and Joie running a desperate race in California, but Ali, the prince, and Joie, the sacred elephant, going on a pleasant journey.
Thus it happened that Joie and Ali forgot the long miles and the hot sun and their thirst, for they were living in a dream, a wonderful dream of the past, and of the beautiful lazy life in Malay land.
When the mountain ahead finally loomed up, Ben Abi and Black Araby were nowhere to be seen, but Ali did not care.
Singing and laughing, he and Joie mounted the steep trail and crossed the mountain and then sped along the valley trail.
As Sahib Anderson had prophesied, Ben Abi was far ahead at the end of the first lap, but Ali noted to his surprise that Black Araby was dripping with sweat, and seemed rather badly blown. Ben Abi saluted and cried, "Good-bye!" as he passed, thinking that he had surely won the race.
But Ali and Joie kept right on at their steady pace of nine miles an hour. They rested five minutes, and Ali gave Joie a rather stingy drink of water, and they were off for the return run.
When they reached the crest of the mountain, Ben Abi and Black Araby were three miles away at the foot. They had gained two miles and Ali was much elated. In the race across the desert they closed up the gap to within a hundred yards, so if they won it would be on the last five miles.
Ali noted as he turned off the desert trail that Black Araby was acting strangely. Ben Abi was having difficulty in keeping her in the road. She was zigzagging this way and that. Finally as the surprised boy watched, the beautiful mare was seen to fall heavily. Ali saw Ben Abi kneeling by her side. As he and Joie came up a wild cry escaped from the lips of the Bedouin and he wrung his hands. "Oh, Black Araby," he cried, "Black Araby, I have killed you!"
Ali dismounted and went to them. "What is the matter, Ben Abi?" he asked, sympathy in his voice.
For answer the Bedouin pointed to a pool of blood beneath the beautiful Arab's mouth, which Ali had not noticed.
"She is dead, Ali. She is dead!" wailed the Bedouin. She had burst a bloodvessel.
Ali had heard much about the love of the Arab for his horse, but he was not prepared to see the Bedouin throw himself upon the ground beside his horse and bury his face in her mane and weep like a child.
The race was forgotten and Ali stood a helpless spectator of the Bedouin's grief.
Finally when it had passed Ali invited the Arab to get up beside him upon Joie's back, and together they rode into Pasadena, the vanquished upon the back of the victor's steed. A strange race, indeed.
The following day Sahib Anderson and Ali went to a stock farm near by and with the wager-money purchased Ben Abi the best mare they could find, but she was not another Black Araby, for that fleet steed had gone the way of all horses. She had been killed in her tracks by a great plodding pachyderm, but Joie, the victor, was footsore for a week.