The Leopard Man's Story

by Jack London

　　

---

He had a dreamy, far-away look in his eyes, and his sad, insistent voice,gentle-spoken as a maid's, seemed the placid embodiment of some deep-seatedmelancholy. He was the Leopard Man, but he did not look it. His business inlife, whereby he lived, was to appear in a cage of performing leopards beforevast audiences, and to thrill those audiences by certain exhibitions of nervefor which his employers rewarded him on a scale commensurate with the thrillshe produced.As I say, he did not look it. He was narrow-hipped, narrow-shouldered, andanaemic, while he seemed not so much oppressed by gloom as by a sweet andgentle sadness, the weight of which was as sweetly and gently borne. For anhour I had been trying to get a story out of him, but he appeared to lackimagination. To him there was no romance in his gorgeous career, no deeds ofdaring, no thrills--nothing but a gray sameness and infinite boredom.Lions? Oh, yes! he had fought with them. It was nothing. All you had to do wasto stay sober. Anybody could whip a lion to a standstill with an ordinarystick. He had fought one for half an hour once. Just hit him on the nose everytime he rushed, and when he got artful and rushed with his head down, why, thething to do was to stick out your leg. When he grabbed at the leg you drew itback and hit hint on the nose again. That was all.With the far-away look in his eyes and his soft flow of words he showed me hisscars. There were many of them, and one recent one where a tigress had reachedfor his shoulder and gone down to the bone. I could see the neatly mendedrents in the coat he had on. His right arm, from the elbow down, looked asthough it had gone through a threshing machine, what of the ravage wrought byclaws and fangs. But it was nothing, he said, only the old wounds bothered himsomewhat when rainy weather came on.Suddenly his face brightened with a recollection, for he was really as anxiousto give me a story as I was to get it."I suppose you've heard of the lion-tamer who was hated by another man?" heasked.He paused and looked pensively at a sick lion in the cage opposite."Got the toothache," he explained. "Well, the lion-tamer's big play to theaudience was putting his head in a lion's mouth. The man who hated himattended every performance in the hope sometime of seeing that lion crunchdown. He followed the show about all over the country. The years went by andhe grew old, and the lion-tamer grew old, and the lion grew old. And at lastone day, sitting in a front seat, he saw what he had waited for. The lioncrunched down, and there wasn't any need to call a doctor."The Leopard Man glanced casually over his finger nails in a manner which wouldhave been critical had it not been so sad."Now, that's what I call patience," he continued, "and it's my style. But itwas not the style of a fellow I knew. He was a little, thin, sawed-off,sword-swallowing and juggling Frenchman. De Ville, he called himself, and hehad a nice wife. She did trapeze work and used to dive from under the roofinto a net, turning over once on the way as nice as you please."De Ville had a quick temper, as quick as his hand, and his hand was as quickas the paw of a tiger. One day, because the ring-master called him afrog-eater, or something like that and maybe a little worse, he shoved himagainst the soft pine background he used in his knife-throwing act, so quickthe ring-master didn't have time to think, and there, before the audience, DeVille kept the air on fire with his knives, sinking them into the wood allaround the ring-master so close that they passed through his clothes and mostof them bit into his skin."The clowns had to pull the knives out to get him loose, for he was pinnedfast. So the word went around to watch out for De Ville, and no one dared bemore than barely civil to his wife. And she was a sly bit of baggage, too,only all hands were afraid of De Ville."But there was one man, Wallace, who was afraid of nothing. He was thelion-tamer, and he had the self-same trick of putting his head into the lion'smouth. He'd put it into the mouths of any of them, though he preferredAugustus, a big, good-natured beast who could always be depended upon."As I was saying, Wallace--'King' Wallace we called him--was afraid of nothingalive or dead. He was a king and no mistake. I've seen him drunk, and on awager go into the cage of a lion that'd turned nasty, and without a stick beathim to a finish. Just did it with his fist on the nose."Madame de Ville--"At an uproar behind us the Leopard Man turned quietly around. It was a dividedcage, and a monkey, poking through the bars and around the partition, had hadits paw seized by a big gray wolf who was trying to pull it off by mainstrength. The arm seemed stretching out longer end longer like a thickelastic, and the unfortunate monkey's mates were raising a terrible din. Nokeeper was at hand, so the Leopard Man stepped over a couple of paces, dealtthe wolf a sharp blow on the nose with the light cane he carried, and returnedwith a sadly apologetic smile to take up his unfinished sentence as thoughthere had been no interruption."--looked at King Wallace and King Wallace looked at her, while De Villelooked black. We warned Wallace, but it was no use. He laughed at us, as helaughed at De Ville one day when he shoved De Ville's head into a bucket ofpaste because he wanted to fight."De Ville was in a pretty mess--I helped to scrape him off; but he was cool asa cucumber and made no threats at all. But I saw a glitter in his eyes which Ihad seen often in the eyes of wild beasts, and I went out of my way to giveWallace a final warning. He laughed, but he did not look so much in Madame deVille's direction after that."Several months passed by. Nothing had happened and I was beginning to thinkit all a scare over nothing. We were West by that time, showing in 'Frisco. Itwas during the afternoon performance, and the big tent was filled with womenand children, when I went looking for Red Denny, the head canvas-man, who hadwalked off with my pocket-knife."Passing by one of the dressing tents I glanced in through a hole in thecanvas to see if I could locate him. He wasn't there, but directly in front ofme was King Wallace, in tights, waiting for his turn to go on with his cage ofperforming lions. He was watching with much amusement a quarrel between acouple of trapeze artists. All the rest of the people in the dressing tentwere watching the same thing, with the exception of De Ville whom I noticedstaring at Wallace with undisguised hatred. Wallace and the rest were all toobusy following the quarrel to notice this or what followed."But I saw it through the hole in the canvas. De Ville drew his handkerchieffrom his pocket, made as though to mop the sweat from his face with it (it wasa hot day), and at the same time walked past Wallace's back. The look troubledme at the time, for not only did I see hatred in it, but I saw triumph aswell."'De Ville will bear watching,' I said to myself, and I really breathed easierwhen I saw him go out the entrance to the circus grounds and board an electriccar for down town. A few minutes later I was in the big tent, where I hadoverhauled Red Denny. King Wallace was doing his turn and holding the audiencespellbound. He was in a particularly vicious mood, and he kept the lionsstirred up till they were all snarling, that is, all of them except oldAugustus, and he was just too fat and lazy and old to get stirred up overanything."Finally Wallace cracked the old lion's knees with his whip and got him intoposition. Old Augustus, blinking good-naturedly, opened his mouth and inpopped Wallace's head. Then the jaws came together, crunch, just like that."The Leopard Man smiled in a sweetly wistful fashion, and the far-away lookcame into his eyes."And that was the end of King Wallace," he went on in his sad, low voice."After the excitement cooled down I watched my chance and bent over andsmelled Wallace's head. Then I sneezed.""It . . . it was . . .?" I queried with halting eagerness."Snuff--that De Ville dropped on his hair in the dressing tent. Old Augustusnever meant to do it. He only sneezed."

---

The Leopard Man's Story was featured as TheShort Story of the Day on Sun, May 01, 2016

---