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Now shake hands and let me die." And two hands clasped. One was warm, and pulsating with vigorous life, but the other was dead. As Rounders held the lifeless one in his, he resolved to renounce the ungrateful profession; but after the burial of the dead tamer, the ruling passion took possession of him again, and he did not rest until he had performed the "meat-jerk" with Brutus.
"Jim Rounders," pursued he, "I owe you something, and I want to pay you before I die. It's about the 'meat-jerk." Naturally the curiosity of Rounders was eager. "Like all great inventions," continued the tamer, "it's as simple as A, B, C when you know how it's done." The secret, as explained by the sinking man, was in substance as follows: It is a work of several months.
You tried to get Sally Stubbs away from me; for that I didn't like you. But what you have done to-night wipes that out, and puts something to the credit side of your account. This being the case, let me give you this advice: Don't try the 'meat-jerk, and when you go into Pompey, go at him before he has time to think."
Quiet reigned in the tents of the elephantine woman and the calf with six legs. The lung-tester had folded up his machine and departed. The sound of "ice-cold lemonade" had died in the general stillness. Mlle. La Sauteuse leaned over lovingly to the new keeper, and asked in a low, sympathetic voice, "What can I do for you, Jim Rounders?" "Find out the 'meat-jerk," was the swift response.
For two or three weeks Rounders continued to go through a performance like the initiatory one, but at the end of that time his ambition moved him to do something more. Pompey was tractable, and he determined to attempt the "meat-jerk." He had not forgotten the advice of Brinton, but he thought it was given through jealousy.
The apprehension of a recurrence of the critical scene which has been narrated was however groundless. Brutus dutifully leaped forward and smashed the brittle spears, without hesitation, and calmly suffered himself to be embraced as a "noble beast" afterward. The "meat-jerk" was given with the success which usually characterized it in the hands of Brinton, the applause being enthusiastic.
The trick of pulling away the meat from under the jaws of Brutus was technically known under the canvas as the "meat-jerk." It continued to remain uppermost in the mind of the new keeper. The nomadic life had pleasures for Rounders, aside from the fascination of the "meat-jerk." He drove a gayly colored wagon in the caravan, as it moved through the country.
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