The Popular Magazine/Volume 31/Number 3/Cephas the Paladin

by Albert Payson Terhune

 

Cephas the Paladin

By Albert Payson Terhune

 

In which there is for hero a pig—a month-old porker so rawboned and stunted that not even the most optimistic of farmers could have hoped to sell him, But he had the heart of a Paladin

 

CEPHAS was his name. He was a pig. But he was, none the less, a paladin. A porcine St. George when fate at last sounded the call for his great adventure.

Byram owned him. Byram was the man who had mortgaged his up-State farm to buy a half share in the “Trip to Mars” concession at the Pan-Universal Exposition.

Most expositions, or world's fairs, are financial failures. But most of their side-show attractions make money. And—thanks to Cephas—the Trip to Mars was one of these money-makers. Through its gingerbread-gilt gateway on the Street of a Thousand Laughs trickled a goodly stream of sight-seers, and of dimes, throughout that long, hot summer.

Byram, exiled for the season from his beloved farm in order to make ten times as much money at the exposition, was acting as his own ballyhoo man to draw trade to the Trip to Mars. And on the third day of the season his raucous cries of “Greatest, most reefined, most side-splitting show of the century,” were suddenly punctuated by a squeal that split the looser volume of his clamor as a sword blade might cleave past-worthy melon.

And at that imperative insult to the eardrum, full a thousand hurrying, babbling people stopped and, for a flash of time, were silent. The sound had wafted Byram momentarily back to his farm. It carried the memory of many another listener to a similar starting point.

Byram sought to locate the cause, and at a glance he found it. Down the narrow Street of a Thousand Laughs rumbled a big market wagon, taking this short cut to the heart of the city. The wagon was loaded high with crated poultry, calves, and pigs.

An insecurely fastened crate at the very back of the pile had shaken loose, and had fallen to the ground, where, from the tumble, it promptly disintegrated. Its late occupant stood free, dazed, indignant, in the middle of the thronged street; giving forth squeal after squeal, that filled the whole walled space with a series of shrill and unlovely echoes.

The vocalist was a very small, very thin, very youthful pig. For scarce a month of time at most could he have been on earth. And during that brief month he had apparently cultivated his voice at the expense of his anatomy. For, seldom has so much leanness been seen in conjunction with so much youth. Indeed, only the most optimistic of farmers could have hoped to sell such a rawboned and stunted baby porker at any market.

The wagon vanished around a corner, leaving the baby pig stranded and deserted; a bit of noisy jetsam on the shores of the Street of a Thousand Laughs. Byram gazed. So did every one. And a Homeric guffaw arose. The Street was for once living up to its name. The piglet retorted with an ear-racking squeal.

A long-legged, rangy dog dashed from the crowd and charged the waif. The baby pig, no whit daunted, wheeled to meet the charge. Yes, to meet it half-way. His pink lips drawn back over tiny, white milk tusks, his scant spine hairs a-bristle, his vocal cords throbbing with a long-drawn squeal of glad challenge, the pig scampered toward his thrice-larger foe.

Whereat, the dog, which was of many breeds, checked its attack in mid-course, tucked a grubby tail between its flanks, and wheeled in flight; turning piggy's solo squeals into close harmony by the addition of a long, fear-stricken howl.

The baby paused, blinking his near-sighted little red-rimmed eyes in search of his flying foe. And at that moment Byram was mastered by one of the inspirations that had lifted him at thirty from farm hand to rising showman.

He strode forth and snatched up the valiant little porker. The latter seemed to know from the way he was handled that Byram was accustomed to pigs. So, unresisting, he allowed himself to be tucked under the man's arm and carried into the cubby-hole office of the Trip to Mars building:

A boy was sent on the run for a half-gallon can of buttermilk, and with further orders to hunt up the market man from whose wagon the pig had been jolted, and to pay him two dollars for the attenuated prize. Just then Byram's partner, Bud Crane, happened in,

“We aren't showing freaks,” was Bud's comment, at sight of the Little Stranger. “What good is a living skeleton to us?”

“But we're selling the dear public,” gently corrected Byram. “And I've just bought for two dollars the best barker on the Street. I'm going to tie this pig to a six-foot cord alongside of my ballyhoo bench outside there. His squeals will make every mother's son in earshot stop and listen to me.”

But Crane was dubious. Byram expounded his theory of the farm memory that lurks in the back of every one's brain. And he told how the crowd had waxed silent, and had turned, as one man, at piggy's unrehearsed recital.

“But won't the S. P. C. A. butt-ins get after us?” objected Bud, “for—for torturing a dumb animal—or something?”

“This animal's worst enemy couldn't call him dumb,” retorted Byram, “And, besides, nobody' s going to torture him.”

“Then how'll we make him squeal?”

“We'd have harder work to stop him. A pig of that age and breed squeals every few seconds, anyway. Just as he's doing now. He'll be a dandy card. Folks'll get talking about it, too. And then——”

“All right,” conceded Bud comfortably. “And say! I've got a corking idea for a name for him. 'Spareribs!' How's that? Look at his sides. You see, he's——”

“His name,” coldly decided Byram, “is Cephas.”

“Cephas?” echoed Crane, in blank wonder. “Why Cephas?”

“Why not Cephas?”

This argument could not be parried. It could only be ignored. Crane protested feebly:

“It's a fool name.”

“It's my father-in-law's name,” rebuked Byram, with icy dignity.

“Oh, I see. The old man's the one who's got the mortgage on your farm, isn't he? I remember. All right. Let it go at Cephas.”

And Cephas it was; thenceforth and for the season.

Through the torrid, sticky summer, Byram, from his ballyhoo bench, extolled the marvels of a Trip to Mars. From noon to midnight he added his ever-hoarsening shouts of praise to the clamor of the Street of a Thousand Laughs.

And on the sidewalk beside Byram, every week day, from noon to midnight, stood, or sprawled, or trotted Cephas; ever and anon lifting to high heaven a squeal or a succession of squeals that tore the busily humming summer air into shreds.

Never did Cephas squeal without drawing as much attention as did all the Street's human barkers combined. City folk would jump in amaze and turn to see whence emanated the fearsome sound. Memories awoke in most passers-by, and curiosity in all. And the Trip to Mars speedily became the best-advertised show at the exposition.

Cephas, with a brazen collar about his brazen throat, and a long brass chain connecting him with Byram's bench leg, went through the business of the day with undying spirit.

Sometimes he would pace or gallop from one end of his tether to the other; shrieking in drawn-out fervor at every step. Again he would stand and survey the passing hundreds with the impersonally curious eye of a philosopher, squealing only occasionally and in a dispassionate tone, as one with a dull but needful duty to perform. When rain pelted heavily, or the August sun fell like a fiery scourge on the cement pavement, Cephas would lie at ease in the sparse shadows under the bench, squealing with a somnolent but racking dreaminess,

Thanks to the new ballyhoo, the Trip to Mars did unparalleled business. It drew quarters when equally meritorious shows drew nickels. It paid the mortgage off Byram's farm, and started a plump little bank account for him. It earned for Bud Crane a pale-yellow diamond, with crinkly depths and of unbelievable area.

Cephas toiled on; sleeping in the mornings to an hour that would have brought a flush of shame to his farm ancestors; and sitting up till every other pig in America had finished half its night's sleep. He ate in large quantities and at frequent intervals. Beyond his regular diet, there were many and heterogeneous' contributions—ranging from apple cores to crack-jack—from passing admirers. And his physical exercise was limited and spasmodic. Yet he gained no flesh. Perhaps nature did not intend that he should. Perhaps squealing for a livelihood twelve hours a day on a crowded, hot, ill-savored cement pavement, and sitting up until midnight do not tend to put flesh on little pigs. In any case, Cephas remained svelte; not to say bony. And his general size increased so imperceptibly that he was scarce three inches longer, or an inch taller, in September than he had been in June.

Cephas' lack of growth, and his perpetual thinness, worried Byram. Yet he could see nothing amiss with the squealer's appetite or general health. He had grown genuinely fond of the queer little fellow during their months of jointly haranguing the multitudes. And Cephas reciprocated the man's affection.

Cephas was not demonstrative. But on such rare intervals as he was loose he would always seek out Byram and trot gravely at his heels, or lie curled in an angular bunch at his feet. Bud Crane the pig openly and throatily disliked. And Bud regarded Cephas merely as an unlovely, but paying, adjunct to the show.

Strewn through the summer there were several happenings to lighten the monotony of Cephas' life. Once, for example, he was stolen. And his squeals of wrath furnished a running clew to his negro captor's movements, until Byram and a patrolman could overhaul the fugitive in the crowd.

Again, the shed wherein Cephas slept, at the back of the Trip to Mars building, took fire just before dawn one day. And the flame-defying squeals of fearless Cephas awakened Byram and other sleepers barely in time to save the pig's bacon from more than a superficial, if painful, scorching; as well as to save the building, and probably the entire flimsy Street of a Thousand Laughs.

An exposition newspaper published a story of the scant-averted holocaust; heading it, “pig turns in a squeal alarm,” and running a picture of Cephas, the hero of the account. (Cephas never having been photographed, a “stock cut” of a prize Berkshire boar was printed as substitute.)

Then, dog fights were matters of such frequency that they hardly called for comment. It was a favorite amusement for the Street's youthful hangers-on to catch some large or small stray cur, haul him to the space in front of the Trip to Mars, and then gleefully “sick him onto” Cephas.

The baby pig met all canine comers. Yes, met and routed them. Such few dogs as withstood his first indignant rush found his teeth amazingly sharp, and his skin incredibly tough, And the assailants seldom-wasted time over the useless combat; but withdrew as early in the action as they could tear themselves free.

Thus—fighting, squealing, half baking, singed, stolen, stared at, the butt of inextinguishable laughter—Cephas wore out the red summer and shrilled a gallant greeting to the purple-and-gold autumn.

The exposition was at its last gasp. The Street of a Thousand Laughs prepared to put up the shutters. The crowds had dwindled. Summer and shows were past; winter and work were at hand.

Byram and Crane on the first of October, counted up their comfortable profits, divided a good sum of money, and rejoiced. Byram next day was going back tu his worshiped farm, to make ready for a record agricultural year, wherein labor should for once be reënforced by capital. Crane, buying out his partner's interest in the Trip to Mars, prepared to take the show to New Orleans for the winter.

Byram went over to the Agriculture Building, on the Street's last day, to buy some farm implements at end-of-season rates. Crane was packing some of the Trip's paraphernalia. Cephas, his position now a sinecure, was snoring shrilly under the vacated ballyhoo bench. The show was closed.

Then it was that Ophido, the Cobra King, from the Hindu Village across the Street, honored Mr. Bud Crane with a morning call. Ophida, in private life, bore the more reasonable cognomen of Murtha. And Bud had known him in the olden years before ever Ophido was a Hindu. The Cobra King's visit was of a business nature. His star python, Brahma—second largest of its species in captivity—was ready to be fed. Brahma, python fashion, ate but once in seven or eight months. And he always evinced his periodic desire for food by an increased liveliness. Such liveliness, Ophido told Crane, had now obsessed Brahma. Nor would the reptile quiet down sufficiently for transportation, or for safe handling in public, until hunger should have been appeased, and sweet reflection should bring back the snake's wonted laziness.

Pythons, Ophido prattled on carelessly, will eat nothing but live food. A half dozen kicking rabbits, a month-old kid whose horns have not yet sprouted, a lamb, or even a small dog, will serve amply for the semiyearly banquet. Or—here Ophido coughed discreetly—at a pinch a young pig might do.

Crane pricked up his ears. Ophido dropped glittering generalities and went further into details.

“Business is dead,” he explained. “Here's the last day; and the only way we could get a handful of boobs into the Village was by advertising that Brahma's to be fed. Now, that squealing pig of yours is pretty well known about here. If I could send word around the Street that he's the dinner picked out for Brahma, it ought to draw a whole bunch of folks. Get the idea?”

“Yes,” said Crane doubtfully.

“The feeding's advertised for an hour from now,” went on Ophido, “and I could get the news around before then. How about it?”

“No,” decided Crane, after a moment's wistful thought—during which he covertly surveyed a half-healed scar on his thumb, the imprint of Cephas' tusks on an occasion when Bud had tried to slap the pig into louder squeals. “No. It won't do. Byram would never stand for it. He's fond of the measly little cuss.”

“I thought you'd bought out Byram.”

“I have.”

“Then the pig's yours. He's part of the show, isn't he?”

“Why, I s'pose that's so,” admitted Crane, hope dawning in his voice. “But,” he added, “Byram would raise an awful kick just the same.”

“Afraid of him. I see.”

“No,” glumly denied Crane, “I ain't afraid of anybody. Besides, he's away for the morning. And the pig's no use to me down South. He'd cost more to transport than he's worth. What'll you gimme for him?”

After some slight dicker, five dollars and Cephas changed hands. And Ophido-Murtha, the Cobra King, departed for his Hindu Village, bearing with him the indignantly protesting Cephas.

“'Twon't hurt him? Not so very much?” queried the conscious-twinged Crane, as he escorted his guest across the Street.

“Not a bit!” Ophido assured him. “When a python looks at the critters that's put in his cage, they just get paralyzed, all at once, with fear. Kind of hypnotized. And they don't move a muscle, but only crouch there, with their eyes popping while he gets 'em ready to eat. It's a painless death. The S. P. C. A. folks themselves says so. Some of 'em.”

An hour later the Serpent House of the Hindu Village was full to overcrowding with eagerly morbid sightseers, who had paid double rates for the dual privilege of seeing Brahma feed and Cephas die.

“Ladies'n gentlemen,” began the hirsute lecturer, mounting a box beside a glass-faced cage that filled one end of the narrow hall, “you will now be treated to one of the most instructive sights in the fascinatin' domain of Ophidian natural history. Brahma, the mammoth python, second largest snake in captivity, will proceed to break his eight-month fast, before your very eyes, by devouring a large and livin' pig. Please keep as quiet as you can, ladies'n gentlemen, until this wonderful exhibition is over. For pythons is very dainty about their eatin'. And if they're disturbed or distracted, why, they won't eat at all. Ready, Mr. Ophido?”

Ophido advanced from behind a screen, carrying at arm's length between his hands the struggling Cephas, whose presence had been audible throughout the entire brief “lecture.” The Cobra King went to the rear of the cage; an attendant with him. The audience sat mute; every eye glued to the interior of the glass-fronted inclosure.

There, on the floor, before a painted backdrop supposedly depicting an India jungle at sunrise, moved something—enormous, sinuous, hideously beautiful.

Fold on fold the python had assembled together his squirming length; the satin pattern of red-brown and black widening, as the body expanded in process of coiling, to the girth of a human thigh. Then, untangling his massed convolutions, Brahma flattened out to almost the full depth of the huge cage; and glided restlessly from end to end, from corner to corner of it; running his head and neck man-high along the slimy surface of the glass.

Nothing short of famine or intense pain could rouse a captive snake to such unwonted activity. Clearly, Brahma was hungry. He could not stay quiet. His habitual dead-and-alive lethargy was shed like last year's skin. He nosed in corners; and, coiling himself once more, gazed at the spectators in expressionless malignity from lidless bead eyes set in a triangular head as large as a dog's.

Uncoiling again into a thick, sinuous bar, he recommenced his undulating tour of the cage. Suddenly he halted, slithering to one side of the inclosure, and raising his three-cornered head as though in preparation for attack.

At the same instant a panel in the back of the cage was shot open, and then shut. In the momentary interval the gaping spectators caught a glimpse of two hands that tossed an object through the aperture.

And Cephas stood in the cage's cleared central space.

The pig's little white-lashed eyes blinked with a fleeting look of bewilderment—none who knew him could call it fear—at his strange surroundings. He gazed beyond the sheet of glass, and beheld the staring audience. Professional instincts seemed to tell him that here was a show of some kind, and that it was incumbent upon him to squeal.

The pink mouth opened for a vocal effort. Then, evidently, a swift, rustling sound distracted his attention, and showed him he was not the cage's only occupant. He wheeled abruptly. And Brahma came into his blinking line of vision.

The python, at sight of his prey, had coiled tight, and was now thrusting forth and drawing back his three-sided head, almost on a level with the floor; to gauge the distance for a strike.

“Yes, ladies'n' gentlemen,” the lecturer had resumed in a carefully subdued voice, “the first glance from the python's mysterious hypnotic eye charms the trembling prey into a sort of stoopor. And——”

He got no further. Just then Brahma, having satisfactorily measured the distance, struck, flashing forward his head and ten feet of his mighty length with a speed that the eye could not follow.

At that juncture, Cephas had caught for the first time a full and comprehensive view of his horrible cagemate.

The python struck. But Cephas was hot there. With a squeal whose shrill fury paled all his life's former attempts at song or at displeasure, the pig sprang forward to meet the assault.

Yes, and he launched himself into the fray a fraction of a second sooner than did Brahma. High in air leaped Cephas, above the swift-darting triangular head.

And down he came, all four pointed trotters bunched together on the neck scales of his adversary. His sharp little white tusks promptly buried themselves to their entire short length in the flesh at the very base of Brahma's skull.

With one convulsive start the giant snake upreared; until his head, and the neck in whose nape Cephas' teeth were sunk, smote resoundingly against the cage roof.

The impact was terrific. It shook the cage like a miniature earthquake. But it did not shake loose the hold of Cephas.

Dearly, no doubt, would the pig have loved to exhaust in a battle squeal such little breath as the blow against the roof had left him. But, to squeal, a pig must open wide his jaws. And Cephas' long, narrow jaws were otherwise engaged. So, in his hour of mortal stress, this one beloved expression of emotion was denied. He must fight without the inspiring thrill of music.

The python dashed himself against the painted walls and the floor, striving in growing panic to shake free and to strike. Each smashing beat of the flail head and neck seemed more than enough to flatten Cephas into shapelessness.

But he was a hard, gristly little fellow, this sacrificed pig; as resilient as a rubber ball, and bothered by no easily crushed flesh. Also, he had the heart of a paladin: zealous, flamboyant, unafraid. D'Artagnan's, at the Gascon's glowing best; even if swathed in porcine skin.

Finding the puny foe refused to die, the python resorted to the constrictor tactics of his race. Around the bristling, tense body of the pig he swept his giant folds.

Coil upon coil Brahma cast around his enemy; hampered vastly, it is true, by the fact that Cephas was behind, instead of in front, of him; but none the less managing to secure a fairly close grip on the tiny hero. Then the python proceeded to “constrict.”

Had Brahma been able to coil himself in his customary way, around the pig, the end might have come quickly. But Cephas' position made this impracticable. So the python merely held such hold as he had caught.

Ophido, and the lecturer, and the attendants, and every one else remained almost as moveless as the combatants; powerless to shake off the primitive spell of battle.

That was the situation when Byram—a rumor of the intended slaughter spectacle having reached him in the distant Agriculture Building—elbowed his way into the hall.

Byram was as dangerously angry as only an even-tempered man may become. He was yellow-white, and there were gray dents on either sides of a mouth that was clenched as tight shut as Cephas' own.

He went through the packed crowd without causing the remotest inconvenience—to himself—and made straight for the glass-fronted cage. He stopped only once, and then but momentarily, in his swerveless progress. That was when Crane, as Byram pushed past him, tried to say something by way of excuse or explanation. Byram halted only long enough to aim—and land—a left hook that reached Bud's jaw, and caused him to sit down with great force and promptitude.

Byram, not even troubling to look back, continued his way to the cage. In his right hand was the thick blackthorn stick he always carried.

He had nearly reached the cage before he was first able to see, through the press, the motionless duelists on its floor. Another step brought him to the glass. And he smote its polished surface with the full swinging force of his stick.

At the first blow of the blackthorn knob, the thick glass split in five directions like so much skin ice under a boy's toe. The second, third, and fourth, delivered with a speed that seemed to make therm but a single stroke, shivered the entire glass front, leaving a huge, ragged gap in the center.

Through this gap, Byram stepped; the jutting point of glass tearing his clothes and his hands as he went.

Above the two fighters he towered, his stick upraised, seeking the most vulnerable section of the snake's anatomy. The smash of glass had broken the spell that had gripped the crowd. Silence was replaced by confused shouts and babbling; through which boomed the quite unheeded imprecations of Ophido-Murtha, the Cobra King. There was a surge and a scramble in every direction, too; with much scuffing of feet. No one greatly cared to be so near the abode of the second largest python in captivity, when that captivity was lessened by a broken, cage front.

But the incipient panic was wholly groundless. Nor did Byram's upraised blackthorn descend upon the snake. For, even as the man poised the stick for the blow, there was a sudden movement in the mountainous mass of coils, from tail to head. Then, very slowly, the thirty-foot body unwound; twisted feebly over on its back; exposing an endless stretch of white, scaly underside; and lay there. The python's neck was quite scientifically broken; by the incessant and-ever-fiercer grinding of a double row of white little tushes.

Beside his huge foe lay Cephas; a small, crumpled heap, curiously awkward and twisted in pose.

Ophido strode vengefully toward the wrecked cage, chanced to observe Bud Crane scrambling up dazedly from a sitting posture on the floor, paused, and reconsidered his planned onslaught.

“If I'd charged ten dollars a head for admittance to this fight,” half blubbered the Cobra King to nobody in particular, “it wouldn't half 'a' paid me for losing that python!”

Byram did not hear. He was kneeling beside Cephas, running a tender hand over the limp body, and straightening out the cramped limbs and back.

“Somebody's going to get the licking of his life for this!" he announced to all and sundry, as he gently lifted the small hero in his arms.

Cephas the Unafraid opened one white-lashed, red-rimmed eye, and contributed to the babel of surrounding din a feeble but dauntless squeal. Byram, in incredulous joy, fanned the half-swooning warrior with his hat, and once more ran practiced fingers over Cephas' battered anatomy.

“A rib bashed in, and shoulder 'way out of joint,” was his half-audible diagnosis. “But he's beginning to breathe free. And his heart's going. It doesn't hurt him when I punch him anywhere but on the shoulder and the rib. No inside injuries. He'll live—the gaudy little scrapper.”

“Say, Byram!” hailed a freak-show manager as the rescuer bore his wounded pet, unopposed, through the excited crowd, out of the Serpent House, “I'll give you fifty dollars for that pig, for my mu-see-um. I'll bill him as the Porcine Paladin and Python Killer, and he'll be——”

“You'll buy me as easy as you'll buy Cephas,” growled Byram. “He goes back to the farm with me to-morrow, after the vet has fixed him up. And there he stays forever and ever. In clover. As Providence meant a pig to. Not ballyhooing and killing pythons for breakfast. Hey, Cephas?”

And Cephas, the porcine paladin, gave assent, in a muffled but defiantly happy squeal.