Suddenly, from a distance, came a bedlam of noise that made Michael prick up his ears and bristle with premonition of fresh disaster.  It was a confused yelping, howling, and barking of many dogs.

“Holy Smoke!—­It’s them damned acting dogs,” growled the baggageman to his mate.  “There ought to be a law against dog-acts.  It ain’t decent.”

“It’s Peterson’s Troupe,” said the other.  “I was on when they come in last week.  One of ’em was dead in his box, and from what I could see of him it looked mighty like he’d had the tar knocked outa him.”

“Got a wollopin’ from Peterson most likely in the last town and then was shipped along with the bunch and left to die in the baggage car.”

The bedlam increased as the animals were transferred from the wagon to a platform truck, and when the truck rolled up and stopped alongside Michael’s he made out that it was piled high with crated dogs.  In truth, there were thirty-five dogs, of every sort of breed and mostly mongrel, and that they were far from happy was attested by their actions.  Some howled, some whimpered, others growled and raged at one another through the slots, and many maintained a silence of misery.  Several licked and nursed bruised feet.  Smaller dogs that did not fight much were crammed two or more into single crates.  Half a dozen greyhounds were crammed into larger crates that were anything save large enough.

“Them’s the high-jumpers,” said the first baggageman.  “An’ look at the way they’re packed.  Peterson ain’t going to pay any more excess baggage than he has to.  Not half room enough for them to stand up.  It must be hell for them from the time they leave one town till they arrive at the next.”

But what the baggageman did not know was that in the towns the hell was not mitigated, that the dogs were still confined in their too-narrow prisons, that, in fact, they were life-prisoners.  Rarely, except for their acts, were they taken out from their cages.  From a business standpoint, good care did not pay.  Since mongrel dogs were cheap, it was cheaper to replace them when they died than so to care for them as to keep them from dying.

What the baggageman did not know, and what Peterson did know, was that of these thirty-five dogs not one was a surviving original of the troupe when it first started out four years before.  Nor had there been any originals discarded.  The only way they left the troupe and its cages was by dying.  Nor did Michael know even as little as the baggageman knew.  He knew nothing save that here reigned pain and woe and that it seemed he was destined to share the same fate.

Into the midst of them, when with more howlings and yelpings they were loaded into the baggage car, was Michael’s cage piled.  And for a day and a part of two nights, travelling eastward, he remained in the dog inferno.  Then they were loaded off in some large city, and Michael continued on in greater quietness and comfort, although his injured foot still hurt and was bruised afresh whenever his crate was moved about in the car.