“The shrieks are coming from the bear pit! What if some one had
fallen in there!” cried Bonair, turning suddenly cold as ice with
apprehension, and starting at a wild run in the direction of the sounds.
As the housekeeper had told Berry, her young master had been fond of
animal pets from boyhood, and had quite a choice collection of his own
at the southern end of the park, where they were taken care of by a man
and his wife.
In this miniature zoo there was an aviary, some prairie dogs, a monkey
house, and some larger animals, including bears of different species.
Zilla, the black bear, was his favorite. He had got her himself several
years ago while deer hunting in the mountains of West Virginia. A
handsome fawn, a black bear cub, and some smaller animals, were the
trophies he carried home, and he had duly christened the cub Zilla,
and petted her so much that she loved him with a doglike devotion. In
his last letter from his sister Marie, she had told him that Zilla was
now the proud parent of twins, and had become fierce as a lioness in
defense of her young.
He had just started for the bear pit, idly wondering if Zilla would
know him again after his absence of almost a year, when those frenzied
shrieks of some one in deadly peril made him fly to the rescue in
breathless haste, his heart sinking with a terrible dread.
Suppose it were little Berry herself that had unwittingly stumbled and
fallen into the bear pit?
Oh, horrors! One blow of Zilla’s big paw would be sufficient to kill
the lovely brown-eyed maid. In the twinkling of an eye, she would be
dead!
There was one chance in a hundred for her life.
If he could get there before the fatal blow was given, if he could
spring down into the pit, and arrest Zilla’s furious onslaught by the
sound of his voice--the voice of the beloved master!
But would she remember him still? Would she yield obedience to his
command in her new character of motherhood, filled with the instinct
of protection to her young? If she would not, then woe unto any poor
wretch who had fallen into her angry clutches!
With these thoughts in his mind he flew toward the zoo, with a wild
prayer in his heart to be in time, just in time!
Every moment was an eternity, and his feet seemed to drag beneath him.
He had never realized the value of a moment of time before.
But now life itself seemed to hang upon his haste.
Fortunately the distance was short, so that he covered it in a space
of time less than five minutes--five minutes that might have been
fatal, alas, for ere now the wild shrieks had died into silence more
terrifying still--portentous silence in which the victim might have
died.
At last! At last! After an eternity of time it seemed to him--he
reached the scene of his suspicions.
He was right, for from the pit came terrible sounds, while all the
varied denizens of the zoo, having been startled from sleep by the
screams of fear, were making hideous din in their several voices, the
uproar creating a sort of babel of the scene.
Over all shone the full moon in a cloudless sky, making everything
almost as clear as day.
Bonair flung himself face downward, peering into Zilla’s abode.
Down there was something white that could dimly be seen on the ground,
while Zilla crouched over it, hitting pounding blows with her big paws.
The other three bears who shared the pit were not taking any part,
only walking about on their hind legs, expressing dismay and wonder by
dismal and prolonged growling.
“Oh, Heaven, have pity!” Bonair cried wildly, and leaped into the pit.
He fell flat on his face, and Zilla’s attention was quickly attracted
so that the lifted paw, big, hairy, ponderous, fell nerveless as she
turned desperately on the new intruder upon her domain.
Before he could struggle up to his feet, breathless from his race and
the shock of his fall, the black bear dealt him a blow hard enough
to knock the life out of him if he had not been nerved by a terrible
anxiety that almost made him proof against her force. He got up feebly
and clutched at her, muttering through a mouthful of blood:
“Zilla! Zilla!”
The name proved his salvation, for the huge black animal was opening
her arms to crush him to her in a grip that meant death, but she paused
in sudden indecision.
“Zilla! Zilla!” the man cried again hoarsely, entreatingly, his heart
leaping to his throat in panting gasps.
A stifled moan smote his ear, but it did not come from Zilla, but from
the still white something on the ground, and at the sound the bear
turned toward it again with a ferocious growl.
But the great uplifted hairy paw did not fall, for with lightning
swiftness, Bonair sprang forward, his fist shot out with terrible
force and struck the animal just between the eyes, so that she lurched
backward.
“Zilla, you devil, if you have hurt her, I will kill you!” he shouted,
as he flung himself between them.
Madam Bruin, who had seen stars for a moment as his fist struck her
face, now regained her feet, standing erect and menacing, but without
making direct attack. She seemed dazed, stupefied, and a sort of shiver
shook her huge black body.
As the moon shone down on the strange scene, she got her first look at
the intruder, and she began to tremble more and more with the rush of
instinctive memory. Bonair saw already that the battle was won.
“Oh, Zilla, you know me at last,” he cried, in blended relief and
exultation, and added:
“Down, down, wretched beast, at my feet!”
Oh, wondrous change.
It did not seem possible that the maddened, murderous, plunging beast
of a moment ago could be transformed like this into a tender, loving
animal that groveled on the ground and licked the master’s hand with a
quivering red tongue like a dog’s. But the transformation was wrought.
There she lay prostrate at Bonair’s command, conquered, humble, loving,
her huge black body quivering all over, her whole attitude one of
complete submission.
“Lie still, now,” her master commanded, roughly stroking her head,
even while he turned in an agony of anxiety to that figure huddled on
the ground the other side of him. He stooped down to examine it, and
as he did so Zilla’s fury returned. She growled and half rose, but his
restraining hand thrust her fiercely back.
“Must I slay you, beast?” he demanded, with a blow that forced her
to be quiescent, while he made a further examination of the white
something that after one moan had given no further sign of life.
Alas, his fearful heart had told him right.
It was she, Berenice Vining, the little maid who had stirred his heart
to love’s joy and pain as no other woman had ever done before! Little
Berry of the starry eyes and pure heart.
Gowned in simple white and seemingly lifeless, she lay, and he turned
to find some implement to slay Zilla, in the rush of furious vengeance.
But the bear had slunk from him to the corner where her darlings whined
in their soft nest, and he tripped and fell in his agitation--not in a
pool of blood, but upon a soft mass of wool--the thick red blanket he
had seen on the Indian fortune teller when she had come to drag Berry
away to this hideous doom.
He comprehended that the woman had thrust Berry down to this awful
death, and that in the life-and-death struggle, she had dragged down
with her the scarlet blanket.
But why, why, why, had the old hag thirsted for this beautiful,
innocent young life? was the question that struck him like a blow in
the face.
He knelt down by her in anguish; he put his hand beneath her face and
turned it to the light.
Fortunately there was no mark or bruise upon it to mar its lifeless
beauty, but the lids lay heavy and dark on the white cheek, and the
heart, when he laid his hand over it, had no pulsation. He had come too
late. Zilla’s blows had battered out the life from the beautiful body!
Charley Bonair groaned in anguish.
“Dead! Dead! Poor little darling; sweet, pure child! How could so
slight a form survive those thudding blows I heard as I dropped into
the pit? They shall die for this, the old hag who flung her down to
her fate, and the murderous Zilla, who finished her work! Now there is
nothing left but to take her out of this accursed hole back to my home,
my last dead love, my little Berry, whom fate placed beyond my reach.
Ah,” the tone changed to one of horror, as a bullet whizzed suddenly
down into the pit past his cheek and buried itself in his shoulder.