The keeper grinned in sickly fashion.
“You don’t know bulls. They’ll—”
“Quit your kidding. Let ’em go. The poor things are hot.”
“All right.” The keeper sighed—a sigh with a good-by in it. “You’re boss. Hey, men! Turn ’em loose!”
There was a rush, a splash of water, then shining bulky forms that flopped and scrambled out of the water at the other side of the irrigation ditch. The herd, in its entirety, had smelled broader expanses of water, and almost abreast they went for it, all but Old Mom, who trumpeted wildly, who squealed and bellowed and roared, but who for a moment remained alone. Even her faithful Frieda deserted her, running wildly with Snyder and Trilby over the edge of the hump and sliding down a declivity of solid rock into the raging waters of the Snake River rapids. Behind them the two remaining members of the herd halted, stood a moment in fear, then whimpering returned to the side of Old Mom, while the circus owner, believing he had sent a valuable elephant herd to its death, hurriedly decided to move elsewhere than within the range of the baleful eye of the keeper of the bulls.
Down in the rapids, with its falls and dangerous suck holes below, the three elephants floundered a moment, then splashed out in different directions. Frieda, her common sense aroused at last, swam with all her strength straight for the opposite shore, finally landing in safety just above the falls. But Trilby and Snyder, forgetting the swiftness of the current in their enjoyment of the water’s coolness, drifted lazily along, until too late. A moment more and the hundreds of excited sightseers who had gathered atop the banks saw the rolling, tossing, suddenly frantic beasts plunge, over the falls and into the suck holes and whirlpools beneath, from which no living thing ever had emerged.
By this time the owner was far away and seeking even more speed. A man in an automobile hastened to overtake him and to break the news that his elephants were in the Snake River death trap. He nodded glumly and went on.
The elephants now were in a suck hole which formed the main amusement of the boys of the town who, when the lure of other games had faded, were wont to push large logs over the edge into the swirling waters and watch them churned to bits by the fierce action of the boiling waters. Trilby had vanished. Only the edge of Snyder’s trunk showed at long intervals. Atop the bank the keeper of the bulls breathed another good-by to two of his best elephants.
Then a shout. Fully three hundred feet below the suck hole Trilby, immersed for what had seemed hours, had come to the surface and was fighting valiantly toward shore. Finally she gained it, to crawl to a rocky ledge, to stagger, then to fall exhausted. Five minutes later Snyder lay beside her, equally fatigued. And there they remained, moaning with almost human intonations, until their keeper, with Old Mom, came to their rescue.
All through the town the word spread that a living thing—two living things, in fact—had survived the death trap. The crowds gathered; it was as though conquering heroes had returned from a war. The townspeople even forgave Frieda and refused damages when it was learned that she had ambled from her landing point to a livery yard and caused a panic among the horses stabled there. That night the tents were unable to contain the crowds that thronged to see the elephants which had braved the whirlpools. And in the years to come, the simple announcement of the coming of the circus was enough to insure the influx of thousands of dollars, as long as it contained the assurance that the death-trap elephants would be a part of the performance.