Thuman struggled more closely into the corner, and tried hard to pull himself into the refuse box, through its low door; but with his trunk Gunda caught him by a leg and dragged him back. Then he made a fierce downward thrust with his tusks, which were nearly four feet long, to transfix his intended victim.
His left tusk struck the steel-clad wall and shattered into fragments, half way up. The resounding crash of that breaking tusk was what saved Thuman's life.
Gunda thrust again and again with his sound tusk, with the terrified and despairing keeper trying to cling to the broken tusk and save himself. At last the point of the sound tusk drove full and fair through the flat of Thuman's left thigh, as he lay, and stopped against the concrete floor.
Experienced animal men always are listening for sounds of trouble.
In the cage of Alice, three cages and a vestibule distant, Keeper Dick Richards was busily working, when he heard the peculiar crash of that shattered tusk. "What's all that!" said he; and "That's some trouble," was his own answer.
Grabbing his pitchfork he shot out of that cage, ran down the keeper's passage and in about ten seconds' arrived in front of Gunda's cage. And there was Gunda, killing Walter Thuman.
Richards darted in between the widely-separated front bars, gave a wild yell, and with a fierce thrust drove all the tines of his pitchfork into Gunda's unprotected hind-quarters, where the skin was thin and vulnerable.
With a shrill trumpet scream of pain and rage, Gunda whirled away from Thuman, bolted through the door, and rushed madly into his yard.
Keeper Thuman survived, and his recovery was presently accomplished. When I first called to see him he begged me not to kill Gunda for what he had done, or tried to do. In due course Thuman got well, and again took charge of Gunda; but after that the elephant was not afraid of him. We adopted a policy which prevented further accidents, but finally Gunda became a hopeless case of sexual insanity and lust for murder.
When Gunda became most dangerous, we protected our keepers by chaining his feet, and keeping the men out of the reach of his trunk. Because of this, his fury was boundless; and as soon as it was apparent that he was suffering from his confinement and never would be any better, we quickly decided to end it all. He was painlessly put to death, by Mr. Carl E. Akeley, with a single .26 calibre bullet very skilfully sent through the elephant's brain.