When not engaged in these innocent relaxations, Lola would give herself up to other pursuits. Thus, she hunted and fished and shot, and often made long trips on horseback through the forests and sage bush. Having a fondness for all sorts of animals, on one such expedition she captured a bear cub, with which she returned to her cabin and set herself to tame. While thus employed, she was visited by a wandering violinist, who, falling a victim to her charms, begged a lock of her hair as a souvenir of the occasion. Thereupon, Lola, always anxious to oblige, struck a bargain with him. "I have," she said, "a pet grizzly in my orchard. If you will wrestle with him for three minutes, you shall have enough of my hair to make a bow for your fiddle. Let me see what you can do." The challenge was accepted; and the amorous violinist, merely stipulating that the animal should be muzzled, set to work and secured the coveted guerdon.
Something of a risk, perhaps. Still, it would have been a more serious one if Lola had kept a rattlesnake.
Appearances are deceptive, and Bruin was less domesticated than Lola imagined. One day, pining perhaps for fresh diet, he grappled with his mistress and bit her hand. The incident attracted a laureate on the staff of the California Chronicle, who, in Silas Wegg fashion, "dropped into verse:"
LOLA AND HER PET
One day when the season was drizzly,
And outside amusements were wet,
Fair Lola paid court to her Grizzly
And undertook petting her pet.
But, ah, it was not the Bavarian
Who softened so under her hand,
No ermined King octogenarian,
But Bruin, coarse cub of the land.
So, all her caresses combatting
He crushed her white slender hand first,
Refusing his love to her patting,
As she had refused hers to Pat!
Oh, had her pet been him whose glory
And title were won on the field,
Less bloodless had ended this story,
More easy her hand had been Heald!
This doggerel was signed "F.S.", initials which masked the identity of Frank Soule, the editor of the Chronicle.
V
Never without her dog-whip, Lola took it with her to her cottage in Grass Valley. There she soon found a use for it. A journalist, in a column account of her career, was ungallant enough to finish by enquiring "if she were the devil incarnate?" As the simplest method of settling the problem, "Lola summoned the impertinent scribbler and gave him such a hiding that he had no doubts left at all."