“Show me,” he snapped. “Take me there!”
Bob’s eyes widened into a stare.
“No…” The voice was now a tiny whisper of dread. “I can’t … the tiger, he’s still there … it’s too late to do anything for the boy, you see, it’s too late!”
He broke off as the flat of Harry’s hand lashed across his face with a loud crack, knocking him backwards a step. Harry’s expression was one of barely controlled rage.
“Goddamn you,” he said through gritted teeth. “Goddamn you to hell, you insolent dog. There’s a lot we can do for the boy. We can take him home to his family and tell them that the Great White Hunter didn’t even bother to check that the tiger was dead, before he let somebody approach it. Haven’t you ever heard of throwing stones at a tiger to check that he’s not shamming? Didn’t you have that written down in any of your goddamned books!” Harry’s whole body was shaking with anger, and it was all he could do to refrain from striking the younger man again. “Now you listen to me, Beresford, and you hear me well. You’re going to take me back to the place where it happened or I swear I’ll take my rifle and I’ll put a bullet through your stupid head myself. Now move!” He prodded the Australian sharply with the tip of his rifle barrel and Bob began to move, stumbling helplessly along, his head bowed, his spirit completely broken. It did not take very long to reach the place where Ché’s body lay. Bob hung back, unable to even look at the child, but Harry went straight up to the corpse and stood staring at it in silence for a moment.
The boy’s face was surprisingly calm in death, the black intelligent eyes staring upwards at the sky in an expression of surprise. Harry kneeled reverently beside the body and reaching out a hand, he closed the eyes with a little pressure from his fingertips. He had dearly loved those eyes, and he could not bear to see them now. They made him think of another time, when he had held out a bright shiny watch and the eyes had gazed up at him, glittering with excitement … and Harry had made the boy say the word “tiger” to prove to him that it was superstitious nonsense to believe that he could bring down the beast’s wrath on his own head. A glint of sunlight on silver made him look down and there was the selfsame watch, dangling from its fob at the child’s waist. Harry could see that the second hand was still ticking urgently around, but for Ché, life was stilled forever.
Harry hunched forward and his shoulders shuddered involuntarily, a dryness tore at his throat, his eyes blurred with hot tears. He sobbed out his grief and wondered if it was possible for him to go on living with such sorrow, with such horrible injustice.
He glanced up at Bob once and said coldly, “It should have been you.”
The Australian looked away. He could not meet the old man’s accusing eyes.
After a little while, Harry managed to calm himself. He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve and then reaching down, he lifted the child’s torn body up in his arms. He moved quickly over to Bob and made as if to pass the burden over to him. The Australian recoiled in horror.
“I can’t…” he gasped.
“You will,” retorted Harry simply. He thrust Ché’s body against Bob’s chest so that the man had to take it in his arms. “Now, take him back to the village, you hear me? Take him back to his family and tell them what you’ve done.”
“And you…”
Harry turned and gazed resolutely off into the disturbed undergrowth.
“I’ll go and finish the job,” he said quietly.
“No…” A glimmer of bravado reappeared in the Australian’s eyes. “He’s mine! I’ve done all the hard work, and now you just want to step in and pick him off.…”
Harry stared at Bob in silence for a moment. He had never felt so much contempt for another human being in his entire life.
“My God, you are despicable,” he murmured. “Look where your lust for glory has got you and you still cling on to the belief that some higher power ordains that the tiger belongs to you. That cat is a miserable man-killer, but for all that he’s worth ten of you, Beresford. You’re the animal! D’you hear me? You’re the animal!” Harry stooped and snatched up his rifle. He brought the muzzle up and pointed it squarely between the Australian’s eyes. “Now you start walking back towards that village or by God, I swear I’ll blow your head all over this clearing.”
Bob took a step forward, tried to speak but Harry simply lifted the gun forward in a gesture of warning. Bob’s head dropped forward again. All the fight had been driven out of him. Slowly, hampered by the burden of the boy’s limp form, he turned and began to stumble away through the trees, weaving left and right to find a path through the undergrowth. Harry watched until the man’s figure was hidden from view. Then turning, he picked up his haversack, slung it over his shoulder and approached the thick tangle of grass and bushes into which the tiger had vanished. He stood for a moment, staring straight ahead, flaring his nostrils to smell the wind.
“It’s madness,” he murmured to himself. “You don’t follow a tiger across his own ground. You simply don’t.” But it was a personal matter now. And the old beast would be in such pain, such terrible pain.
Slowly, cautiously and with infinite precision, Harry took his first step into the bushes. The cat was out there somewhere, wounded, desperate. Harry would keep searching until their paths crossed.
CHAPTER 33
THE TRAIL led deeper and deeper into the heart of the jungle. Harry followed at a slow and cautious pace, stooping down occasionally to examine a pugmark or an overturned stone. There were frequent splashes of fresh blood on either side of the tracks, which suggested that Beresford’s bullet had gone clean through its target; but the blood did not have the light frothy consistency that would have suggested a lung wound. The tiger clearly possessed a charmed life.
The ground over the last mile or so had declined gradually into a deep marshy valley, overrun with tangles of swamp grass, bamboo thickets, and thick rotan creepers covered with fishhooklike thorns that continually snagged the khaki material of Harry’s shirt. The Malays called the creepers nanti sikit, which literally means “wait a while.” It was mid-afternoon now and Harry was tiring rapidly. He was obliged to stop and rest every so often, for he was finding it difficult to keep his breathing regular. But the tiger showed no signs of pausing at the moment. He was moving straight and true along well-worn cattle trails, as if heading instinctively for some refuge or other.
At one point, the trail led through a thigh deep swamp and Harry was obliged to wade through, an exhausting proposition, as his boots kept slipping and sliding in the deep deposits of clinging mud beneath the stagnant water. When he emerged on the other side, he found several leeches clinging to the bare skin of his calves, around the top of his tightly laced boots. He sat down on a rock and taking a cigar from his pocket, he lit up, and then applied the hot end of the cigar to each of the pale grey creatures in turn. He watched with satisfaction as they curled up, wriggled briefly and dropped to the ground. After this, he quickly extinguished the cigar, not wanting to make his presence too well advertised. After a brief respite, he plodded on his way agagin, sweltering in his thick khaki clothing. But he knew that if he had to spend a night out in the jungle, he would be more than glad of it.
Now the ground began to incline upwards, to a distant granite mountain, the slopes of which were shrouded with coconut palms and thick stretches of rain forest. Directly ahead lay a wide, almost impenetrable bamboo thicket, the thick stems of which were perilously close together. Harry hesitated a moment. Some sixth sense deep inside warned him that the tiger was near. He thought he could feel the hot stare of a pair of yellow eyes peering at him from cover. He began to move slowly towards the bamboo. Somewhere, off to the east, a troop of monkeys chattered a nervous warning. Yes, he was in there alright! Lying up in cover, waiting for the hunter to come in nearer. Harry licked his lips. They were as dry as a bone, the rasp of his tongue over the parched flesh sounding incredibly loud in the silence. He glanced critically at the thicket into which he was wa
lking. It would be almost impossible for him to move with his rifle held out ahead of him in firing position. He would simply have to move with it pointing upright and hope that he could lower it sufficiently to fire when the opportunity presented itself. He moved into cover, setting down each footstep with painful precision, aware that the cat would hear every rustle of a leaf, every snap of a twig. Meanwhile, he willed the tiger to make a move.…
* * *
HAJI LAY CROUCHED on his belly, behind the rotting stump of a fallen tree. The pain in his chest kept coming and going in jolting spasms, but for all that, he suffered the agony in silence. Meanwhile he kept his gaze fixed firmly on the old Upright who was moving gradually towards him. Haji did not know this Upright, but he could see the glint of light on a black stick and he was afraid and wary and burning with the dark rage of the hunted. The old Upright was also wary. He came forward with inexorable speed, stopping every few moments to gaze intently around in each direction. It was clear that he suspected Haji’s presence, but as yet, he had not spotted the hiding place. From the high treetops a magpie robin shrieked an abrupt warning and the Upright reacted immediately, swinging about to stare straight in Haji’s direction; but then he came onward again, the black stick held tight up against him as he pushed his way through the narrow openings presented by the thick stems of bamboo. It was plain that the Upright was finding the going difficult here, hampered as he was by the clumsy pack on his shoulders. Haji could hear the hoarse shallow sound of his laboured breathing as he drew nearer. Soon, the hunter was near enough for Haji to see the thick film of sweat on his grizzled face, the dark stains of perspiration on the fabric of his khaki shirt. The magpie robin shrieked again and the Upright stopped in his tracks, resumed his careful scrutiny of the surroundings. Then he did an inexplicable thing. He sat down on the forest floor and waited. He had clearly decided not to come any closer.
Haji growled, a low rumbling sound deep in his throat, too quiet to be audible to the Upright’s poorly developed hearing. It was to be a waiting game then.… Haji inclined his head very slightly to one side, to allow him to lap at the gaping wound above his right shoulder where the bullet had emerged. Blood was still flowing sluggishly from the orifice and the rasp of Haji’s tongue sent fresh spasms of pain rippling through his body.
Time passed. The magpie robin gave a last despairing cry and fluttered away above the tree tops. A silence settled on the clearing, a silence so complete that the slightest sound would have constituted a rude interruption. They settled down to wait, the hunter and the hunted, each waiting for the other to make the next move.
* * *
HARRY SIGHED. His legs, crossed awkwardly beneath him in the confined space, were beginning to ache terribly. It seemed hours that he had been sitting here but a quick glance at his wristwatch informed him that, in fact, it was a little over twenty minutes. He frowned, glanced around again. The cat was here somewhere, that was for sure; but there were any number of places where he could be lying up. Behind that tangle of scrub there, perhaps … or concealed in those great green giant ferns off to his left … stretched out behind that fallen tree trunk directly ahead.…
Harry froze with a gasp of shock. A head had slid up into view from behind the rotting wood; a great tawny-red, black-scarred face, with two blazing yellow eyes and jaws, wide open, bellowing hatred. The tiger leapt across the decaying surface of the wood in one terrible leap that made Harry’s heart skip a beat and then it powered forward through the thicket, swift and terrible, an engine of pure destruction. For a moment, Harry was hypnotized by the cat’s approach. It was a simple enough task to track down a wounded tiger, but quite another to stand and face the raging beast as it came in to attack. To Harry’s shocked gaze, the cat looked big as a house and the speed with which it was approaching left no time to think.
Galvanized into instinctive action, Harry attempted to struggle upright, but his legs were rubbery and unreliable, so he settled back into a kneeling position and fumbled the rifle up to his shoulder. The cat was already dangerously close, it filled his vision with a blur of black and tawny movement. In the instant before his finger tightened on the trigger, the eyes of hunter and hunted locked together for a fraction of a second. Harry gave an involuntary cry, because there was a feeling of recognition there, it was like looking into the face of a long-lost friend and the sensation was enough to stay his hand on the trigger. Then the tiger was leaping up and over him, the bulk of its body blotting out the sunshine for an instant. Harry steeled himself for the impact of teeth and claws against his flesh, but it never came. The tiger continued up and over, to race madly away on Harry’s other side, into the shelter of the thicket. Harry slumped down with a gasp of surprise and disbelief. The cat had altered its course at the last instant, to leap clear across the man who had set out to kill him. Had he felt some sense of recognition too?
Harry had little time to think about it. A slow steady pain began to rise in his chest, a pain that wrenched the breath from his lungs and turned the flesh of his face deathly white. He groaned, let his forehead sink down to bump against the soft ground. A series of jolting spasms thudded in his chest and he gritted his teeth, lay still, waiting desperately for the pain to subside. After a few minutes it did, but he remained lying for the moment, while he reached weakly for his water bottle. He unscrewed the top and swallowed a little of the precious contents. The pain was now a powerful ache that throbbed relentlessly in the arid vacuum of his chest. Gradually, the ache subsided but it was some considerable time before he felt strong enough to move on again.
“Old fool,” he muttered to himself. “Coming out after a tiger in my condition. I ought to go home.…”
But without a moment’s hesitation, he located the pugs that the tiger had left and struck out in this new direction, massaging his chest with one hand as he went along.
CHAPTER 34
WHEN THE brief tropical twilight descended, Harry chose a suitable clearing where there was little surrounding cover for any hungry predator and set about building a fire. It was a simple enough task to collect bundles of dry twigs and grass and he soon had a passable blaze going, with enough fallen branches to keep it burning through the night. He sat with his back up against a tall Kapok tree with his rifle lying at hand as he rummaged in his haversack for the provisions that Pawn had packed earlier that day. It was no great surprise to him to see that she had provided for him most handsomely, considering she had been given only a few minutes to prepare things. There were little plastic pots of cold meat and savoury rices, slices of flat bread and various items of fresh fruit. Using his jackknife as an eating utensil, he began to eat, gazing thoughtfully into the fire as he did so.
He could not stop thinking about the tiger, the way it had seemingly changed its course in mid-leap to pass harmlessly over its tormenter. It was as though that single exchanged glance had spooked the cat every bit as much as it had Harry. The hunter could not have failed to miss at that range. The hunted could not have failed to kill such a vulnerable prey. And yet neither had struck the fatal blow. Not this time anyway. But the cat had to be killed one way or another. Harry had seen the maddened brute rage in its eyes as it charged, had noticed the great ugly wound in its flank. In that condition, it might survive a week or so, gradually succumbing to loss of blood or hunger, a miserable, wretched death. And besides, there was no telling how many other people it might kill in its desperate quest for food. It was ironic really. Harry had resisted for so long, any attempts to get him to hunt this particular tiger; it had taken the death of Ché to make him realize that it had been his job all along. Perhaps, if he had shouldered the responsibility earlier, less people would have fallen victim to the man-eater. Perhaps Mike Kirby would still be alive. And Ché… ah, poor little Ché! Reminding himself of what had happened only served to rekindle his grief. He could no longer force himself to eat. Setting down the food, Harry threw some fresh branches onto the fire and poked the red ashes until the flames flared up, throwi
ng their warmth onto his face. He felt exhausted after the long day’s trek and a combination of the heat of the fire and the low rhythmic chirruping of the jungle insects, served to lull him into a shallow, restless sleep in which he was plagued by terrible nightmares about Ché’s death.
He awoke abruptly with the conviction that he was no longer alone. The fire had dwindled down to a low red glow and he was reaching forward to pick up another log, when a soft movement on the other side of the clearing made him freeze. He stared intently into the shadows and thought he saw the redness of the fire reflected in two crimson sparks that seemed to hover in the darkness. Curious, he very slowly picked up the firewood and dropped it into place. The flames crackled, came alive again, and there in the increased glow of light was the tiger, stretched out on the ground some fifteen feet away and staring intently across the camp fire at Harry.
Harry took a long deep breath. The cat looked to be in a bad way. His flanks were caked with dried blood and his jaws were open, while his chest pumped spasmodically in a frantic effort to draw breath. Harry could see quite clearly the creature’s worn and occasionally broken yellow teeth, the thick ruffs of grey hair that framed the still noble face. There in the front foreleg was the swollen suppurated wound that only porcupine quills could cause. There was a pleading quality in the cat’s eyes, a desperate searching stare that was both saddening and terrifying.
Harry glanced sideways and down, to where the loaded rifle lay, mere inches from his right hand. Beside it, lay the hardly touched pots of food that Harry had picked at earlier. Slowly, hardly daring to breathe, Harry began to move his fingers closer. The tiger gave a long, low rumbling growl of warning, but Harry continued the action. He felt both frightened and elated. The tiger had crept up close as he slept and surely could have dispatched him very easily, but for some reason it had chosen to wait, to simply lie and observe the hunter in the light of the fire. Perhaps it was simply not the right time to culminate the hunt.
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