by John Masters
‘Another tiger?’ Mohan whispered. ‘My God, what’s happening? There have never been so many tigers in this district at the same time. Is it another male? Can you tell?’
‘I can tell,’ Smith said. ‘It’s the voice of a male tiger, yes. We’ve heard this particular one before - all of us.’
A roar, slightly higher pitched and noticeably less thunderous in volume, sounded from nearly the same direction as the others, but apparently closer. Smith relaxed. ‘That is her,’ he said. ‘A couple of miles in front of us.’
Mohan rested on his rifle and wiped his streaming forehead. ‘What did you mean about the other, the male?’
Smith said, That voice is quite distinctive. It is the voice of the male man-eater -- her mate.’
‘But he’s dead!’ Mohan cried. ‘Kendrick shot him.’
Smith nodded. ‘Yes, he’s dead. A man made that roar.’
Mohan looked fearfully at the jungle wall close ahead. Smith said, ‘I have been almost sure for some time that the man-eaters were guided up here from Saugor. Now, the same people - and I don’t know of anyone except the Gonds, in this area, capable of doing it - are moving the tigers back to Saugor - or at least, out of this district.’
‘But why?’ Mohan asked.
Smith said, ‘If she is shot, our search for the Venus will begin again. If she is merely not heard of, it will not. Not for, some days.’
‘But... is everyone against us?’ Mohan said. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Nothing,’ Smith said, ’except continue as we are. We decided a long time ago. We must bend with the wind, but notice where it is taking us... Come on now. We can move fast for an hour or so. She is not stalking us, but trying to reach her mate, who keeps moving on ahead of her. See, everything they do helps us - if we know.’
They entered the jungle again. At two o’clock they were slowly climbing the Konpara Hills, some five miles north of the dam site. At three o’clock they heard her calling less than a mile ahead. By four o’clock she had changed direction slightly to the south. They climbed more steeply now, and behind them the forested plain stretched farther towards the blurred horizons. The character of the jungle changed, for there was more water in the sub-surface soil here. The trees became bigger, greener, and more widely spaced. Here and there clumps of bamboo stood like feathery plumes among the sal and teak.
They struggled through an abandoned field, dense with undergrowth, waded a stream that ran sluggish over a muddy bottom towards a small, distant lake, and faced another slope, dotted with bamboo clumps.
On that slope, very close, the tigress roared - once, a pause, twice.
Mohan crouched in the bushes on the stream bank. Smith muttered, ‘No answer. The caller knows we’re here.’ He indicated some large bamboo clusters, each twenty feet by twenty, on the slope about a hundred yards ahead. ‘She’s in one of those.’
Mohan held the rifle ready, his forefinger along the trigger guard. The clumps were all of thorny bamboo, the spikes six inches long and hard as steel, the ten or twenty stems of each clump so close-packed that a rat could hardly squeeze between them. The clumps stood a foot or two apart - room for a tigress, crouched low, to lie in wait; but anyone who wanted to enter must wriggle in on his belly.
Mohan said, ‘First, we have to make sure which one she’s in. I’ll go forward, and...’
Smith interrupted. ‘Wait!’
A wild sow with five piglets at her heels came down the far slope, browsing and rooting. Mohan understood at once. The wind blew from left to right across the slope. The sow would come down among the bamboo clusters, and her forward progress would ‘clear’ each cluster upwind of her as she passed it: for if the tigress were inside any one of those clusters the scent would reach the sow, and her actions would show it.
She came on down, lean, reddish, long-snouted, razorbacked. She passed all the farther clusters, downwind of them. Clear, clear, clear, Mohan muttered. The stream made small liquid noises behind him, and his nerves quivered at full stretch. Now only three bamboo clusters remained. The piglets wandered far from her heels and she grunted angrily at them to keep closer. She passed the left hand of the three clumps. ‘Left, clear,’ Smith muttered. She was going to pass by the centre clump, but on the upwind side of it
The tigress must be in the centre or right-hand cluster - but which? The sow would pass upwind of both of them, and so would give no sign. Quickly Mohan raised the rifle, and, aiming carefully at the ground a yard to the left of the sow, pulled the trigger, and at once reloaded. As the bullet kicked up the dirt beside her, the sow spun and dashed for the nearest cover - the centre cluster of bamboos - the piglets hard on her heels. She crashed in between two clumps head down, under the reach of the thorns. Mohan waited, the rifle in his shoulder. Something moved inside the bamboo, a blur of yellow among the dense green. The five piglets tore out of the cluster and raced away across the slope, The sow did not come out.
She was in the centre cluster. He thought at once of setting fire to it - but this area was quite damp and bamboo was hard to set fire to under any circumstances. Here, where they could not even approach the cluster, it was impossible.
Smith said, ‘I think we must provoke a charge.’
‘She knows where we are now,’ Mohan muttered.
‘Yes. We’ll have to do it quickly, or she may creep away out of the back of the cluster... I’ll go past her on the downwind side. Believing that I must have her scent, I think she’ll charge.’
‘No!’ Mohan whispered. ‘I’m not a good enough shot and now . . . look!’ He held out his left hand, and watched it trembling.
‘You will be good enough,’ Smith said, smiling.
Mohan looked down. - The man’s courage was impossible to emulate, and, with it, he was so gentle. How worthless he himself most seem to Rukmini, in the balance against this man, who was both brave and compassionate. He felt inadequacy - like a physical suffering, and, knowing the cause and despising himself for it, the moment of inadequacy brought to flower a full, despairing hatred of Smith.
Smith put down his long staff, and, searching around in the undergrowth, found a shorter piece of wood. Tearing two buttons from his shirt he fastened them to the stick with small thorns. ‘There - that will look enough like the gleam of metal.’
Mohan could hardly bear to listen to the soft voice as it continued: ‘I want her to think that I am armed. Therefore, that she must charge. I think she will attack about five paces before I could get her scent or - remembering that you are not accounted for, she might try to escape by the back way. So, if she doesn’t charge me by the time I’m level with the middle of the cluster, run like hell out to the side - there - where you can see the open ground behind.’
Mohan opened the breech of his rifle, noted the brassy gleam of the cartridge case in the chamber, and snapped the bolt forward. Smith walked into the open, the short stick carried close to his right side, the side away from the bamboo. He walked in a peculiarly cautious and purposeful manner. He’s going to shoot her himself, Mohan thought, he’s going to shoot her... but he had no rifle. It was for the watching tigress that he played the charade. The perspiration burst out on Mohan’s palms, and he could get no firm grip on the rifle. Smith went forward. He was fifteen paces from the bamboo cluster, and ten to the right Fourteen, Thirteen.
The sights wavered and blurred along the barrel. One fraction of a second’s delay and the tigress would bear Smith to the ground. She would die, but so would Smith. Rukmini would never see him again. The spasm of impotent hatred returned, and with it the memory of another moment like this, when he had run through the jungles at Smith’s back on their way to the shrine. At that time, too, a knowledge of incompetence had made him think of murder. The blued barrel shivered and the sights danced like madmen. There would be no need for jealous intent Sheer incompetence would kill Smith. In desperation he screamed at himself, ‘No!’ and the tigress came running fast from under the bamboos.
Smith turn
ed - she was a quarter left from him - and raised the stick, not hurrying. The tigress gathered her hindquarters under her and roared. On the rifle the sights steadied, and Mohan fired. The shot hit her behind the shoulder, but her spring was already launched. She passed over Smith’s shoulder, and landed on her nose ten feet behind him. He turned, as slowly as he had made all his movements, and looked at her. Mohan’s finger trembled on the trigger for a second shot Smith called, ‘She’s dead.’
Mohan struggled to his feet and broke into a stumbling run. As he reached Smith he threw down the rifle and embraced him. ‘Smith, Smith... oh, my God, my God.’ Tears streamed down his face and his body shook violently. Smith put his arm round his shoulders. ‘Sit down. Here. It’s over.’
He had to get it out He cried, ‘I wanted to fire too late,’
‘All right,’ Smith said.
‘But...’
‘But you didn’t. You killed the man-eater, and now you know that the only dangerous man-eaters don’t have stripes or spots or four legs, and you don’t kill them with a rifle. And look, my friend, let’s speak a moment about what is in your heart, and then never speak about it again. Rukmini and I love, admire, and understand each other in a different dimension from that in which she loves you. From you she asks - she must have - total acceptance, and then you will be linked, for ever, to the finest woman I’ve ever known - a universal woman.’
But she wants to be my wife and my queen, and it’s impossible, Mohan thought. Should he ask Smith what to do? No. He must find the solution to the insoluble himself.
Smith said, ‘Now we must go back to Konpara as fast as we can. Wait a minute, I’ll just make sure the sow is dead,’
He walked to the bamboo cluster and crawled inside. Mohan picked up the rifle, The last man-eater was dead and he had located one certainty: Rukmini mattered more to him than position or power. He’d marry her, leave the state, and go to live in England or America on a small pension, Perhaps some great Maharajah would give him a post in his army. No Hindu would accept them, though, so it would have to be a Muslim. The Nizam of Hyderabad, perhaps. Then he and Rukmini would have to turn Muslim - and she would not do it. The plains of Deori stretched out to the east and the sun was low. No man or woman or child was in sight, only rock and tree and sky, his country.
Smith joined him. ‘She broke the sow’s neck,’ he said. ‘Now... lead, Mohan, as fast as you can.’
‘How far is it?’
‘About three miles.’
Mohan began to walk, going very stiffly. Gradually he was able to increase the pace. Always he felt Smith hard at his heels. They dropped down from the upper plateau on game trails and jungle footpaths, passing close below the Gond village. The sun set in a blaze of violet and orange under high clouds. The village of Konpara crouched on the end of its ridge in a haze of blue smoke that drifted northward towards the great cliffs and the silver line of the Rainbow Fall. Skirting the lower side of the village they crossed the valley towards Cheltondale in the rapid dusk.
Mohan stopped slowly, his hand out in warning. Someone, or something, was crouched under a tree ahead. Twenty yards beyond it he could see the profiles of two people sitting in deck chairs on the Cheltondale lawn. The sound of their voices reached him - Rukmini and Barbara Kendrick. Smith stood motionless at his side. Mohan raised the rifle. The thing under the tree moved with infinite caution, a pace forward, making no sound... then another.
Smith coughed. The thing stopped moving, and a pale blur of face turned. Then there was a double snap, like two twigs breaking one after the other, and the figure below the face jerked, and sprang into focus.
Mohan lowered the rifle, and walked forward. It was Mr Kendrick; He was carrying a small bow, and in the other hand the broken-off heads of two arrows, and in the look on his face was fright, overlaid with pure relief. To break the long silence . Mohan said, ‘We killed the tigress, sir.’ Kendrick said, ‘What? Oh, the tigress. You killed her?’ The two women had heard, and risen from their deck chairs. They were coining down. Kendrick said, ‘Foolhardy of you to go out after her.’ The sweat poured down his face. ‘You’re old enough to know better, Smith. Still, all’s well that ends well, eh?’
The women had come. Kendrick turned to them. ‘I was coming over to tell you to be on your guard. I found these on the verandah steps at Southdown just now.’ He held out the bow and the broken arrowheads. ‘I think they must have been put there as a warning... I will take you back now, Barbara, if you are ready.’
‘Yes, Charles,’ his wife said.
Kendrick said, ‘Oh, by the way, Mohan - you and I have to go to Nowgong. We’ll leave the day after tomorrow, in the afternoon.’ He strode down the hill, his wife a few paces behind him. Neither looked round.
Rukmini ran into Mohan’s arms. ‘Oh, Mohan, you did it!’ She put out a hand and touched Smith’s cheek. ‘And you... thank you, thank you!’
Smith smiled. ‘I was there.’ He waved his hand and left them alone at the edge of the rough lawn.
Chapter 27
Mohan glanced at the sun. Half an hour to sunset and the men had just completed the search of another block. ‘Very well,’ he told the headman beside him. ‘That’s enough for today.’
The headman raised his arm and called. The thirty close -paced men who had been searching this, lower slope of the Konpara Ridge broke away and began to straggle off towards the village. Mohan watched them go with a peculiar feeling. Some of those men, who had been searching diligently for the mouth of the cave, did not want it to be found; and would go to any lengths to ensure that it was not found. One of them might have passed over it during the day and said nothing. Did they know he knew that much? Everyone here was involved in a secret drama, but who was audience and who were actors?
He set off across the valley towards Cheltondale. This was the first day after his return from killing the tigress, and - as far as he could tell - a good day’s work had been completed. Tomorrow, an hour after dawn, the same men would come, under the headman, and continue the methodical search. He himself would have to leave at two o’clock in the afternoon to go to Nowgong with Kendrick, but Rukmini would take charge for the rest of the day, and while he was away.
Trudging up the slope of the Dobehari Ridge he glanced towards Indra’s Rock, which he could see clearly about a quarter of a mile off. Rukmini was still on it. She had started the day with him, but about noon had left suddenly, with no word of explanation, and gone straight to Indra’s Rock. He had found her sitting silent and preoccupied in Cheltondale when he returned there, a little later, for tiffin. After eating, he had returned to his task - and she to Indra’s Rock.
The rock, and the pale blue figure - she was wearing a blue and white sari today - disappeared from view as he came under the steeper section on the ridge below Cheltondale. He was ready to look for her again when he reached the lawn, but he found Kendrick there, and a foam-flecked horse, the trooper standing at attention at its head. Smith and Foster were there, too. Kendrick was reading a note. He looked up as Mohan approached.
‘Ah, Mohan... some Gonds have raided Purankhola.’
‘Purankhola?’ Mohan echoed stupidly. He remembered it A dozen huts and a couple of stone-built houses, beside a small stream. A poor village. A small Gond tribe lived in the jungles behind it, near the state boundary on that side. It was nearly thirty miles from Konpara.
He took the message and saw that it was signed by Captain Manikwal. It reported that a party of Gonds had raided Purankhola early in the morning, wounded a couple of villagers, not seriously, and driven off half a dozen head of livestock. They’re mad,’ Mohan said slowly. ‘What on earth do they want with livestock?’ He read on. Manikwal had taken the cavalry - the whole army, that meant - out to deal with them. He smiled slightly. That was just what Manikwal would do. But Gonds, stealing cattle? ‘I don’t understand this,’ he said.
‘Nor do I’ Kendrick said. ‘We can leave it to Manikwal, I would go myself, but we must go to Nowgong.�
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‘We could put that off,’ Mohan began, but Kendrick said, ‘No, we must go,’ rather loudly, and Mohan held his tongue. Kendrick turned to Smith. ‘I came over to ask how your work progressed.’
‘Very well,’ Smith said. ‘It has made all the difference having expert blasters, and men to clear the shaft afterwards. We’ll be at it again the same time tomorrow.’
He and Foster walked away along the ridge. Kendrick strode off towards Southdown, with a word of good-bye. Mohan noticed that he was carrying the same haversack he had worn yesterday evening, and into which he had carelessly dropped the poisoned arrowheads just before leaving. He wondered whether they were still in there.
Mohan went up into Cheltondale. He was in his bath when Rukmini returned at dusk, but he hardly noticed. The events of the past two days pursued themselves through his mind.
He found that he was at the dinner table. His mouth fell open and he looked at Rukmini; her thoughts were as far removed as his own, but in some other direction. He bent his head again to his plate. Yesterday Kendrick had been creeping towards the two women. There was no other word for it He would have noticed it at the time if his relief at finding that the mysterious shape was Kendrick, and not another man-eater or a Gond, had not overcome every other thought. And the snapping noises. Suppose they had been made by Kendrick breaking off the arrowheads? That would mean that Kendrick had been carrying a bow, and full-length arrows, which could be shot from it.
Tomorrow, at dawn, he would go out and search for those arrow shafts. If he found them... He sat back, wiping his lips with his napkin. Kendrick’s taut, twitching face stared up at him from his empty plate.
He found himself in bed, lying on his side, staring at the wall Rukmini spoke. ‘I saw your face at dinner,. What were you thinking of?
‘Kendrick.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think we have reached the truth about him.’
‘I shall know tomorrow, soon after dawn.’
