Part 43 (2/2)

Skag turned with a cheering whisper, s.h.i.+elding his eyes from the light for a moment before peering in. There was a sound like blown paper across a marble floor and then another sound--low, soft, prolonged, like the hiss of escaping steam.

Skag shoved himself into the narrow, rocky aperture. He could see nothing for the moment. The taint was oppressive at the first breath of the still air. There were kittens--no doubt of that. He heard their scurrying; he felt their eyes and the sort of melting panic in the place that would have utterly unstrung any but a perfectly keyed set of nerves.

It was a cave, the mouth higher than the floor. The way down was jagged and precipitous. Skag, advancing softly, had to feel for each step and yet give no distracting attention to keep his footing, for the full energy of his faculties was directed ahead.

The sound of blown paper was from the kittens--that was clear enough.

Yet the hissing continued and this was the mystery of it all--that there appeared to be no movement besides. If this sound came from the tigress, at least, she had not stirred to meet him.

The hiss sunk to a low guttural grating. No cub had a cavernous profundity of sound such as that. Still there was not the stir of a muscle, so far as his senses had detected.

Skag was puzzled. Big game before him, possibly nerved to spring, and yet the tensity was not like that. The man stood still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness--waiting for the mystery to clear.

Then to the right, like a little constellation suddenly p.r.i.c.king through the twilight, Skag saw a cl.u.s.ter of young stars. His heart warmed--kittens hunched there in a bundle and watching him. Their p.r.i.c.ked ears presently shadowed somewhat from the blacker background; then he saw the little party suddenly swept and overturned, as if a long thin arm had brushed them back out of reach of the intruder.

Now his eyes turned slightly to the left and began to get the rest--the great levelled creature upon the darkened floor. Skag kept his imagination down until his optic nerves actually brought him the picture. The long thin sweep was the mother's tail, yet she was not crouched. Skag saw her sprawled paws extended toward him. She lay upon her side.

Thus it was that he was rounded back to the original proposition. He had found the lair of the wounded tigress and her young. For fully two minutes Skag stood quiet before her, working softly--her hiss changing at slow intervals to the cavernous growl. The kittens were too young to organise attack--the tigress was too maimed for resistance, even though at bay in lair with her kittens to defend.

Now the man saw the gleam of her eyes. She had followed his movements and was holding him now, but half vacantly. The pity of it all touched him; the rest of the story cleared. Her tongue was like a blown bag, the blackness of it apparent even in the dark. She was dying of thirst, the bullet wound in the shoulder turned up to him. The little ones were still active, for the tigress had fed them until her whole body was drained. He saw how her breast had been torn by the thirsty little ones--the open sores against the soft grey of her nether parts.

Skag backed out. Nels pressed him--half lifted his great body in silent welcome.

”Oh, yes,” Skag was saying, ”we got the call, all right, my son. Four little duds in there eating their mother alive, and she full of fever from a wound--no water for days. I'm just after the canteen, Nels.”

Skag entered again. His movements were deliberate, but not stealthy.

He spoke softly to the creature on the floor--his voice lower than the usual pitch, yet sinking often deeper still. The words were mere nothings, but they carried the man's purpose of kindness--carried it steadily, tirelessly. The great beast tried to rise as he stepped closer. Skag waited, still talking. He had uncorked the canteen and held it forward--his idea being not only that she would smell the water but become accustomed to the thing in his hand. Each time he pressed a bit nearer she struggled to rise toward him--Skag standing just out of reach, tirelessly working with his mind and voice. He keenly registered her pain and helplessness in his own consciousness and was unwilling to prolong it, yet at the same time he had a very clear understanding of the patience required to bring help to her.

It was fully a quarter of an hour before he bent close, without starting a convulsion of fear and revolt in the huge fevered body upon the rocky floor. Skag poured a gurgle of water upon the swollen tongue, watching the single baleful tortured eye that held his face.

The water was not wasted, though not drunk, for it washed away some of the poison formed of the fever and the thirst. Skag poured again and for a second the great holding eye was lost to him and the tongue moved.

Thus he worked, permitting her fear and rage to rouse no answer in kind from himself; talking to her softly, luring her out of fury into the enveloping madness of her own great need.

He waited a moment and her tongue stretched thickly to draw to itself the water on the rock; then he turned toward the cubs. They scurried back deeper into the cave. He poured a gill or two of water into a hollow of the rock and returned to the mother. Presently as he moistened her tongue again, one of the little ones crept forward and began to lap the puddle on the rock.

Skag smiled in the gloom. The others were presently beside the baby leader. A few moments later Skag interrupted his ministrations to the mother to fill the hollow for the kittens again. All this with less than three pints of water--the work of a full half hour as he found when he emerged to Nels and the light.

”It's only a beginning, old man. We've got to get more water. It's five hours' march back to the pool where we camped. I'm gambling that we're a lot nearer than that to the Nerbudda.”

Nels' jubilation was stayed by the unfolding of fresh plans that were not slow to dawn upon his eager mind. They hastened along the river bed, continuing in the direction they had come. Skag was in a queer elation, dropping a sentence from time to time. Suddenly he halted.

It had occurred to him to recall something his mind had merely noted during the work in the cave. There was fresh meat there. He had not looked close, but at least two partly devoured carca.s.ses had lain in the shadows.

”They were mighty thirsty, Nels,” he muttered. ”The mother dying of thirst, but the little ones were only sultry compared. Yes, they're old enough to tear at fresh meat. They weren't so bad off and there was plenty of meat there. Only thirsty,” he added thoughtfully.

It was clear to his mind that the tigress had been helpless at least three days, possibly four. She could not have brought the game. There was one conclusive reason--that the meat was in an altogether too fresh condition to have been brought by the mother before she gave up. Skag walked rapidly. They did not reach the Nerbudda, but sighted a village back Horn the river bed after nearly two hours' walk.

They refilled the canteens and procured two water skins besides; also a broad deep gourd which Skag carried empty. The man's difficulty was to escape without a.s.sistance. A white man in his position was not supposed to carry goatskin water bags over his shoulders. The boys of the village followed him after the elders had given up, and Skag halted at last to explain that this was an affair that would interest them very much--when a teller came back to tell the story; but that this was the doing part of the story and must be carried to its conclusion alone.

A little later in the nullah bed he fastened the canteen and the gourd to Nels' collar, but continued to pack the two skins himself--a rather arduous journey in full Indian daylight with between forty and fifty pounds of water on his shoulders. It was four in the afternoon when they neared the mouth of the lair and Nels was drooping again.

”Buck up, old man!” Skag said. ”I'll go in for a while with the thirsty ones. Then we'll make a camp and have some supper together.”

Skag heard the hiss again as he entered the darkness, and the kittens were not so still as before. Only a trifle less leisurely he approached the mother. He knew that any strength that had come would only feed her hostility so far; that a man was not to win the confidence of a great mammal thing like this in a day. His first impulse was to silence the kittens with a gourd of water, but he could not bear to make the mother wait.

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