by John Masters
The silent, sunny jungle crept past and round them as they went on. The Konpara Cliffs fell back and ended on the left, and they climbed towards the upper plateau. The wind hung steady over Kendrick’s right shoulder, making the back of his neck damp and cold on that side, where it evaporated the sweat A peacock rose in a clatter of green and purple, burst up into the sunlight, and slanted downhill above the tree-tops. Aitu, walking twenty feet ahead and to his left, made no sound as he glided over the earth. Under Kendrick’s own boots, though he was a hunter, the twigs cracked and the leaves crunched.
Aitu stopped, his movements congealing to a halt without any suddenness. He pointed with his chin, and gave the sign - careful! Staring ahead, Kendrick at first saw nothing. Gradually a point of red grew larger in the scene... a sheen of something smoother among the rough tree boles and the corroded stones. He walked slowly forward. The dwarf teak trees stood many feet apart, and between the trunks there was no scrub. It was impossible to believe that a huge animal, brilliantly striped in black and gold, could be waiting there in full view, but he knew that it was possible, and that not even Aitu could say whether the tiger was there or not.
The sunlight streamed through the thin branches in black and gold. The bare earth and the scattered leaves were red-brown and barred with the shadows of the tree trunks. The red spot grew Like an orchid against a fallen limb of teak. Keeping it carefully in the exact centre of view, and exactly downwind, Kendrick looked slowly from half right to half left.
Aitu moved, Kendrick stopped. He caught the Gond’s eye, and Aitu motioned with his hand - nothing.
The red spot was a corner of a coolie woman’s pleated skirt, sticking out from under her body. She lay on her back, naked, the skirt underneath her and the ripped choli ten feet away. Her left knee was raised and fallen sideways, and one arm was stretched out above her head. A raw patch marred the sheen of her right thigh, where the tiger had licked off her salt sweat with his rasping tongue.
Aitu, crouching to peer below her, pointed under the exposed groin and said, ‘He has eaten. All of one buttock. Then he turned her over and licked her... Then he pulled this dead bough to her. It was lying over there.’ He traced with his toe a faint trail of bruised grass and overturned pebbles.
Kendrick turned his back. Ten o’clock. The wind would stay steady in the south until late afternoon now. There was a strong tree fifty feet from the corpse and in the right direction. The tiger would come back from the north or north-east downhill and upwind, quartering the hillside. At the moment he was resting, or perhaps watching from a hiding-place dose by.
‘Aitu,’ he said, ‘go back to the village and tell the headman to bring men here at once, to make a machan.’
As soon as the Gond had gone Kendrick turned to the dead woman. Young and lovely she had been. A bar of sunlight shone on her belly and raised, spread knee - the very gesture of lust, even in death,
Kendrick began to pace slowly up and down in the forest, his ears alert, his head turned downwind. The machan should be ready in three hours at the most He must get up into it as soon as it was ready, send the people away, arrange a system of signals. One of the beasts he must kill tonight. Two man-eaters that worked together were at least four times as dangerous as one. Nearly eleven o’clock. They were taking an unconscionable time. He was hungry and thirsty, and would be more so before the night came.
He stiffened, hearing the crack of twigs. It was the people coming from the village, the headman in the van, half a dozen men in his wake, carrying planks and tools; and Aitu and Rukmini. Kendrick glowered furiously.
Behind the headman rose a frantic shriek, and a slight young man in a loin-cloth stumbled past, his arms outstretched.
Kendrick seized him. ‘Stop, fool! Quiet!’
‘My wife,’ the man wailed. ‘My love...’ Tears streamed down his cheeks and his jaw shook in an ugly paroxysm of grief.
He wiped his brown arm across his face, dashing the tears to the ground. He said, ‘My wife and the mother of my child shall not lie there, thus. I have come to take her back. No one can stop me.’
Kendrick’s cheek twitched. Now this young man to spoil everything. Kendrick shouted, ‘I know about your feelings! What about the others whom the man-eaters may kill? The body must stay.’
The headman said, ‘I have told him, lord. He will not listen.’
The young man said, ‘I must take her home.’
Kendrick yelled, No!’ He raised his hand to strike, but the young man jerked free and ran towards the corpse of his wife. Kendrick threw him to the ground with a flying tackle. Rising winded and angry, the man struggling in his arms, he shouted, ‘This fellow is under arrest’
The headman beckoned to two or three villagers. ‘Come. Seize him.’ They shuffled their feet uneasily in the high Bundelkhand slippers and looked from one to another, at the shaking young man, never at Kendrick.
Rukmini spoke, softly, but all turned to face her. ‘What is your name, father of a child?’
‘Buddhoo,’ he muttered.
‘And your wife, who lies before us in her beauty, was the mother of... a daughter?’
‘Praise be - a son,’ the young man said, raising his head.
‘How old?’
‘One year old.’
‘And he is healthy and strong, like his father?’
‘He is strong and fat. Her milk was full in her breasts, and though she and I went short of food, our son never did.’
‘He is beautiful?’ Rukmini asked, her hand now caressing the young man’s arm.
‘He is a son,’ he said. ‘A son for a man to be proud of, a son for my old age, for my field, for my death.’
Rukmini said quietly, ‘From that womb he came, father of a son. Next week he may lie where she lies, as beautiful as she, and as dead, if the sahib may not kill the beast that took her.’
The young man began to tremble again. Again the tears started in his eyes. Kendrick watched, his cheek jerking.
The young man cried, ‘Leave her then!’ He ran back down the hill, through the jungle, and away.
Kendrick turned away with an angry grunt Deori was governed by Hindu law, and if the fellow had insisted he would have been forced to let him take the woman - the bait - away.
He said, ‘Build the machan there. Work fast, but with care.’
He turned to Rukmini. ‘You should not have come here. But I must thank you.’ He bowed brusquely.
Rukmini said, ‘These are my lord’s people.’
Kendrick grunted again. The villagers didn’t share the Deori priests’ suspicion of her. They obviously respected her. Of course, they were all low caste in Konpara, like her.
The villagers set to work, directed by Aitu and the headman. Rukmini was at his elbow. ‘Mr Kendrick... I shall go back to Southdown now to collect a lantern and the food and drink that I told your khansamah to prepare for you. I think you will need a coat, too, with long sleeves against the mosquitoes. There are often red ants in these trees, so I shall also bring some oil which I have. It has no scent, but it keeps off all insects. Is there anything else?’
He thought slowly. She was a whore, but competent ‘Ten more rounds of ammunition,’ he said. ‘In case both tigers come, and for signalling. This sort of ammunition.’ - He gave her a round from his cartridge belt ‘Joseph will show you, in the gun room, but don’t trust him to match the cartridges. Nor my wife. Do it yourself.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling. ‘I shall be back in an hour.’
She walked away. Kendrick waited for her to signal one of the men to accompany her; but she walked on, and in a moment was alone, going down the hill at her usual slow, lithe pace, her buttocks swaying. He ought to call to her to stop, and send Aitu with her. But every man was needed here, and... Would he be sorry if she lay, her secret, parts revealed, like the woman’s behind him, and dead? , He turned to work and began to help the men. He noticed at once that the machan would be too small to seat two people in comfort Aitu would
have to return with the villagers, then.
An hour and a half later Rukmini returned, as casually as she had gone. An hour after that the machan was ready - several rough planks nailed together and laid across a fork of the tree, and another fastened crosswise to a lower bough. He would have to sit on the platform, and rest his back against the tree; or he could half- turn, sit forward, and rest his feet on the lower plank.
Aitu swung easily up to the machan and the villagers passed up the lantern and the food hamper to him. It was nearly three o’clock and the jungle shuddered in the heat. The afternoon would be almost intolerable - but now was the time to take post, especially with a man-eater. Helped by Aitu from above, and the headman from below, Kendrick struggled up into the machan. It was about twelve feet above the ground, and seemed a good deal lower once he was up there. A tiger standing up on its hind legs would almost be able to touch it, without jumping. Aitu scrambled down.
Rukmini gathered the villagers. He watched her sourly as she pointed out a small saw that had been overlooked, and made another man pick up a pile of fresh-cut chips. At last she bowed in silence towards the corpse, and turned to the villagers. ‘Now, to Konpara, and let us leave the Resident Sahib to kill the tiger for us.’ She made a low namasti towards him, her eyes warm as she looked up at him over the joined palms. ‘We shall pray for your success.’
‘Go on,’ Kendrick called impatiently.
They went, and he was alone. He checked that the rifle was loaded, rested it across his knees, reached for the hamper, drank some cold tea, and ate a mutton sandwich. The tiger would not come for at least three hours. He leaned back.
Far to the south-east, through the upper branches of trees lower down the slope, he could see the drab green wash of the cultivated land in the plain. In the opposite direction, northwest, he was looking up the rocky hill. Twenty feet beyond the corpse the roots of the trees were level with his eyes, and the spreading foliage of his own tree obscured the view. The air moved like a slow furnace draft across the slope, leaves rustled, boughs creaked. His eyes kept wandering to the corpse. The woman lay spread-eagled, stripped of her clothes by the tiger’s eagerness to get at the succulent flesh. The tiger was strong and bold, a male. The woman might be the same girl who had lain under the bush with the herd boy. He raised the rifle slowly. When the tiger came he would wait until it was engrossed in feeding, crouched over the body, over the swelling breasts. He held the sights steady on her body, moving them slowly over her, here, there, his tongue caught between his lips. His breathing shortened. There was desire, and failure. He should squeeze slowly on the trigger, squeeze, squeeze, until the butt plate struck back against his shoulder and the blued steel barrel jumped slightly and a thin wisp of smoke curled from, the end. And fire again and again until the cold barrel was hot and the scornful, twisted smile smashed to pulp.
He closed his eyes, sweating and shaking.
He heard a strange sound and quickly looked up. Soon he located the source of the sound as being in the north-west, up the slope. The wind had almost died, but such as there was blew towards the sound... the disturbance, rather, for it was not a clean-cut sound of any kind, but a thudding, a jerky unrhythmical disturbance of the heat.
He listened to it with all his attention. It came from the direction of the Gond village, on the upper plateau, but closer than that. It could be men, clearing an open space at the limit of hearing; but no men would be abroad, against his orders and with the tigers near by. Or it could be a heavy animal, moving jerkily. Not a tiger, that was certain - and no other carnivorous or hunting animal. A cow or buffalo, though. He strained his ears. Yes, that was it. Probably a buffalo, tethered, stamping its feet.
His first feeling was of anger. What fool had left a buffalo tethered up the slope, to spoil all his plans? The tiger would come downhill, right past it. The chances were strong that the tiger would be suspicious of the activity that had taken place round the corpse, and would take the buffalo instead of coming on down to the kill.
His anger increased. The act was deliberate! The villagers had been here until three o’clock. The headman’s first order to them, to return at once to the shelter of the houses, bringing in all grazing cattle and goats, had gone out long before that If the owner of the buffalo was too frightened to go and bring it back at the first order, he could have come out with the headman’s party, knowing that Kendrick himself would escort him up to the buffalo. But he had not come. A buffalo represented a great deal of wealth to the villagers of Konpara - to any of them, including the headman. Now he remembered that there was no grass on the slope above his present level. Therefore, no reason to tether a buffalo mere in the first place.
His mind slowed, caught hold. The buffalo had been put there deliberately. The purpose of such an action must be to prevent the tiger coming to its kill. If the tiger did not come to the kill, it would not be shot. Someone, or some people, wanted the tiger to remain alive. That had been his own wish, until the danger of trying to hunt a pair of man-eaters, and other reasons, had decided him he must shoot one of them immediately. Again, he felt the presence of allies.
The momentary warmth vanished as soon as it had come. These two man-eaters had been in the Saugor District two weeks ago. Why had they come north? Someone did not want them killed, because their presence delayed the search for the Venus; but that someone could not have known they were coming. Or could he? Some of the greatest shikaris among the primitive peoples, even an occasional Englishman who devoted his life to the hunt, were able to move tigers large distances at will, by imitating their calls and playing upon their sexual instincts. The idea was not impossible; but it was chilling. For these were man-eaters. They had already claimed two victims here. How could the someone, Or the people - it would take more than one - know that they themselves would not be among the victims? Or their wives or children?
Money meant nothing to these people. Nor life. He sat hunched and cold for a long time, while the shadows lengthened, and the sun set, and twilight came. At last he sat up. One thing was certain. He could no longer allow himself to be a pawn in their intrigue. He must control it. They must be made to understand that a pair of man-eaters was too dangerous - to himself, who must pretend to stalk them; to Mohan, who might walk into them.
Meanwhile, he could relax. The tiger would not come tonight
A heavy thudding and cracking of twigs approached down the slope. Without hurry, he raised the rifle. Whatever this was, it was not the tiger. A dirty grey buffalo cow cantered into view, crashed past the foot of his tree, and hurried on down the hill, her udder swinging, her tail streaming out, and a short length of rope trailing from one hind leg.
Kendrick thought, she’s broken her tether. Now the tiger might come after all. He grinned without mirth. Other people’s plans, as well as his own, sometimes went astray.
Something else was coming down now, slow and subtle among the boles of the trees. He aimed carefully along the gleam of the rifle barrel. The monkeys began to chatter farther up the hill. The sights steadied and held on the moving blur in the dusk... a dull blue, a point of red near the top. Rukmini’s face floated over the foresight.
Kendrick lowered the rifle and pulled back the safety catch. She was wearing a red-jewelled brooch at the shoulder of her sari. She bad reached the foot of his tree.
He bent forward. ‘What are you doing here?’ His voice rose and cracked. ‘I said no one was to come out! What do you mean by it?’
The light was failing fast, the darkness riding down the slope, the jungle settling into the special quiet of nightfall. She turned up her face. ‘Did you see the buffalo cow go by?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What has...?’
She said, ‘May I come up, please? We can speak more softly.’
‘There’s nothing else to be done now,’ he snapped. Dimly he saw her lift her sari, the sheen of her leg, a hand grasping a bough. Another reach, a lithe step, and a pull, and she sat beside him.
She said. ‘T
he buffalo was tied to a peg up the hill. I cut the rope and she ran home.’
Kendrick muttered, ‘Oh.’ He boiled with rage. The woman was intolerable. ‘You came out just to do that? How did you know?’
Rukmrni’s voice was very soft. ‘I was in Konpara, visiting the sick woman again. It was against your orders, but I had to do it. She died in my arms. On my way out of the village I saw a buffalo in a stall, with a yoke hanging on the wall, and a place for another buffalo beside the first I was curious. I spoke to the man, who seemed very nervous. At last he said that the other buffalo was up here. He brought it up early in the morning, he said, and tethered it to eat the jungle grass. Then he went away and was working the other side of the village when the tiger took the woman. He said nothing. He was afraid the headman would make him go up and get the buffalo. But there is not any grass up there, where she was tethered.’
‘I shall speak to the headman about it,’ he said curtly.
‘Or shall I?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he snapped.
He settled back against the tree. He’d sent Aitu away because there was hardly room for two on the machan - and now she’d come.’
Sharp stars swelled out of the darkness. The moon, three days before full, blazed above the latticed trees. The wind had died, not a leaf stirred. She smelled faintly of her strange, Hindu perfume - but very faint, no stronger than the animal tang of his own sweat. Her hips touched his on the narrow machan. Her breathing was light, slow, and even, and the rise and fall of her breast caused, the material of her sari to hiss with a sound so small that he had to strain his ears to hear it. The corpse was a paler blur under the trees. Cold and stiff she would be now. The thigh lay warm against his, and he could not move away, for he was already pressed against the tree.
An hour passed. Another. Kendrick’s thoughts kept returning to her thigh, her breasts, the hollow of her loins.
Her fingers crept out and lay along his arm. The pulse at his temple began to beat painfully. His grip tightened on the rifle. The hand crept up his sleeve, to his shoulder, to his neck. The faint odours of musk and sandalwood and female dilated his nostrils. Her hand crept round his neck and lay flat along his farther cheek, the soft wrist pulsing against the back of his neck. Power was risen and straining, and his finger on the trigger.