Tiger's Chance

by H. V. Elkin

  Reissuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!

  John Cutler followed a newspaper lead to Langtry, Texas, where his rogue grizzly was rumored to be, but instead he found a broken-down frontier circus. During the tiger act, the beast suddenly sprang at the audience, and Cutler leaped from the stands and forced the tiger back into its cage. Instead of praise for his brave act, he got nothing but anger from the animal trainer, Erik Hansen. The following night, the tiger escaped and killed six sheep belonging to Judge Roy Bean, who deputized Cutler but told him to stay behind and keep an eye on the circus people while Hansen searched for the tiger. Cutler smelled something fishy between Bean and Hansen, and before it all ended, Cutler found himself facing the tiger … and a charge of murder!

  TIGER’S CHANCE

  JOHN CUTLER 4

  By H. V. Elkin

  First Published by Tower Books in 1980

  Copyright © 1980, 2014 by Vernon Hinkle

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: July 2014

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  This book is for Bunny and Lovina who were the Law East of Stone Arabia, and who still ride the trail together.

  Chapter One

  She was a four-hundred-pound Bengal and still growing. If you came upon her there in the mad green of her Nepal jungle, you could not be indifferent. No man would blame you if you were terrified. Her great weight moved with a deadly gracefulness, no movement wasted, each muscle working only when needed, a movement that could not be stopped if it came in your direction. If she leapt at you, her steel spring jaws opening, her claws extended, you were as good as dead. You would be lucky if you could faint and not be conscious of what was happening to you. But even if you could not faint, you would not be alive to worry for very long. Yes, fear is permitted. In fact, it is very sensible. It is not wise to feel safe with a tiger like that.

  But if one of you happened to be safely in a cage and you had the soul of a poet, you might be struck by her beauty. The grace of her movements, the fluid savagery of a Colorado rapids imprisoned inside fur and harnessed towards a purpose, might make you gasp as though you had suddenly emerged from midnight into a bloody sunrise. The tiger’s beauty would seem as impossible as a sudden sunrise and would affect you in the same way. The Old Master Painter had been inspired when He created her, splashing on her body a tawny mixture of reds, yellows and browns, then brushing on a white outline and Oriental strokes of black, and adding the final touch, the masterstroke, the two golden jewels that are eyes. Yes, awe is permitted also.

  More than likely, you will experience the chill that creeps up your spine when you see danger and beauty at once. No one could blame you if you wanted to capture that dangerous beauty and own it.

  In fact, she is about to be captured. She does not know it. But she knows something is wrong. She senses she is in the wrong place but does not know it is at the wrong time. Normally, she would not be here at all. This is not her range. Maybe she has wandered here after food, maybe on the track of game. Whatever her purpose might have been, she concentrates elsewhere now, immersed in the uncertainty of the present.

  Her ears go up, some moments it seems before the sound fades in. When it travels on the breeze, it is a harsh slapping of brush, and it comes in a wave on three sides. She moves away from the sound, away in the only direction the sound is not. In a moment, she stops again, pricks up her ears and looks around to pinpoint its direction. But it is too general, not as definite as one animal running, not even as definite as a stampeding elephant herd. The great cat cannot cope with something like this, and she must look toward the specific direction where the sound is not.

  She runs far into the territory that belongs to other tigers. She runs, oblivious of a lingering smell of men, now focused stubbornly on the path that leads away from the sound. She runs until the ground gives way beneath her feet, and she falls into a deep pit. She lies there a moment in the smell of earth, then rises and attempts to scale the sides, but a wooden grating now covers the opening and she is trapped. She sees some dark, young faces of men looking at her through the grillwork. She snarls and leaps at them, but the faces duck out of sight. Confused, she twirls about in the pit, then leaps again, this time her claws grabbing and holding the wood, the wood bending under her weight. She hangs there a moment, then falls. Again she twirls about in the pit, like a kitten chasing its tail, her great fury needing to express itself in movement, even though movement now is futile.

  Up above the pit, a bronze shikari waved to a man in a pith helmet, and the hunter came to the edge of the pit.

  “That’s not the one,” the hunter said.

  “No,” the shikari said.

  “But she’ll do, I guess. Eh?”

  “A proud animal,” the shikari said, “and good to the eye.”

  “Nice markin’s. Ought to bring a lot. Not the one we was after, but a good one. Better maybe. Our lucky day.”

  “And unlucky for the tiger.”

  “You take your chances, says I. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose.”

  The tiger had lost. By chance.

  A year later the tiger was called Anna. Not because the name meant grace, though that would have been appropriate. No, it was because while she was being trained for her new home with the Great Maroney Circus, she got the reputation for being stubborn as a mule. For a while she was Anna-mule to sound like animal. Now simply Anna. She was not so stubborn anymore. Nor was the Great Maroney Circus really great. But if it was the only circus around, who could say otherwise? And who would be qualified in Texas to suggest they might have found a better name for four hundred and fifty pounds of potential danger like Anna? Anna was in a brightly painted cage, and the cage was on a flatcar between two other cages, one with two lions, the other with another tiger. The flatcar was not moving because the train had stopped to take on water.

  The place was called Langtry. And it was as misnamed as Anna, depending on whom you listened to or whom you dared to believe in Texas. Some said the town got its name from some construction foreman who worked on the Southern Pacific line when they brought it through Pecos country. If that was so, the poor railroad man was doomed to lose his immortality when others claimed the town was really named after an English actress, Lily Langtry, who made a name for herself in England and later did the same in America when she toured this country. Anyway, Lily Langtry had never set foot in her town, though she offered to buy it a fountain. But the offer was rejected on the grounds that only trains drank water in Langtry. If she ever did come to see the town, she might be appalled that her name graced such a place.

  The town was as unbeautiful as Lily was beautiful. Adobe buildings. Bare yards. Some sorry-looking chickens scratching about. Just sort of mean and sun baked and thirsty. That was Langtry in those days.

  The man who was really responsible for Langtry’s name stood on the porch of a saloon called The Jersey Lily (also named after Lily Langtry). The saloon advertised “ICE COLD BEER & LAW WEST OF THE PECOS.” In truth, the beer was far from ice cold. And the man was no longer the only law west of the Pecos. But in his mind he was. And his mind had a lot of strength in it. He could be very convincing. If he said something was so, you had just better believe him.

  The man’s name was Roy Bean. Around her
e, Judge Roy Bean. And as he stood there on his porch and looked across the tracks to the train with the circus cars attached, he seemed to be standing there not so much to look as to be looked at. After all, he was famous. Lots more famous than the Great Maroney Circus. So if the circus had paused at Langtry-—never mind that the train always stopped for water—it must be that the circus had come to view the judge.

  He was in fact getting some attention, being as he was the most striking thing about the landscape. Starting at the top, he wore a big Mexican sombrero. Below that, white eyebrows with small eyes peeking out in a calculating way. White mustache and beard, pretty well trimmed at the moment, the way Santa Claus might look if he ever came out of a barbershop. Around his neck a red bandanna. He wore a vest and had the top button buttoned. This left a space for his great beer belly to flow out and over his belt. The shirt was open in places, showing underwear, and its tail was outside the side of his pants. He held a sawed-off shotgun. And he stared.

  A blond man stepped off the train and stared back. This man wore an open short-sleeved shirt, jodhpur breeches inside tight, fancy riding boots. His left arm had a long scar. He had left the train to come around and check on his animals but got distracted when he saw Judge Bean.

  “How long will we be here?” he called to no one in particular.

  ‘Twenty minutes!”

  The man nodded and started for the saloon.

  “Eric?” It was a woman’s voice.

  Eric glanced around at a dark-haired beauty looking through a passenger window two cars away. “What is it?”

  “Fred says we’re not to leave the train.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if we do, we might get left.”

  Eric laughed. “I don’t think anyone’s going to be leaving me behind, do you?”

  The girl shook her head in disgust, and then her head disappeared inside the car. Eric laughed again, then turned back toward the saloon. He saw that the fat man was not looking at him anymore. The man was looking where the girl had been, and he was transfixed. He kept watching the train window as if he was waiting for the girl to reappear, to convince him that he had not seen a ghost. He paid no attention to the blond man even when Eric stood beside him on the porch.

  “You must be the judge I’ve heard about,” Eric said.

  There was a moment before Bean looked around at his visitor, and when he did, there was a funny faraway look in his eyes. Eric had seen that look on the tigers before, and he knew there was no point in saying anything until the eyes focused. He could not get the judge’s attention by cracking a whip, as he might have gotten the attention of a tiger. He did not have his whip with him at the moment. And even if he had had it, he would think twice about cracking it near a man with a sawed-off shotgun. Then he saw the eyes focus and, when they did, they seemed to look right through the animal trainer.

  “I’m Eric Hansen. I’m the animal trainer with the circus,” He extended his hand, thinking it a magnanimous gesture since, up close, the judge did not smell pretty and his beard was streaked with tobacco stains.

  But the judge only nodded, ignoring the outstretched hand, turned and walked through the open doorway. Hansen followed him into the hallway and through a door on the right which led into the saloon.

  It was a long, dirty room with straw on the floor, but Hansen made a point of concealing his disgust because he had some royal blood in him and considered it his obligation to be gracious with peasants. There was a pool table in the center of the room and a long bar on the opposite wall. To the left, in the corner, was a rumpled cot, and in the other far corner, next to the bar, was a junk pile of whisky barrels, harness, horse blankets, rope and so forth.

  Bean was behind the bar by the time Hansen had taken in the room. Bean nodded to Hansen.

  “I’ll have a highball,” Hansen said.

  “What the hell’s that?”

  “Oh. Well, it’s whisky and ice with some water in it.”

  Bean poured some whisky in a glass. “Don’t have no water,” he said. ‘You’ll have to spit in it.”

  “Well,” Hansen said, “I guess I can let the ice melt.” And he smiled broadly, figuring he had shown the judge that he was a regular man who was not difficult to please.

  Bean glanced at him and for a moment his eyes seemed to twinkle. He reached to a ledge behind the bar and took from it a glass cube, dropped it in the whisky, stirred it around with a spoon, then retrieved the piece of glass with the spoon and replaced it on the ledge. He slid the glass of straight whisky toward Hansen.

  “You wouldn’t be trying to make a fool out of me, would you, judge?”

  “Not in my power to do that,” Bean said. “Now, we never met before, did we?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then whatever you are, can’t say I had anything to do with it. There’s your highball. Drink up. Two dollars.”

  “Two dollars?”

  “Oh, I got cheaper stuff.” Bean reached under the bar and took out a bottle of a colorless liquid with some tarantulas lying in the bottom.

  Hansen grabbed his highball and sipped it. It tasted awful. “What is this stuff you call whisky?”

  “Well, sir, I got to admit it’s got some water in it.”

  “No water I can taste.”

  “Then there’s some raw alcohol, a little plug tobacco for colorin’ . . . and a couple other things I forget about.”

  Hansen put the drink back on the bar. “I think I’ll pass.”

  “Drink up, son. It’s against the law to waste good whisky in Langtry.” He sounded as if he meant it.

  Hansen drank and, with great self-control, managed not to make a face in case that too happened to be against the law in Roy Bean’s jurisdiction. When he had finished what he thought the judge might consider a respectable amount, he put the glass back on the bar. “Don’t want to miss my train,” he said.

  “Two dollars,” Bean said.

  Hansen took out a five and laid it down. The judge put it in his pocket, and then his eyes glazed over.

  “What about my change?” Hansen asked.

  “What change?”

  “From the five. I got three dollars coming back.”

  “Don’t have no change.”

  “Well, you can’t take the whole five!” Hansen was getting hot under the collar. “Damn it, Judge! I want my change!”

  “Seems like you’re raisin’ your voice in the courtroom.”

  “You’re damned right I’m raising my voice!”

  “You admit it, do you?”

  “I admit it all right, after I gave you a five for a two-dollar drink!”

  “Well, son, I see no other way out of it.” Bean placed a large book on the bar. It was the Revised Statutes of Texas for 1879, seventeen years ago. Bean took an alpaca coat from beneath the bar and put it on. “Court’s in session,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “The defendant admits to raisin’ his voice in the courtroom,” Bean said, laying his hand on the book. “By the power vested in me, I hereby find you guilty of disturbin’ the peace. The fine’ll be three dollars.”

  Hansen’s jaw dropped, and he breathed through his mouth. Then he realized how bad the judge’s whisky had made his mouth taste. But he laughed in spite of himself. “Judge,” he said, “how much would it cost me for a beer?”

  Bean put the law book away and took off the alpaca coat. Then he opened a warm bottle of beer and put it on the bar. “On the house,” he said.

  Hansen looked suspiciously at Bean. He had heard enough about the famous judge, and he ought to have known better about handing over a large bill. He admitted to himself that he had been taken and was happy to get away with a good story to tell. But he was on his guard about any more bilking going on, and he had heard that the judge never gave anything away. If Bean was offering a free beer, Hansen knew he was on the spot. If Hansen refused, the judge would find some legal implications in it, some justification for another fine. If he acc
epted the beer, there was sure to be something the judge was going to want in return.

  “I’d really like to pay for it, Judge.”

  “Are you questionin’ the intent of the law, young man?”

  “No, sir. But . . .”

  “Drink your beer. And raise a toast to this little lady here.” Bean gestured behind him to a framed picture of a beautiful woman. The lady looked as if she was dressed in some sort of stage costume. It was a dress with circular designs, a fur-collared cape and a hat with little feathered wings on the sides. But the face! Dark hair swept back from even features, and eyes that looked directly at you, yet seemed to have a thoughtful expression as though she was wondering if you would be kind to her.

  But there was something else that Hansen found striking about the picture. “Why, that looks like ...”

  Bean interrupted, “It’s Lily Langtry.” His voice had a note of worship in it now. “It’s the Jersey Lily, the finest woman on God’s earth, young man.”

  Hansen took a swallow of beer from the bottle. “Yes,” he said, “I guess that makes sense. For a minute there I thought it was Molly.”

  Bean feigned nonchalance, as though this had nothing to do with the free beer. “Molly?”

  “Molly Barrie. A girl with the circus. She works with the horses.”

  “That one I saw callin’ to you from the train?”

  “Yes, that’s the one. There’s a striking resemblance between Molly and that picture of Miss Langtry.”

  Some men scratched their heads to show they were thinking. Bean scratched his belly. Probably he scratched lower before he got fat, but now the belly was handier. “Course, there couldn’t be no two Jersey Lilys. This Molly, she might be like a picture of Miss Langtry, though.” Bean continued to scratch his belly and looked at the picture on the wall. “Maybe better’n just a picture.”

  Hansen took another swallow of beer and, though it was warm, his mouth was beginning to taste better. He could begin to sense something in the wind, something that appealed to him, and his eyes took on that same calculating look the judge had. Bean seemed to recognize the familiar look on the blond man’s face, and the judge smiled slightly, almost shyly.