"What are you talking about?" Hayes said warily. His face had returned to its normal color, a reassuring sign that I did not think was going to last very long.
"I'm puzzled, Sheriff. I would think you'd be spending more time trying to catch the people who let that tiger loose."
"You are an amateur, Frederickson," Hayes said, his eyes glittering like black diamonds. "That happened in Seattle, and Seattle ain't in my jurisdiction."
"Right. But my guess-an amateur guess, of course-is that those men could live right here in this county. Consider: Ramsey County isn't exactly in a straight line from Seattle. In fact, you have to do a considerable amount of twisting and turning to get here. Now, why did they pick this particular spot to drop the tiger off? Why that particular stretch of woods? Maybe because it was the only area they knew of."
"Coincidence."
"I wonder. Second question: Why drop off a tiger in a section of forest so near a logging camp? Certainly, they must have realized an animal like that could be a threat to the men up there. I'm right, aren't I? Isn't there a logging camp up there? I thought I saw some smoke when I was out there yesterday."
Hayes said nothing. Now it was the deputy's face changing color, from its normal pasty shade to a light sea green.
"So, you see, it's just possible that whoever let that tiger loose does live somewhere around here. If so, it shouldn't take too much checking to narrow down the field of suspects."
"Impossible," Hayes said with a satisfied air of certainty. "They got away clean as a whistle."
"Yes, but you see it would take a special kind of truck to transport a cat that size. It would have to be completely enclosed, and strong enough to hold Sam. Why, it might even look something like your paddy wagon."
Hayes' face read like a map. Or a sign warning of thin ice.
"There's another funny thing about this whole business," I continued. "Most of the people who go after circus owners know a lot about animals. They care about them. The last thing an animal lover would do is take a circus-trained cat and put him up in those woods in the dead of winter. It is kind of peculiar, isn't it?"
"I thought you weren't on a case, Frederickson."
"I'm not," I said evenly. "Like I said, all I'm after is a tiger. It's just that I can't help thinking aloud sometimes. It's an awful habit, and I'm trying hard to break it."
"Who hired you?" Hayes voice was clipped, brittle.
"You might say I'm here on a mission of mercy."
Hayes laughed, but there was no humor in the sound.
"C'mon, smart guy, tell me how you'd go about figuring who let that cat loose."
This surprised me. Hayes was calling my bluff, and I could feel the damp, cold sweat starting under my arms.
"Well, first I'd start looking around the county for a truck that would do that kind of job. Chances are it might have some wood in the interior. If it did, I'd take some chips."
"Why?" The deputy's voice was high-pitched and nervous.
"To check for signs of tiger blood or hair," I said, raising my eyebrows modestly. "Tigers are notorious pacers, as I'm sure you're aware. Sam probably left traces all over the inside of that truck."
"What if the truck had been washed?"
"Gee, I hadn't thought of that," I said with a straight face. "Like I said, I'm new in the business and the tough ones sometimes get away from me." I shot a glance in the direction of Hayes. His eyes were riveted to my face, wide and unblinking, like a cobra's. "Of course, there are blood tests. Blood can't be cleaned completely from wood. It soaks in. And you could always take some paint scrapings off the outside of the truck."
"What good would that do?" Hayes said quietly.
"Whoever backed that truck up left some paint on the cages." I didn't have the slightest idea whether or not that was true, but it would certainly be worth looking into. And I hoped it was enough to keep Hayes at bay.
"That's pretty good thinking, Frederickson," Hayes said evenly. "Of course, it's only guesswork. Things don't always work out that simple in real police work."
"Of course not."
"Uh, have you told anybody else about these ideas of yours?"
I smiled. "I'm sure I haven't come up with anything you haven't already thought of, Sheriff. I'm never one to interfere with another man doing his job." I paused to give my next words emphasis. "All I want is a shot at that tiger, then I'm on my way."
"That a fact?"
"That's a fact." I found it surprisingly easy to lie to Hayes. I'd repeat my scenario to the state police later; but Sam came first.
"That cat's dangerous, Frederickson."
"I'll take my chances. All I want is my chance. Without interference."
"I need that cat, Frederickson," Hayes hissed, leaning far forward in his chair. "You don't understand."
I tried to think of something to say, and couldn't. An iron gate had slammed shut over Hayes' eyes and I could no longer read them. There was a long, tense silence during which the deputy watched Hayes watching me. Finally Hayes rose and walked quickly out the door. The deputy followed. I went after them and closed the door.
I didn't sleep well, a fact that might have had something to do with the fact that I was supposed to get up in the morning and go after a Bengal tiger that outweighed me by nearly a quarter of a ton. And the fact that I hadn't won the love and admiration of the local law didn't help matters any.
I got up around four and fixed some coffee on a hotplate in the room. Then I sat down by the window and waited for the sun to come up.
Phil Statler was supposed to be waiting for me at the edge of town with a horse and the rest of my supplies. At dawn I dressed warmly, picked up the kit with the tranquilizer gun and went down into the morning.
They'd probably been waiting for me all night.
I had a rented car parked out in the back of the rooming house, and the first man went for me as I emerged from the mouth of the alley into the parking lot. He had an unlit cigarette in his hand and was going through the pretense of asking for a match, but I had already sensed the presence of a second man behind me, pressed flat against the weathered side of one of the alley garages.
Somewhere I had miscalculated; either Hayes was very stupid, or I had overplayed my hand and worried him too much.
On dry ground, unencumbered by a heavy woolen jacket, I wouldn't have been too concerned. My black belt in karate, combined with the tumbling skills honed and perfected over the long years of traveling with the circus, combined to make me a rather formidable opponent when aroused, an asp in a world that catered to boa constrictors.
But snow wasn't my proper milieu. That, along with the coat wrapped around my body, spelled trouble.
The second man lunged for me from behind. I sidestepped him and ducked under the first man's outstretched arms. At the same time I clipped him with the side of my hand on the jaw, just below the lower lip. He grunted, spat teeth and stared stupidly at me as I stripped off my coat.
By this time the second man had me around the head and was beginning the process of trying to separate it from the rest of me. I gave him a stiff thumb in the groin, then jumped up on his back and onto a drain pipe leading up to the top of a tool shack.
There I stripped to my tee shirt and kicked off my boots while the two men stood in the deep snow below me. I thrust my hands in my pockets and waited patiently while they recovered slowly from their initial shock.
"Get him," the second man said to the first, indicating the pipe.
He got me, promptly and feet first. I caught him in the mouth with the heel of my shoe, hit the snow in a shoulder roll and came up on my feet on the plowed gravel of the driveway. The man I had hit was sitting in the snow, his eyes glazed, his hand to his ruined mouth. After a moment he keeled over and lay still.
The other man was now indecisive, standing spread-eagled in the snow, glancing back and forth between me and his fallen partner.
"If you're going to do something, I'd appreciate it if you'd hurry
," I said, bouncing up and down and flapping my arms against my body. "I'm getting cold."
The man frowned, reached into his coat pocket and drew out a knife. The steel glinted in the morning sun. I suddenly felt very unfunny. I stopped dancing, spread my legs in a defensive crouch and spread out my hands.
The man approached slowly, and looked almost comical slogging toward me through the deep snow. I backed up in the driveway until the gravel under my feet was relatively dry and hard-packed. The man, waving the knife in the air before him, stepped out into the driveway and stopped.
His muddy eyes were filled with fear, and it suddenly occurred to me that this man was no professional; he was probably a crony of Hayes who had been recruited for the seemingly simple task of working over a dwarf. He'd gotten much more than he bargained for. For all I knew, he might be considering using the knife in self-defense. I straightened up and moved back against the building, leaving him plenty of room to get by me and out through the alley.
"You can go if you want to," I said evenly. "But if you come at me with that knife, I'll kill you. I assure you I can do it."
He hesitated. I circled around him carefully, stopped and let out what, for me, was a relatively blood-curdling yell. The man dropped the knife into the snow and sprinted out through the alley.
I put my clothes back on and went to my car. The first man was just beginning to stir as I backed out of the alley and into the street.
It still bothered me that Hayes would have made such an overt move after the conversation we had had earlier in the evening. Using that approach with some people would have spelled a death warrant, but Hayes wasn't big city crime; he was small fry, a corrupt, local sheriff.
It appeared that I had underestimated just how far he would go to insure his reelection. I wouldn't make the same mistake again.
I drove slowly down the main street on my way out of town, past the police station. The paddy wagon was in its usual place, covered with a shining new coat of fresh, green paint.
Within twenty minutes, I stood with Statler and stared at the fresh horse tracks that veered off from the road to the east, disappearing far in the distance at the edge of the forest.
"Hayes came through here about an hour and a half ago," Statler said through clenched teeth. "Just as happy as you please. Wished me good hunting."
"He had reason to; he figured I was sitting in whatever passes for a hospital around here."
I sketched in some of the details of the incident in the parking lot while I made a final check of my gear.
"Damn, Mongo, I didn't think Hayes would go that far," Statler said quietly.
"He's running a little scared," I said hurriedly, before Statler could start worrying about me to the point where he'd take his horse back. "And he's got good reason. He's the boy who let your tiger loose. Or at least he's responsible."
"What. .?"
Hayes had a head start on me of at least an hour and a half; I didn't want to widen it by taking the time to explain everything to Statler. I tightened the cinch on the special saddle once more and swung up on the animal's back.
"I think they used the county paddy wagon," I said. "There just might be some paint scrapings on Sam's cage. I suggest you make it your first order of business to find out. Then get the state bulls in here. Hayes had the wagon painted, but that won't do him any good if he didn't take the time to scrape off the first coat. And I don't think he did.
"Now, I don't know how long I'm going to be up there. You just make sure you're looking for my signal. When you see it, I'll be looking for the cavalry. With nets."
Phil Statler grunted, stepped forward and grabbed the reins. He was chewing furiously on a dead cigar, and that was always a bad sign.
"You're fired," he said evenly. I pulled at the reins, but Statler held firm. "I don't mind asking you to go up after Sam, but paying you to share the hills with that crazy goddamn sheriff is something else again. I've decided to save my money."
"You paid for the horse and the supplies," I said quietly, measuring each word. "The tranquilizer gun I got on my own. You take the horse, I'll walk up there, Phil. I mean it."
He grunted and tried to glare, but the feigned anger failed to get past the tears in his eyes. "You screw this up, Mongo, and you get no more of my business."
"When you get my bill, you may not be able to afford any more business." I grinned, but Statler had already turned and was heading back toward my car. I dug my heels into the horse's side, pulling up my collar against the rising wind.
The air was clear and very cold, but it was a dry, sun-speckled cold, and the net result was that special kind of euphoria that comes when a man alone slips between Nature's thighs. I moved easily with the horse beneath me, taking deep gulps of the frigid air, trying to flush the accumulated filth of city living out of my lungs.
In the distance, smoke from the loggers' camp plumed, then drifted west with the wind currents. The hoofprints of Hayes' horse veered sharply to the east, running a straight parallel to the tree line. It was reasonable for Hayes to assume that Sam would get as far away from the camp, and the people in it, as possible. He wouldn't know any better.
I did. Sam was a circus animal, and had spent most of his life around people. He had come to depend upon them for food and shelter, and I was convinced he would be somewhere in the vicinity of the camp, waiting.
That was good, and that was bad. If worse came to worse, he would kill and eat a logger. If that happened, there was no way Sam was going to get out of this alive. And he would be getting close to the edge; bewildered, wounded, cold and hungry, Sam had spent more than three days in the forest.
Working in his favor was the fact that he had always been one of the best and most reliable cats in the show, a strong and stabilizing influence on the other animals. On the other hand, he was-above all else-a tiger, a killing machine in his prime.
The horse, with his collective, primeval memory, would know that, too, and there would be hell to pay if he got a whiff of Sam's spoor. I thought I had that problem solved.
I headed the horse in a direct line toward the smoke, then opened one of the saddle bags that was draped over the saddle horn. I opened the plastic bag there, and immediately the air was filled with the strong, ripe odor of bloody meat. Mixed in with the meat was a large dose of red pepper.
The horse whinnied and shied, but steadied again under a tug at the reins. This particular bag of meat had a dual purpose; to overwhelm the horse's sense of smell and, hopefully, also act as a powerful magnet to a very hungry tiger. In the second bag, among other things, was a second batch of meat, unadulterated, a suitable tiger snack. I hoped Sam would prefer it to me.
I was past the tree line, on the lip of the forest. It was immensely serene and peaceful. The vast canopy of brown and green overhead had cut down on the snowfall, and the floor of the forest was carpeted with a thick bed of pine needles.
In a few minutes we emerged into an open glen. To my left, high up on a mountain, I caught the glint of sunlight off metal. It could have been a rifle. Or binoculars. I hoped it was a rifle; if it was binoculars, it probably meant Hayes had already spotted me.
I veered back into the protective gloom of the forest, heading the horse on a path that would, if my sense of direction was correct, take us in ever-shrinking concentric circles around the camp's perimeter.
I ran through an inventory of my equipment for what must have been the tenth time. But I felt it was justified; when something happened, it was likely to happen fast, and I didn't want to be groping around for some needed piece of equipment.
I had the tranquilizer gun in a sheath on the right side of the saddle, just in front of my leg. I had a large supply of extra darts in one of the bags, but the gun would only take one dart at a time. I would have to make the first shot count. If it didn't, there was the high-powered hunting rifle on my other side.
I broke the chamber and checked to make sure it was fully loaded, took off the safety and replaced it
lightly in its oiled scabbard. I was as ready as I would ever be.
Finally, of course, there were the dog biscuits crammed into the pockets of my wool parka. The ultimate weapon.
That brought me a laugh, and I relaxed in the saddle, putting myself on automatic pilot and letting my senses guide me.
Curious: It had been years since I'd last seen Phil Statler, and yet all the old feelings had come back, a love-hate ambivalence that would live with me to the day I died, like an extra limb that could not be amputated.
The reaction was not to Phil himself, but to what he represented-the circus, where I'd constantly struggled to show the world that the performer with the stunted body was a man with unique skills and capabilities.
Phil Statler was the man who had given me his faith, his trust, the man who had spoken to my mind rather than my body.
And there had been Sam. Always I had loved the animals, and had used their company to while away the lonely hours between cities and performances. And Sam had been my favorite, my friend, and we had spent many hours together, staring at one another from behind the bars of our respective cages.
But that had been many years before, and I would have been a fool to suppose that our friendship represented anything more than a small paper boat adrift on the raging river of Sam's natural savagery.
And now I was hunting him with a dart gun, a situation that suddenly seemed even more ludicrous when you considered the fact that Sam was hurt. I leaned forward and spurred the horse, trying to push the rising fear out of my mind.
I completed the first circuit of the camp, then reined the horse in and began another, tighter circle. It was growing dark, and I knew that soon I would have to stop and camp.
I opened a quart container of chicken blood and began dripping it in the snow behind me. I didn't like the idea of Sam coming up from behind, but it couldn't be helped; I had to find a way to lure him to me before Hayes got him.
A half mile into the second circuit I found something that made the blood pound in my skull; two sets of prints, crisscrossing each other. One set belonged to Hayes' horse, and the other belonged to Sam.
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