Tusker Tales

by Ruskin Bond

  At first, he was harmless, an inquisitive, ravenously hungry clown. We enjoyed his escapades.

  He consumed bushels of leaves, twigs, bark and coconuts along with gallons of liquid. His ever-sniffing snout not only led him to food and water, but to every well-hidden wine barrel.

  Once he had drained a barrel, he bellowed, rocked and rolled in drunken good humour. The rumblings of his stomach, the thump of his feet, and the slap-slap of his ears echoed far and wide. Yet, when he wished, he could move through the dense bush as quietly as a mouse.

  The villagers were terrified by the silent movements as well as the uproarious rioting of this great white beast. Fearful and angry, they sent native hunters after him.

  The pain inflicted by these hunters, whose guns were not powerful enough to kill, made him a rogue. Within a week he had tracked down two of his tormentors. He stamped them to a pulp, gaining for himself the name Kafa, the furious one.

  From then on, even the gardens he raided were completely destroyed—trampled in rage. The already short food supply was dwindling. Something had to be done.

  We bought a 470 double-barrelled elephant rifle from a friend who was returning to the States. But by the time we secured a permit, Kafa had mysteriously moved on.

  Now, he was back. We could hear the rumblings of his stomach above the thrashing of his feet as he moved into our neighbour's cassava patch.

  Just as the sharp crackling of branches told us the old bull was destroying the neighbour's coffee tree, Toma returned. His hunter friend, Munda, muzzleloader in hand, was with him.

  'Pa,' Toma said addressing my husband, 'Munda and I must kill Kafa.' He flicked his pink tongue across his lips.

  'Tonight?'

  'No, Pa, when the sky begins to gray.'

  'You can't go after him with one muzzleloader. That would be suicide.'

  'For true, Pa. Therefore, we are begging for your gun. Your big gun'

  'Toma . . . '

  'I am able. You can remember I killed the crocodile with that gun.'

  'Yes, but this is different. When you go after an elephant, it is either kill or be killed.'

  'Pa, I know. I must hit him half-way between the eye and the ear.

  'Or, on the forehead at the base of the trunk.'

  'For true. I can aim for the bump if I meet him face-to-face.'

  As they were talking, I felt my stomach tighten. I could not stand the thought of Toma facing this pain and wine crazed bull. Toma was young and tender-hearted. He loved all living creatures except snakes and crocodiles. He had no desire to be a hunter.

  'Will you be able to shoot Kafa?' I asked. 'You say you pity the poor old creature.'

  'I do, Mama. The hunters' bullets made him a rogue. It is not his fault. But he must die, because by now he is a dangerous adversary.'

  Aren't you afraid, Toma?'

  'For the sake of fear my stomach is cold. But only Pa and I can use the big gun.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'My leg is not broken.'

  The next morning, we were awakened before dawn by a tapping on our window. We heard Toma's tremulous voice saying, 'We go now.' With that they slipped away. By the time we reached the door, they were gone.

  A dreadful hush hovered over the village all day. Only a few brave women went to the river to bathe and get water. None of the children went to the bush for firewood. The marketplace and the school remained empty. Most of the people sat in and around the barrier, speaking in hushed tones.

  Then at 4:00 p.m. the stillness was shattered by a deafening scream and a furious thrashing in the bush. Moments later, a terrified Munda followed by Toma burst through the kitchen door.

  'We done shoot em,' Munda gasped.

  'He cannot agree to die,' Toma's breathless words were barely audible. His shoulders heaved. All at once his cheeks were wet with tears. He turned away to hide them.

  'Where did you hit him?' my husband asked.

  'We aim for the soft spot between his eye and . . .' Toma's voice broke. Munda continued the story.

  'Then, Kafa move like so,' he said demonstrating with a lift and turn of his head. Patting a spot to the left of his nose, he added, 'The shot strike here.'

  'Near the base of the tusk?'

  'For true, Pa.'

  We groaned. There was no doubt in our minds the tormented tusker would soon come raging through the village that held the hunter's scent. Instead, his terrified trumpeting and screaming subsided in the distance.

  Within minutes, a noisy crowd of machete clutching villagers gathered in our compound. One man had a gun fashioned from the steering column of an old jeep.

  'They think the furious one is ready for death because he is now silent,' Toma said. 'They are calling for Munda and me to accompany them.' He started for the door. Clutching his stomach, he gagged as though about to vomit.

  'His silence doesn't necessarily mean he is ready to die,' I warned. 'It may be a trick. You hit him in a nerve centre. He is more dangerous than ever.'

  'You talk true, Mama,' Toma said turning his distressed face toward us. 'He is too clever. All day we track him. When we find his dung is not plenty warm, we think he is far ahead. Not so. He loop around to stand behind us. The poor creature has great pain, but he cannot forget his tricks.'

  Neither Toma nor Munda wanted to go with such a large group, but the older men were insistent. At ten after five the party started down the bush path. Ninety minutes later. Munda returned alone.

  From his hysterical report, we pieced the tragic story together. The party had followed the trail of blood and loose stringy dung to the Jong Swamp. There, the gory evidence and the huge circular and oval prints of Kafa's fore and hind feet ended.

  The older men hung head (consulted with each other) and decided the injured tusker had swum across. Immediately, they ordered Toma and Munda to lead the party around the swamp. Their attention was centred on the bush opposite the end of Kafa's trail. They had not gone six hundred feet when the great white rogue came crashing from the bush behind them.

  With an enraged scream he tossed and crushed the panic-stricken men as though they were made of straw. Toma and Munda fled to a giant baobab tree where Munda hid behind the massive trunk. Toma stood to one side. He aimed the 470 and prepared for Kafa's certain head-on attack. No doubt, he hoped to hit the orange-sized skull opening on his forehead.

  But Kafa thundered toward him with head held high; his trunk curved like a giant fist. The first shot hit him in the chest. Then, the mammoth tusker lowered his head and Toma fired the fatal shot, hitting the frontal bump. Kafa lunged, knocking Toma to the ground. A split-second later he toppled, crushing his courageous tormentor under his six-tonne dead weight.

  Though years have passed since that fateful evening, the sound of wailing echoes in my ears. I see again the faces of those who went to the Jong Swamp to recover parts of barely recognisable loved ones. I see and smell the carcass of the once mighty Kafa being mutilated by rats, roaches and driver ants.

  Fortunately, I cannot picture Toma crushed beneath the stinking carcass. Instead, I see his handsome young face across the table. His eyes dance with amusement as he corrects my ridiculous pronunciation of a Mende word he knows so well.

  I am thankful the nightmarish memories do not include the crushed body of this very special young man. If they did, I could not bear to keep the ivory Kafa on my desk. In that case, I would miss the exquisite reminder of Toma's friend, Munda. For it was the ex-hunter who carved my beautiful miniature and in so doing, discovered his real talent was carving—not killing.

  From Short Story International, Student Series

  Poo Lorn the Terrible

  Reginald Campbell

  1. POO LORN LOSES HIS HERD

  ichard Cairns was by profession an elephant-trader. At the age of twenty-one he had been left a comparatively large sum of money by an obscure relation, and with this money he had decided to make a round tour of the world before settling down to the humdrum routine of office life in London. Cairns
was of the hard, lean type not usually associated with sudden accesses of fortune, and he therefore decided to avoid the beaten tracks and visit those countries that still remained comparatively free from the ubiquitous tourist.

  In due course of time he arrived at Bangkok. There, smells, motor-cars, trams and throngs of perspiring humanity caused him to flee up-country in order to view the great teak forests that were said to stretch for mile upon mile over the northern portion of Siam.1 Arrived at the head of the railway, he hired carrier coolies and with them made an extensive tour of the north.

  Soon the fascination of the jungles caught him, as it has caught many a good man before. He went on a few tiger-hunting expeditions, and then his interest began to centre on the elephants, both wild and tame, that abounded everywhere. He met Shans, Burmese, Laos and Siamese who made a living by rounding up wild elephants and selling them to various native contractors and European traders. Could not he, too, do this? he reflected one day. The work would enable him to remain in or near the jungles he loved, and incidentally yield him a handsome profit into the bargain.

  With his main base at Lakon Lampang, young Cairns began elephant-trading. This new profession of his certainly proved exciting, but it did not give him that handsome profit he had expected. The cost of buying good tame tuskers, of hiring coolies, forest guides and hunters, ate up most of his remaining capital and, cool and efficient though he undoubtedly was, he experienced scant luck in rounding up any animals of real value. He persisted in his efforts, however, only to find himself at the end of two years back in Lakon Lampang with his pockets wellnigh empty.

  But now, even as he contemplated the bitter necessity of selling his tame tuskers and leaving the country for good, this strange tale of a gigantic tusker was going the rounds of the town. That the creature was a god or devil he did not believe. He, Richard Cairns, being white and unimaginative would capture this giant. Thus would his fortunes be restored and a long stay up-country assured him.

  Cairns thought long into the night, and early the next morning, laden with a bottle of whisky and a Forest Department survey map, he hastened round to the abode of the native chief from whom the tale had sprung. Prompted by the liquor, the chief gave him full details of the size and particulars of the herd, together with its rough locality, whereupon the white man leapt into feverish activity.

  Overcoming the fears of his coolies and mahouts by the promise of a great reward, he set out with his tame elephants in the direction indicated by the chief. As the rains had not yet cleared, he made no attempt at a short cut through the jungle. An old cart-road, so his map informed him, ran for the first seventy miles or so in the required direction, and along this he jogged on his pony with his line of transport trailing out behind him. The road, though scarcely recognisable as such, made better going than the rough, tangled paths of the jungle, and in four days' time he had arrived at the village of Ban Tern. Here, according to the map, he should strike off the road and proceed another sixty miles in a northerly direction through the forest, and by then he should be in the reputed grazing grounds of the herd.

  The first stage of his journey being now completed, he set up his tent for the night close by the little village, for there a supply of fresh eggs and fruit would be procurable. Soon, old Lao women, toothless and wrinkled, were visiting the camp with their wares, and from them he learnt that a great white lord lived in a bungalow set upon the hill. Cairns, anxious to see one of his own race again, bathed hurriedly, then strode up the slope towards the company compound.

  He found John Morrison alone in the bungalow living-room, and the pair shook hands.

  'You'll stay for dinner,' said the manager as a matter of course. 'My wife and daughter will be glad to see you. They're dressing now. Meanwhile, sit down and have a drink and smoke.'

  Over a whisky and soda, young Cairns expounded his plans, and when he had come to an end, John Morrison gave vent to a loud and prolonged whistle.

  'That elephant's Poo Lorn for a cert,' said he.

  'What!' exclaimed Cairns, surprised. 'You've heard of him?'

  'I have,' answered the other dryly. 'Poo Lorn was one of my company elephants. A grand beast, and the biggest tusker I've ever seen in my life. Early last year he escaped, and we haven't heard a word of him since. But I reckon this giant your chief spoke of is Poo Lorn right enough. Now that's bad luck for you, young man.'

  It was indeed, but Cairn's lean face betrayed no sign of emotion. Should the elephant prove to be Poo Lorn, by the law of the land he must surrender the animal back to the company to whom it rightly belonged, and Cairns, being fully aware of this fact, puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette.

  'How much would you give me if I recaptured Poo Lorn?' he asked after a pause.

  John Morrison frowned. He wished the elephant to remain free, but on the other hand, he could scarcely prevent an effort being made by some outsider to round up the leviathan; moreover, there were his own firm's interests to be considered in the matter.

  'I'll give you two thousand ticals, provided Poo Lorn is brought into the compound absolutely unharmed,' he told his companion.

  'Done, sir,' said Cairns briskly. The reward, though not comparable with the full market value of a tusker, was fair enough, and as for the remaining animals of the herd, they would be his to sell outright. The herd, so the chief had told him, consisted of some eight bulls, sixteen cows, and a few young calves: a goodly number and a worthy bag.

  The deal clinched, Cairns was introduced to the manager's wife and daughter, who had entered the room. Dinner was then served by a dusky Lao boy clad in a neat white tunic.

  'Poo Lorn,' said John Morrison as the soup was handed round, 'has been located. He's been found at the head of a wild herd grazing some sixty miles from here.'

  Elise clapped her hands. 'Oh, daddy, how lovely for him.'

  'Mr Cairns is out to capture him again,' continued her father, with a twinkle in his eyes.

  'But Mr Cairns mustn't do anything of the sort,' said Elise decidedly.

  Richard Cairns flushed and bent his head to the soup. He was not accustomed to be given orders by any man, either white, black or brown, yet here was this chit of a girl taking a hand in his own private affairs. Cairns preserved a haughty silence and concentrated almost fiercely on his plate.

  John Morrison laughed. 'Sorry, Cairns, but my daughter was rather a particular pal of Poo Lorn's, and when you've heard the story you'll understand. According to the natives, Poo Lorn's sire was a wild elephant, and the result was he hated being hobbled. My daughter sympathised with him, and then one day he actually did get loose and—'

  'Your soup's getting cold, dear,' reminded his watchful wife.

  'Anyhow, I'm sure Mr Cairns won't catch Poo Lorn,' said Elise presently. 'Poo Lorn's much too clever to allow anyone to get the better of him.'

  'Child, you mustn't say such things,' broke in her mother, deeply shocked.

  'Very well. Then I'll say I hope Mr Cairns doesn't catch him.'

  Cairns now looked at the girl with interest. This living in the wilds had made her stay younger than her years, so that she still remained naive and frank to an embarrassing degree. But she was a good kid, if a trifle spoilt, he decided, and he would try to draw her out.

  'We can't allow mere sentiment to interfere with business, Miss Morrison,' he told her. 'Besides, I've given your father my promise that I'll see Poo Lorn doesn't get hurt.'

  'Oh,' exclaimed Elise with rounded eyes, 'I don't think it's he that'll get hurt.'

  Cairns attacked the next course of chicken, conscious that the victory lay not with him. John Morrison made hoarse apology for his daughter, then changed the conversation.

  No more mention of Poo Lorn was made till dinner was over, and then the girl went straight up to where the guest was standing.

  'You've made up your mind? You're still going through with this?' she asked him suddenly.

  'I'm afraid I must, Miss Morrison.'

  She drew herself up to he
r full height. She stood, white, lovely, imperious.

  'Mr Cairns, Poo Lorn once saved my life!' The words were tense and quivering with emotion.

  Richard Cairns gazed back unflinchingly into those blue eyes of hers. He was hard, efficient, sure of himself, and as stubborn as she.

  'I am sorry, but I cannot go back on my word,' he said steadily.

  She swung away from him and walked out on to the verandah, leaving the others staring uncomfortably after her exit. A minute later she returned to the room.

  'Forgive me, everybody. I'm spoilt, I suppose. No, it's not your fault, dears; it's my own. Mr Cairns, forget a little girl's silly temper and make up a four at bridge. We don't often get the chance of a game.'

  They played till close on midnight, and then Cairns rose to leave. His companions escorted him to the gateway of the compound, where they shook hands.

  'I'll be back within a month and tell you all the news,' he said. 'And ever so many thanks for the evening.'

  'Take care of yourself, my dear boy,' whispered Mary Morrison.

  'Good luck to you, Cairns,' breezed her husband cheerfully.

  'Good luck to . . . to Poo Lorn,' said Elise, and she smiled her sweetest smile.

  True to his word, on a rainy afternoon four weeks later, Richard Cairns came riding up the slope on his little pony, and the Morrisons, on hearing of his arrival, hastened over the lawns to meet him.

  'I've got the herd . . .' Cairns flung himself out of the saddle and mopped his brow.

  'Ah . . .'

  'But not Poo Lorn.'

  'Not Poo Lorn?'

  'No. He wasn't with the others when I rounded them up,' replied Cairns, smiling. He thought it best to smile with little Elise so near.

  'H'mm. Come on into the bungalow and have a yarn,' said John Morrison.

  Installed in a comfortable chair, the younger man related his adventure. He had tracked down the herd without much difficulty, but of Poo Lorn there had not been the faintest sign, though his hunters had searched far and wide for any elephant of unusual size or stature. Finally, giving up all idea of finding him, they had concentrated on the capture of the herd itself. A keddah of bamboo stakes had been built, and after a few days the herd had entered like so many sheep. The tame elephants were then sent into the keddah to rope the wild ones, and after a few more days the latter had quietened sufficiently for them to be led. Cairns had then freed a few of the weaker animals, and the remainder were now being brought by easy stages on the long journey back to Lakon Lampang.