And Davey almost despaired of Sultan.
The tiger trailed at the back of the line, looking as if he expected to be chased off at any moment. Sultan understood that the pigs were to be stalked and pounced upon, but he would never have dared interfere. He would not have dreamed of trying to muscle in on what Kitty and Princess and Tommy were up to. When Tommy sat down to watch his troops, Sultan sat down too, at a sensible distance, and watched Kitty and Princess have the fun.
Davey tried to encourage him, make him take the lead, be the first to see the pigs, to get him excited. But as soon as Davey was not looking, Kitty and Princess balefully overtook him. He tried to take Sultan out hunting by himself, but the others always followed, despite his orders. The breakdown in discipline was something that Davey did not want to interfere with, in the same way as he did not want to interfere with Tommy sitting down with centurian dignity when Kitty and Princess went into action—because in the wild, male lions mostly let their lionesses do the killing.
When he came back to the mineshaft after visiting the other animals, their huge tawny heads peered out, ears pricked; then in a mass they would come bounding down the embankment, muscled killers with piercing eyes. They would be all over him, on their hindlegs, paws on his shoulders, growling and licking, squabbling for position, slurping in his ears and rubbing against his legs. But poor old Sultan hung back, sitting at the top of the embankment, looking disdainfully away, feeling entirely out of it. Davey thought bitterly of Mama lying dead in the car headlights at Devils Fork; how wonderful it would be if she were here now, Mama and Sultan together. Sultan stuck with the lions because they were the only family he had. And they didn’t want him. Davey worried about him.
But Davey did not worry about Kitty. He had seen the clawmarks on her belly from her encounter with the bear, and he was delighted. She would make the first kill; she would show the others how it was done. There was an intensity about her, a hungriness: Kitty was a killer.
Then, one day, she was not at the mineshaft.
That day Kitty caught her first pig.
Admittedly it was a very unlucky pig, and only a piglet at that. The breeze was blowing toward Kitty as she crouched, just her eyes peeping above the grass, as the mother boar and her brood rooted and bustled closer and closer in the dappled sunshine. It had all the makings of a walkover. But it was the big, tusked female boar that cautioned Kitty. She knew something about mothers now.
The sow was oblivious, her litter scattered, and the biggest of them was grubbing his way straight toward Kitty’s nose, his tail curled up over his back. Closer and closer the little boar came, grunting and chomping. If Kitty had just opened her mouth he would probably have gone bustling straight into it. Kitty watched him, eyes bright with excitement, heart hammering joyfully. Now he was only five yards away—stop, grub, bustle—now only four—stop, grub, root. When he was three paces off, Kitty’s quivering muscles unleashed, and she sprang.
Massive paws crashed down on the little pig; then his head was inside terrible jaws, and he was squealing frantically.
Kitty ran, carrying the screaming piglet in her mouth, and the sow and her litter fled. Kitty ran for several hundred yards before she was satisfied she was safe from the mother boar. Then she stopped and dropped the piglet.
He took to his heels, but Kitty’s great paw swatted him flat. He lay gasping under Kitty’s claws, his eye rolling in terror and Kitty’s tail flicked happily. Then she playfully lifted her paw, and the battered little pig scrambled up and made his dash again. Leaping joyfully, Kitty swiped him across the head in full run, and over he rolled, shocked witless. Kitty leapt up onto her hind legs and boxed the little pig with both paws, to shock some life back into him, but he just slopped around. So she grabbed him in her mouth and tossed him high.
He went cartwheeling up into the trees, and came hurtling down. Kitty pounced and tried to box some life into him, but the little pig just lay there. Kitty sat down, disappointed. But he was a tough little pig and still alive. Kitty sat, waiting for him to revive, looking disdainfully around at the forest.
The pig opened his dazed eyes. Then he staggered to his feet and began to totter off. Kitty began to wash her face elaborately. She let him stagger off for six paces, and with each tottering step his hope fluttered. Then he tried to run, and Kitty bounded after him.
For another five minutes the great cat played with him, thoroughly enjoying herself, but by now the pig was dead of multiple internal injuries and, finally, heart failure induced by terror.
Then she settled down to eat him. It was her instinct to take him back to the den, to show him to the other cats; but she realized they would want to eat him too. And there simply was not enough of him.
She took him between her paws and began to crunch. She ate every bit of him, head, hooves and all, and he was delicious.
It was a good day, and an important one. But it was the last of the good times.
sixty-two
That day, soon after sunrise, Elizabeth led the bears out as usual.
She was satisfied with Smoky’s recovery. By God, you did a wonderful job there, Johnson. She was also pleased how he was returning to the wild; he showed much more independence than the grizzlies. Smoky no longer thought he was just a puny grizzly bear, and although he still hung around the cabin at night, come daylight he wandered off by himself.
She had to discourage the grizzlies firmly, or they would have followed her around all day like two huge dogs. They were good company at night, especially after the gorillas took to nesting farther away, and the elephants had not reappeared. She loved the big, furry, cuddly beasts with their sniffling noses and their fat, waddling backsides and stubby tails; and when they reared up onto their hindlegs, towering nine feet high over her, she wanted to take their great paws in her hands and ask them to dance with her. But they had to forget the past. They had to go off into the mountains, steamrollering through the wilderness like the natural monarchs they were. Furthermore, she wanted them to go off separately, for grizzlies are meant to be solitary creatures. But Winnie and Pooh wanted to be with her, and they were devoted to each other.
That day she took them much farther than usual, with Smoky following. When she was to look back on it, she would wonder whether Smoky sensed something wrong that day: something afoot. For did she not feel it herself? She was very anxious to get these bears really moving today—as if there was not much time left.
She led them over Welsh Ridge, into the valley below, and addressed them sternly.
‘Sit,’ she commanded.
Smoky sat. But Winnie and Pooh just looked. They had got wise to her now; they knew she was going to abandon them again.
‘Sit!’ She was angry at their disobedience. But on the other hand she badly wanted them to forget all about commands.
At last they sat, with monumental reluctance.
‘Stay!’ She glared at them, then muttered, ‘And don’t come back tonight,’ and she disappeared into the wilderness.
Smoky did not go off by himself that day. For a while they all sat on their haunches, pessimistically waiting for her to come back. From time to time they stood up and sniffed the breeze for her. Finally they began to start sniffing around, looking for breakfast.
In truth, they were not disconsolate for long. After a while Smoky forgot his nervousness because, if there’s one thing that’s uppermost in a bear’s mind it is breakfast, lunch and dinner. After a while they forgot about seeing her again before tonight. There was plenty to eat, and they were happy enough. But they stuck close together: the two future monarchs of the wilderness, big Pooh following Winnie, and Smoky following both of them. They knew which way was home.
Then, in the middle of that afternoon, it happened. Suddenly, amid the sounds of feeding, Smoky heard a human voice. So did Winnie. Only Pooh, a bear of rather little brain, missed it.
Slowly, Smoky and Winnie rose onto their hindlegs. They stood there, hearts pounding, noses twitching, absolutely
tense; then simultaneously they smelt the dreaded scent of man. They both crashed to the earth, and turned and fled—Smoky one way and Winnie the other, with Pooh blundering after Winnie.
It was almost dusk when Winnie and Pooh came running up through the Garden of Eden. Elizabeth had not yet come back. They reached the log cabin and stopped, looking back the way they had come, flanks heaving and their eyes full of fear.
That sunset, when Jonas Ford returned to the camp in the helicopter, the warden informed him that Sally had been sighted along the Pigeon River.
There had been complete radio silence from Forsythe and his trackers for five days; and Ford was thoroughly fed up with the lack of results. For all he knew Forsythe had been kidnapped in those forests by the very Cherokees he thought he was duping.
part thirteen
sixty-three
On the banks of the Pigeon there were eddies and still places among the rocks, with weeds, fish, and salamanders.
In the daytime Sally trundled along the banks, the sun on her back, her big square mouth munching through the rich greenery, and earthy smells. She lumbered herself into the clean, cool water and sank to the bottom, and plodded around down there, experimentally nudging this and taking a mouthful of that; then she took off like a ponderous submarine, her fat body suddenly streamlined, her stubby legs expertly churning, and her eyes wide.
She swam like a submersible tank, maneuvering around rocks, diving into dark hollows, and surging up the other side, in and out of the gullies, grazing the bottom of the river like the old sea cow she was. In the middle of the day she slept at the bottom of a tranquil pool, and when she needed to breathe she rose to the surface naturally, without waking, took a long sighing breath, and sank down to the bottom again.
But, for all those good things, old Sally was not happy. Despite all the space to be a hippopotamus in and the real mud beneath her feet—and even though she did not have to run for her life any more—she yearned for Davey Jordan and for the company and security of the other animals.
In those first few days, following the crossing of the Pigeon, she had been terrified, croaking for Davey to come back. But he had not, no matter how hard and long she had called. Now she almost accepted that he was not going to fetch her, though she still had hope. She still sometimes croaked; then listened. She was still afraid of being alone, of the long dark nights.
Her old heart and soul yearned for another hippopotamus just to be with. In the night when hippopotamuses like to play, in their herds, barking at each other, Sally swam disconsolately all by herself, and she made her long, lonesome noises, then listened, her eyes staring in the darkness. But no answer ever came back.
Then, one afternoon, she heard a hippopotamus croak.
She jerked up her head, her heart pounding. She stared, ears pricked, her whole body suddenly quivering with excitement; and she barked and lumbered forward. She stopped, listening, nostrils eagerly sniffing the breeze. She turned around and stared in the other direction. Then she heard the bark again.
She spun around and went lumbering along the bank, haunches bouncing, and gave a long desperate croak in excitement. She came to a lumbering stop and listened again. She could smell nothing; she turned and stared the other way. She gave a long, heart-rending croak from the bottom of her belly, and she heard the answer. That time she could identify where it came from; she gave an excited answer and went lumbering through the bushes away from the river. She blundered excitedly up a narrow ravine for twenty yards; then suddenly she smelled man.
The dreaded scent. She whirled around to charge back to the river and saw a line of men blocking the ravine with a net. Sally snorted in terror, whirled around and Went thundering up the ravine again; then she crashed headlong into another net.
Slapbang crash, and the net was all over her, and ropes entangled her thrashing legs. Sally croaked and thrashed her hooves; she scrambled up and fell onto her chin. She tried to scramble up again, and she crashed. Again and again. And all the time the men were shouting and wrenching the ropes tight, and all the time she bellowed in terror. For ten minutes Sally fought, and the ropes got tighter and tighter. Now her struggles were just grunting wrestles. Then her entangled hind legs were lashed together, her jaws pulled shut by the net. Then her forelegs were tied together.
She lay in a tangled mess of nets, flanks heaving, eyes rolling, groaning in fear. Professor Ford surveyed his first capture with intense relief. He had done it. Without Forsythe. The panting marines and wildlife officers were grinning.
For another fifteen minutes Sally lay trussed, quivering. Then a new terrifying noise began—a drone that got louder and nearer; the air vibrated and Sally kicked and wrenched. Then the roar reached its crescendo and dust was flying, and she screamed in her throat as she saw the helicopter, huge and roaring, coming down at her.
Sally went berserk, wrenching and thrashing, her heart almost bursting, and she crashed her head up and down on the stones and kicked and jerked; and the terrible roaring monster descended on her, and the men were swarming all round her as she screamed and thrashed, heaving on the ropes. Then her legs were being heaved up so she was writhing on her spine, and all the time the monster was blasting above her. Suddenly she felt her body begin to lift off the ground, the ropes biting into her. The earth was disappearing beneath her, the trees and river falling away, and Sally was filled with the purest terror. She screamed and twisted in the deafening downblast, and her neck swelled; her stomach was bulging around the ropes as the helicopter roared over the mountaintops, the valleys yawning below. Sally kicked and twisted all the way, terrified out of her mind. Then she was suddenly dropping, down, down, down, the mountain and valleys rushing up at her, crowds running toward her, and new terror leaped on top of the old. Sally screamed, and she bumped to the ground.
Dirt flew and the monster roared; men were dashing all about, and Sally screamed so her eyes bulged bloodshot. Ford cast off the helicopter’s ropes, the pressure left her guts, and Sally tried to scramble up. But she was still in the net and she crashed. Ford cut the ropes binding her legs, Sally bellowed, and all the television cameras were rolling. Ford could not disentangle the nets. His only hope was to pile ten men on top of her, and he did not like to do that because she was an old specimen. For another five minutes Sally tried to get up; then all of a sudden she sort of froze.
Quivering, her hobbled backside stuck up, her chin on the ground, her chest was wracked with pain; she crouched for a long instant as the agony streaked through her. Then she gave a big groan and toppled over onto her side.
Sally had suffered a heart attack, and she was dead.
sixty-four
Elizabeth hardly slept, worrying about Smoky’s disappearance. She had noticed the tension in Winnie and Pooh when she got back last night. She lay inside the cabin, listening. Finally, she had fallen into a fitful doze, but before dawn she was awake again. The bears were gone.
With the first light she was hurrying through the forest with a sense of foreboding, going to look for Smoky’s spoor where she had left him yesterday. Maybe she had not done such a fantastic job on him after all. She had been working alone, against time; there had been all that blood and pus …
But no … that was not why she was running through the forest with dread in her heart. She wanted to find Smoky, then go plunging off to look for the elephants, and then the gorillas: to reassure herself. In fact she wanted to herd them all together, guard them. For the second time in her life, Elizabeth wished she had a gun. She felt fierce enough to shoot somebody.
It was eleven o’clock when she reached the place where she had left the bears. She found the initial spoor easily.
It was difficult tracking, because the bears had wandered all over the place. There was no sound but her own panting and rustling in the stillness of the forest. It was noon when she saw it. She stopped, her heart knocking, the color drained from her face: it was an unmistakable human footprint …
She stared at it. Her
first reaction was to sink down like an animal. She forced herself to stand still and think; she made herself look around for more. Her fear rose like bile. She could make out three different sets of feet. None of them was Davey’s, Big Charlie’s or her own. She crouched in the silence, eyes wide. Then she turned to go and warn Davey.
She started striding through the forest, the way she had come. For two hundred yards she controlled her panic; then she started to run.
It was nearly three o’clock when Elizabeth came stumbling down out of the forest into the pasture below the log cabin. She was exhausted: hair in her eyes, sweating, gasping, lugging her medical bag. She splashed across the river, through the trees, and out into the other half of the pasture.
She slowed to a stumbling walk up the path through the trees to the cabin. She was halfway up when a rough hand slammed over her mouth from behind.
She struggled and kicked, horrified, but her screams were stifled. Another set of hands grabbed her ankles. She was carried up the path, kicking and wrenching, and into the cabin. They thumped her down. Somebody pulled her hands behind her back and tied them. She was gargling into the hand that gagged her mouth.
‘Sorry about this, ma’am.’ Sheriff Lonnogan gave his big fleshy smile and raised his Stetson. ‘But as a duly-sworn officer of the law I’m required to take certain steps which may inconvenience law-bidin’ folk, for the greatest good of other folk. Now, I know you ain’t no criminal, ma’am, though you came precious close at the Pigeon River, but in order to carry out my duty today, I find it necessary to restrain you for the time bein’. Now, I don’ want to put no gag in your mouth, ma’am, but if you were to holler when he comes, I just got to do it. Now, what do you say?’
The sheriff nodded, and the Kid lifted his hand off her mouth. Elizabeth was outraged, but her mind was racing desperately. She hissed, ‘Unhand me at once!’
Fear No Evil Page 35