Chapter 29
The tiger padded silently through the forest, eyes and ears keen for any sign of game. The hunger in his stomach drove him, as well as the hunger of his heart. His hind leg, he knew, was not up to an extended chase. But stalk he could, and hunt he must. The man-child fed him and gave him shelter, but more and more his restlessness grew. For he was a creature of the wild forests, and he heard their primal call. Even now, amidst the cover of thickening pine and mottled oak, he felt yet too exposed, and longed to plunge into some limitless wood where clearing and field were the exception, and not the rule. Such a place had once been his home, and must be again.
A black bear he had already passed, but this was neither prey nor foe. If it had confronted him he would have fought it, and almost surely have won. Yet he was glad when it saw him coming and moved away. This forest was not his: there was no need to stake a claim. And seeing it he recalled his fight with the grizzly, when in youthful ignorance he had stood his ground against a more powerful foe, then been a step too slow, or too proud, in retreating.
It had nearly cost him his life, as wounded and almost lame he had been pursued by the raging beast for miles on end. In his crippled state he could barely keep ahead of it, and this seemed to goad it on. Till at last he gained an unknown, freezing river and half stumbled, half swam his way across it. Even now the sounds of cracking ice, the final break and splash into the death-like waters, swimming desperately, clawing out again and scrambling forward….. Without his broad, padded feet to spread his weight upon the ice, without his clinging claws, alive with the frightened desire of youth, he would surely have perished.
But now that the brush with death was past, he was not afraid. Those who learned fear from such a trial quickly lost the will they needed to live. Those who learned caution and still greater determination, these were the hunters, the great cats who survived.
Coming to the crest of a long hill, he looked down upon a gentle valley, at the center of which lay a clearing along both sides of a swirling stream. Just at the edge of it on the far shore, beyond which the forests rose once more to dominate, stood a tall buck and his troop, three females and their half-grown young. Engaged in eating bark and pawing through the snow for saplings, at that distance and with their eyes they could not have seen him.
Immediately he crouched, and in his wordless way, formed a plan. The wind blew from right to left, with the stream, and to cross it silently….. He snaked out of sight among the trees, and began to descend at an angle to his left. Coming to a place where the stream bent towards him, he followed it a short way further, then quickly and quietly waded across. He heard the buck sing out as he reached the farther shore and scrambled up, and feared that his chance was lost. But stubbornly he dove among the trees and made his swift, circling way towards the spot.
>From ahead of him now came the sounds of conflict, a muted knocking and scraping of antlers and the angry, conch-like cries of the bull. Drawing hard upon the clearing he discovered the reason. It was not because of him that the herd-leader had spoken in warning. Another buck, younger but nearly equal in girth, had come upon him, and thought to steal away his harem. In this he was premature, since neither doe nor female fawn would be ready to mate until Spring. But such mistakes are often made, born of the cold and bitter isolation of a solitary male in Winter.
Nature plays no favorites, nor does the hungry predator. The females had seen the big cat's approach, and with their young fled swiftly and silently into the wood, leaving the two bulls locked in oblivious combat. The tiger leapt over a fallen tree, forgetting his pain, and charged across the open space toward them.
The herd leader saw him coming, and stepped back. The young male in his blind fury did not, and perceiving hesitation on the part of his opponent, thought to charge again. It was his last mistake. The tiger leapt full upon him, knocking him to the ground, and before the buck knew what had happened, his throat was held fast and his life's blood ebbing.
The herd leader turned quickly to see what had become of his charge, then with a last look at the predator and his fallen foe, moved to join them. He did not run blindly, nor fully turn his back. But neither did he dare a brave show. Not for nothing had he lived to sire offspring.
The yearling stood poised above his kill, looking about him cautiously. He felt neither sadness nor elation, only the openness around him, and a sullen determination not to surrender his prize. Taking it firmly by the scruff of the neck, he dragged it back among the timbers. Lifting it across the same fallen trunk he had leapt in pursuing it, he set it to rest in the hollow just beyond, and once more looked around him. No sight or sound broke the silence of the afterkill.
It was only then that he let himself rest, and remembered his hunger and his pain. His leg ached dully and his muscles tried to knot. But these could be denied. His hunger could not. Licking a spot on the carcass as he would a bosom friend (the feelings were not dissimilar), he lay down and began to eat, and once more to feel pride and confidence in the strength he possessed.
He had made, with help, the long climb back. He would endure.
*
Kalus stood at the beginning of the plain. In one hand he held the snares he meant to set, but in the other was his spear, which stubborn optimism had told him to bring. And at his feet were the tracks of the tiger. Studying them more closely, he saw that despite the sharp climb up from the gorge, there was no blood from its injured hind leg, and only a trace of a limp. The cub sniffed at the familiar prints, recognizing their scent.
Kalus felt a sudden surge of desire. An impulse had come to him, and he acted upon it at once. Hiding his traps behind a stone, he dropped down on one knee beside the cub. With his hand he indicated the tracks, then the line they followed into the distance.
'Alaska. These tracks. Avatar. We follow. AVATAR.'
The cub looked back at him, confused. But after repeating the gestures, the name of the tiger, and finally, walking along its visible trail, Kalus made her understand. Nose to the ground, she began to pursue the trail ahead of him, always urged to greater speed by her master. Together they covered the distance swiftly, running whenever the snow and his strength permitted it.
For Kalus knew the tiger had set out the night before, and he had only the daylight to find it.
If only its hunt had been successful.
*
It was perhaps midday when he stood at the top of the same long hill, looking down with lesser eyes upon the valley and the clearing by the stream. He had begun to despair of his chances, knowing it would take nearly the rest of the day just to make his way back to the warmth and safety of the cave. Almost he had let the hill turn him back. But he, too, felt the stubborn need to persevere.
Here, if the read the signs right, the cat had suddenly crouched and begun to stalk. His shielded eyes strained against the blinding white, up and down the stream, searching for any further sign. But all such effort was defeated by the hard glare of the noon sun. Perhaps if he made his eyes like a quiet pool, in which any movement would be as a pebble dropping into glassy waters…..
Movement. His eyes shifted to the source. Again. The branches of a leafless tree, no, the tree itself, moved under the weight of some large animal, disturbing the snow-layered pines around it. At the edge of the clearing, on the far side of the stream. A short distance in front of it the snow had been mangled and stained, as by a recent kill.
He cut a swath straight towards it, risking much that the creature in the tree was his own, self-named Avatar, proud hunter of the frozen woodlands. He came to the stream, and lifting both his garments and the startled cub, waded across. The shaking of branches had not ceased, and now as he gained the far bank and set down the cub, a muffled growl was added to it. He froze, spear lifted. But the sound had been neither sudden, nor seemed in any way to correspond with his movements. And at last, his eyes describing the scene, he lowered his spear with a surge of pride and gratitude. It was his ally, the tiger, struggling to lift a large buck into the crotch of a trembling beech.
'Avatar!'
The great cat gave a sudden snarl, and dropping its prey, loosed its hold on the tree and leapt down to face him. All done in an instant, and with such angry determination that the man-child's eyes went wide, and he took a step back in spite of himself.
The tiger, too, felt a moment of confusion. For here was something not stamped into the racial memory of instinct. Kalus it knew, as the creature who fed and protected him at need. He felt an association to him, even a kind of closeness. But he was also the first creature to disturb him at his part-eaten kill, and those feelings were strong and immediate.
Kalus seemed to understand this, because he stood silent and made no further move, staying the cub, who would have stepped freely to the meat her friend had provided.
The tiger looked at the tree, then at the man. He vaguely recalled his mother, coming upon the scene of another tiger's kill, and the way it had first snarled, then yielded, allowing her to eat….. At last he solved the puzzle. Searching the forest behind him for any sign of danger, he moved away from the buck and remained standing, patient but alert, leaving the other to eat his fill.
Kalus came forward steadily, and with a further greeting, began to cut away at the untouched back legs (which a more experienced predator would have eaten first, but which were ideal for his purposes). He worked hard and diligently with the hunter's knife, trying at the same time not to jerk the carcass, which might arouse the tiger, at intervals shooing away the cub.
He felt as he did so an almost irrational need of haste, which went beyond his concern for the tiger or the long journey home. He could not have explained it. There was time to meet his ends. No, it was more the aggressiveness of the act itself which put him on his guard. After so many days of caution and yielding, to have been so bold, and come to such a reward….. And whether superstition or sixth sense, his one desire at that moment was to take his portion and be gone.
As the last stubborn tendon surrendered its hold of the second leg, he straightened his back with a sudden glow of pride and happiness. He wanted to walk right up to his companion, a thing which he had never done, and box his ears in relief and brotherly affection.
But in the same instant the shadow behind his fears took flesh, as with a mad crash a large grizzly split through a wall of bushes, not forty feet away. And as it growlingly surveyed them with but a moment's consideration, the tiger recognized his old enemy.
Fear rose instantly in the man-child, but stronger was his cornered rage. A mindless brute, who knew nothing of his struggles and yearnings, blindly sought to steal what had cost him so dearly, and in so doing, rend or even kill both himself and his closest companions. Knowing that to run would be the greater danger, and goaded by his passion, he lifted his spear and cried out in fury, standing his ground and preparing for the inevitable charge. The tiger seemed to feel much the same emotion, for it too snarled threateningly, and even began to move forward.
But in the dim perceptions of the monster there also burned dark fires. This land was his, as was any in which he walked, and he would not be defied. His victory over the tiger still lived in him, and the man-child was beyond his experience. He was a prince of power, and aggression his only creed. Coming close in short, growling breaths, he raised up his quivering bulk for battle, and on his hind legs advanced toward the tiger.
Whatever the poetic or philosophical may say, in Nature, as well as in Man's darkened nature, strength is often (and only) by cornered strength defeated. As the full eight-foot carriage of the bear began to lower toward the mortal and extinguishable flesh of his friend, Kalus felt the terrible white fire that lives in every creature whose dearest are threatened, take hold of him. And as the tiger drew back and raised its extending claws in answer, he drove his spear deep into the grizzly's brawny neck and shoulder. Nor did he draw away in the face of its fury, but drove in against the scruff, pinning its head while the tiger's slashing blows fell unmercifully.
Pulling back the shaft as the spearhead lost its bite, he drove it this time into the bristling shoulder, and with a strength he would not have thought in him, from both point of pain and pressure, drove the thousand pound menace onto its side.
This was all the tiger needed. Slashing and biting, braving the peril of its roaring jaws, he tore away at the vital streams of his foe until they spilled recklessly, and the raging heart that drove them was betrayed in a self-defeating carnage of red. The bear lurched forward, dying.
Kalus stepped back, panting, his heart near exploding with the effort and fear, while the tiger yet leered over his fallen enemy, unsure of its end. Then the bear's eyes faded, and all was silence.
The cub whimpered out from its hiding place, looking to Kalus for some sign of reassurance. He knelt down and caressed her head against him, feeling much the same need himself. Then turned to face his ally, feeling a fierce kinship as deep and true as any he had ever experienced.
At last the tiger stepped back, and raising its head, gave a growl of pride and possession that told any who cared to listen that this land was his, and his alone. Kalus stepped back, acknowledging this, and with a surge of bittersweet emotion, realized that his friend had ascended to the magnificent freedom of a creature of the Wild. . .but also that it no longer needed him.
'You've done it,' he said quietly, and with such feeling that the pent-up emotions burst forth in a flood of tears. Then he shook off all weakness, lifted the legs of the deer, and looked one last time at his friend.
'Fly well, my Avatar. My spirit is always with you.'
Kalus turned sadly toward home, and followed by the wolf, was away.