“The beggar might be paying rent and taxes,” Chinn muttered ere he asked whether his friend’s taste ran to cattle or man.
“Cattle,” was the answer. “Two heifers a week. We drive them for him at the foot of the hill. It is his custom. If we did not, he might seek us.”
“Blackmail and piracy,” said Chinn. “I can’t say I fancy going into the cave after him. What’s to be done?”
The Bhils fell back as Chinn lodged himself behind a rock with his rifle ready. Tigers, he knew, were shy beasts, but one who had been long cattle-fed in this sumptuous style might prove overbold.
“He speaks!” some one whispered from the rear. “He knows, too.”
“Well, of all the infernal cheek!” said Chinn. There was an angry growl from the cave—a direct challenge.
“Come out, then,” Chinn shouted. “Come out of that. Let’s have a look at you.” The brute knew well enough that there was some connection between brown nude Bhils and his weekly allowance; but the white helmet in the sunlight annoyed him, and he did not approve of the voice that broke his rest. Lazily as a gorged snake, he dragged himself out of the cave, and stood yawning and blinking at the entrance. The sunlight fell upon his flat right side, and Chinn wondered. Never had he seen a tiger marked after this fashion. Except for his head, which was staringly barred, he was dappled—not striped, but dappled like a child’s rocking-horse in rich shades of smoky black on red gold. That portion of his belly and throat which should have been white was orange, and his tail and paws were black.
He looked leisurely for some ten seconds, and then deliberately lowered his head, his chin dropped and drawn in, staring intently at the man. The effect of this was to throw forward the round arch of his skull, with two broad bands across it, while below the bands glared the unwinking eyes; so that, head on, as he stood, he showed something like a diabolically scowling pantomime-mask. It was a piece of natural mesmerism that he had practised many times on his quarry, and though Chinn was by no means a terrified heifer, he stood for a while, held by the extraordinary oddity of the attack. The head—the body seemed to have been packed away behind it—the ferocious, skull-like head, crept nearer to the switching of an angry tail-tip in the grass. Left and right the Bhils had scattered to let John Chinn subdue his own horse.
“My word!” he thought. “He’s trying to frighten me!” and fired between the saucer-like eyes, leaping aside upon the shot.
A big coughing mass, reeking of carrion, bounded past him up the hill, and he followed discreetly. The tiger made no attempt to turn into the jungle; he was hunting for sight and breath—nose up, mouth open, the tremendous fore-legs scattering the gravel in spurts.