“I am a recluse from the mountains,” said the stranger. “I have left family, friends and home, that I may live my life alone, and there is good feeding ground about here. I am three years’ old, and it is time to lead the solitary life.”
He spoke at length of the joys of the single state in which he lived all the year save for the brief period beginning with November, when he drove some charming young lady pig from the nearest herd to be his companion for a few weeks. He would tend her with all the care and love and affection of which a boar is capable, but leave her to rear the young and join the herd again when her litter was strong enough.
WILD BOAR [Photo by Ottomar Anchutz, Berlin]
Thereafter Tusker made his home under an Argan tree, separated from the rest of the forest by a wide clearing where wild thyme and toad flax and dwarf palm grew, and creeping plants climbed over the double-thorn bushes. During the fine weather he never went out by daylight unless it was to drink, but when the rains came he would eat by day. He was so constituted that one visit to the pools would suffice him for two or even three days; but the visit was a prolonged one, accompanied by endless precautions, for since he had become solitary he had become more nervous than ever, and when he ate or drank he would make sudden pauses to make sure that nobody was about. He relied more upon hearing than sight. The slightest unaccustomed sound when he was coming to the pool would send him grunting into the thicket, but if all was well he would permit himself to enjoy a very lively time. First, he would drink deeply, and then he would wallow in the mud for two or three minutes to ease the irritation of his skin.
The forest was very quiet at night in spite of hungry jackals and stray hyænas, and Tusker made very little noise as he travelled to his feeding grounds, always working against the wind. There were a few duars, or native villages, in the forest, and one or two large farmhouses built on the sun-dried clay called tapia that glows so white under the light of the moon. Tusker avoided farm and village but he could not leave the crops alone, and for the chance of a meal of young maize he was content to go where no other food would have taken him.
His keener perceptions taught him now that there was a great, inexplicable danger in the forest—something his mother had spoken about when he first joined the herd by her side; and, though he had forgotten the details, the sense of fear was never really absent from him, and it was strengthened by one or two events that took place in his first solitary year.
One night he met the recluse from his mountains looking as he had never seen pig look before. His coarse hair was matted with perspiration, he breathed heavily, his little eyes were full of the terror that comes to the hunted beast.
“I must eat a little,” said the recluse hoarsely, “my strength has almost gone,” and so saying he fell to and found a number of Argan nuts which he ate eagerly, though he paused to sniff the breeze every moment and ate head to wind. Tusker was astonished and uneasy.
“What’s the matter?” he said, when both had eaten.