Nels woofed.
"Half-grown tiger cubs are apt to be a whole lot meaner than their parents," Skag went on. "Wild—that's the word. They haven't sense enough to be careful or mind enough to be appealed to. I think that's something of what I mean to say."
Skag was taking more pains to explain than he would to a man. Nels didn't get it—didn't even make a pretense. He knew what Tiger meant, but so far as he was concerned that subject had been dropped some moments since. He had listened intently to the point in which Tiger ceased to be the topic—sitting on his haunches. Then he dropped to his front elbows, and as Skag's voice trailed away he rolled quietly to his side, keeping himself courteously awake.
There was silence. Skag's eyes were far off among the blazing Indian stars.
"We'll manage 'em together," he added sleepily. The next day they wandered—rough desolate country in burning sunlight. It gave the impression that the whole surface crust of earth had been burned to a white heat ages ago. Low hills with clifflike faces; shallow nullahs used only a month or two a year to carry the monsoon deluges to the Nerbudda; the stones of the river bottoms bone-white—everywhere sparse and scrubby foliage with dust-covered leaves. There was no turf in this stony world except the sand of the hollows and the wind eddied most of these spaces like water, quickly covering all tracks. It was toward the end of the afternoon that Nels first intimated a scent.
Tiger of course—that was Nels' orders—but it wasn't fresh. Skag gave the Dane word to do the best he could and followed leisurely. The big fellow worked with painful care for more than an hour before he became sure of himself; then his speed quickened, following a dry nullah at last, for several miles. The dark was creeping in before they came to a deep fissure among the rocks where the empty waterway sunk into a pool which was not yet dry. Skag and the Dane drank deep; then the man filled his canteen, with the remark:
"We'll camp a little back, not to obstruct the water hole. All trails end here. To-morrow morning we'll get fresh tiger scent if we're in luck. But I wonder what we're trailing?"
It was a fact of long establishment among the villages that only the one mated pair worked this section of the country. According to one of the stories of the English hunter, the male tiger had been killed and the female wounded—in which case what was this? Certainly there was nothing to indicate that the scent was left by a wounded tiger. Others might have doubted Nels' discrimination, but Skag scouted that in his own mind. The Dane knew Tiger. It was as distinct and individual to him from the other big cats as the voices of friends one from another.
Nels was said to have met Tiger in battle before he came to Skag, but it was no purpose of his present master to give him a chance now. It was established that several of the great Indian hunting dogs had survived such meetings. Malcolm M'Cord declared that a veteran in the cheetah game would show himself master in any ordinary tiger affair.
They were tired and sun drained. Skag laid down his blankets in the early dusk and there were hours of sleep before he was awakened by the different activities at the water hole. Nels apparently had been awake for some time, studying the separate noises in a moveless calm. Skag touched his chest affectionately. A panther or some smaller cat had just made a kill among the rocks above the pool, yet Nels' hackles had not lifted in answer to the bawl of the stricken beast.