It was two minutes before Skag ventured a further movement to the right. The tiger made absolutely no counter this time. Skag now spoke to Nels:
"You're doing beautifully, son."
The dog had stood by like part of himself. The droop and the quiver that he had known twice that day when the man disappeared into the lair had given way in the real test to unbreakable nerve and defiant heart. Yet it was less the courage than his absolute obedience that entered the man with a charge of feeling that instant. A minute later Skag took another ten steps to the right.
In the deeper shadows, less than an hour afterward, he struck a match to the little supper fire a hundred yards up the slope from the mouth of the lair. Skag then loosened his hunting belt, dropping the weight from him to the blanket with a sigh of content. The hardware had chafed him all day and had only been really forgotten in the stresses of action.
"I didn't pack that gun for tiger," he said softly. "Why, I would as soon have shot our good Arab, Kala Khan, or put a bullet between Nut Kut's eyes, as to stop that big fellow bringing young mutton home—to please her! Won't Carlin love to hear that! Oh, yes, it's been a day, son, one more day! I've loved it minute by minute, and you've been—well, I can't think in words, when it comes to that."
The big fellow drowsed in the firelight, his four paws stretched evenly toward the man.
In the morning and afternoon of the next two days Skag brought water to the tigress and bathed her shoulder long. On the third day he could not be sure that the male had left the lair until late afternoon, and when he finally ventured to the mouth and his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness within he saw that the tigress was watching him from the deeper shadows—not prone, but on three feet.
He filled the gourd and weighted it with stones; then backed out.
"We're starting for Hurda to-night, son," he said to Nels. "I've left her a drink or two, and by the time she needs more, she'll be able to get to the river herself."
Carlin must have caught the reality of that moment of crisis from Skag's telling—the moment when the male tiger might have charged but didn't, because she succeeded in making Malcolm M'Cord see it, too.