Agent out of Time (The Agents for Good) (18 page)

That tiger hadn’t sneaked up while I lay in wait for the bear. He’d been there the whole time, less than thirty feet from where I’d crouched baiting the trap. He could have had me easier than even his perfectly choreographed attack on the bear. Shaking I let the rifle fall, as I did so the tiger leaped away from his kill and bounded up into the forest off to the right of me.

I was tempted to swear in that moment.

You idiot! You should’ve pulled the trigger!

One thing was clear, if the tiger was in the forest, than I wanted to be out of it. I bounded down out of my hiding place into the open ravine below. As I reached my baited trap I turned with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sure enough the tiger had come ghosting up behind me in the snow and now it was, but ten feet away. My insides turned to jelly at the sight of the massive snarling face.

The tiger truly was massive. It was an adult male specimen that probably tipped the scale close to 700 pounds. One massive paw swung out in a threatening swing into the air, as its roar sounded threateningly husky from within.

I realized that I still held the stick I’d used to set the trap.

“Easy big boy! I just came to set this off.”

The stick depressed the trap’s trigger mechanism and it sprang shot with a loud metallic clang, crunching my stick in its iron jaws. The tiger’s heavy breathing abruptly stopped, as his ears pressed flat and he crouched down low in the snow, his big eyes going from me to the trap and back again.

I had been backing up meanwhile trying my best to appear nonthreatening, but ready to bring the rifle to bare at a moment’s notice. Not that it would matter. The skull of a tiger is so dense in the front that you could fire both barrels of a shotgun point-blank and have no distinguishable impact other than to enrage the beast further. I was dead meat with or without the rifle at this short distance.

The tiger stayed put and didn’t advance past the trap.

I let the muzzle of my rifle incline towards the fallen bear, “I don’t suppose you’d mind sharing would you?”

Amazingly the tiger seemed to sense what I was referring to and it leaped off to the side in a sudden action of movement that had my breath locked up inside of me and my finger tightening on the trigger. The tiger’s claws latched into the bear’s carcass, as the tiger’s great head turned back to me with a vicious snarl and a half roar.

Point taken. His kill, his meal.

I kept backing away feeling grateful to still have my life as the tiger watched me go. When I was out of sight I headed back to the cabin and depression set down hard upon me. What a fool I was!

I was heading back with nothing, when I could have had both the bear and a tiger. There would’ve been enough meat to last for months. The two rabbits would be gone by tomorrow and if I wasn’t successful in another hunt, then our dire situation would be because of me. Worse yet, I felt another snow storm, coming on. Hunting might not even be an option open and available to us much longer.

When I reached the dugout I told them of what had happened. I turned down the snowhair meat that they had saved for me and instead I turned in on my blankets on the floor, too sick to my stomach to care about eating. It wasn’t just self loathing that led to my upset stomach, it was fear also. That tiger would have enough food to last him for a few days, but what then?

I had been such a fool to come this way. Wolves were more preferable than this.

Chapter Seventeen

Manna in the Wilderness

I slept fitfully that night and with dawn’s first gray light I was up ready to go hunt before the snow began to fall. Trent was up too. I could tell that he burned from frustration at not being able to join in the hunt, but somebody had to stay with Deshavi and of the two of us, I could hunt better without the use of a gun.

“Caleb get over here!” Trent whispered out harshly.

I joined him at the single window fully expecting to see a tiger waiting for his breakfast to come out. I didn’t see the tiger though and then I saw what had aroused Trent’s interest. The large heavy ball that we had discovered upon our arrival was sitting out in front of the dugout. The snow all around it was churned up.

Trent and I glanced at each other, as we were obviously thinking the same thing, but neither of us wanted to put words to it. It was just too crazy to comprehend what we were thinking. I headed outside and in some ways I strongly felt that I wouldn’t be back. I almost woke Deshavi up to say goodbye, but I stopped myself from doing so at the last moment. I was just getting melodramatic in my old age most likely.

I saw nothing. Tracks were plentiful, but I saw not so much as a squirrel. Grimly I headed back to the dugout around midday, when I got there I was thoroughly exhausted. Deshavi had nothing but concern in her eyes for me, but all I could notice was the hollowing of her cheeks caused by our forced rationing. I had completely failed as a provider and the deep shame I felt at that tinged my cheeks with red, even as my insides burned with disgrace.

“Grandpa….”

I cut her statement of concern off, “I’ll go back out later, wake me after a couple of hours.”I turned from the concerned couple to the privacy of my blankets in the corner of the room and fell asleep surprisingly fast.

The hand shaking at my shoulder was insistent and somewhat bleary-eyed I came half alert. Had it already been several hours? I asked as much.

“No, just about 30 minutes, but you’ve got to see this!” Deshavi said.

My joints protesting and my muscles aching with fatigue I let her half pull me up to my feet. The door was open and I stepped out beside Trent. At our feet lay an adult red deer buck. Part of its neck had been ripped out, but that was the only sign of injury.

My eyes moved upward and out into the yard before the dugout where the big ball still sat. Beside the ball, the big tiger from my encounter the day before, lay sprawled out basking in the afternoon sun rays.

“What should we do?” Trent asked.

I didn’t know what was going on here. Perhaps this was my manna in the wilderness experience. “We’re going to butcher this deer, before our generous friend thinks otherwise about his gift.”

I started the process of butchering the deer with Deshavi helping me, as Trent stood guard watching the lazy feline. It brought its great head up, every once and a while, to watch us for a moment and then it would flop back down. After about an hour it got up and left the clearing abruptly without any warning.

We finished with butchering the deer and went inside to eat.

I heard something outside about an hour later and got up to look out the window. The tiger was back and he was right beside the window!

He reared up on his back legs and put a paw to either side of the window and we looked each other face to face through the glass. I didn’t move a muscle, as I stared deeply into his cat eyes through the thin panes of glass. The Tigers big tongue came out and he licked the pane of glass with one slurp before getting down and ambling out towards his ball.

I began to breathe again and glancing down I saw a red doe laid out beside what was left of the buck’s carcass. Tears came to my eyes, God was so faithful!

In the height of my despair, in the midst of the wilderness of my life He was still showing me that He cared and that I could trust Him to always provide. I opened the door and with the others help we began the butcher the second deer.

The Tiger stayed around. I watched him as I worked. He approached the big ball, his tail flickering and without warning he suddenly sprung forward upon it biting and scratching at it, while ferociously roaring. He rolled around with the ball in the snow with it clutched by all four paws. The ball popped away and he was up after it tackling it into the snow again. It was like watching a big kitten with a ball of yarn.

As playful as it was, it was still an awesome display of strength and agility that I couldn’t help but be in awe of. I glanced to the side at Deshavi to discover her smiling wistfully at the playful tiger.

“What are you thinking?” I asked softly.

She glanced at me, but shook her head no.

Trent wanted to know too, but he went about finding out with a tease. “If your thinking about asking to bring it along, as a pet, the answer is no.”

Deshavi laughed shaking her head no.

“Well then out with it.” I pressed, as I wanted to know what had brought forth the first laugh that I’d heard from her in a long time.

“I was just thinking how it must have been in the garden before everything went wrong. How it must’ve been possible to approach such a beast as our tiger here, without fear. I’d love nothing more than to scratch his big belly right now and pet him.”

I glanced back out at the tiger, who was sprawled in the snow belly up. I didn’t even like cats, but I had to admit that a belly rub looked tempting on the big tiger at the moment.

“Do you think the miner raised him up from a cub?” Trent asked.

I nodded, “At first I thought the miner did poaching on the side, but now I think he was against it. He probably found this one as a cub beside its mother caught in a trap and decided to raise it instead of letting the poachers have it.”

Trent looked over at me curiously, “Why do you think he wasn’t a poacher? He may have just been raising the cub to a bigger size before killing it for its hide or selling it to a zoo.”

“Because he trained this tiger to know what a trap was and I unwittingly enforced the training, when I sprang the trap with my stick. Another reason being for my hypothesis is that the miner’s leg was snapped by a tiger trap. It’s the kind of revenge that a poacher would take out on someone messing with their trap lines. He likely died of blood poisoning, from the penetration of the rusty metal teeth, of the trap than he did from the broken leg.”

Trent nodded thoughtfully and then rejoined with his own statement, “I’ve done my own investigating while you’ve been out hunting. Our miner was mining for gold. It looks like the seam of it that he was mining was all played out and yet he stayed. Now why do you suppose that he did that?”

“To raise the tiger.” Deshavi responded softly.

Trent nodded, “So he stayed, which means that the gold he mined also stayed. Now where do you think the best place to hide a fortune in gold around here would be?” Trent asked knowingly.

“A tiger’s play toy.” I said, as the truth of the heavy weight of the ball occurred to me. I had just thought it to be sand rattling around inside of it.

“Exactly.” Trent responded. “Now with such a tidy little fortune in gold we could bribe our way out of here if need be.”

I glanced at him pondering his suggestion. Trent wanted to just cut across to the coast and bribe passage out, as opposed to a longer journey to the south. I still liked the longer journey option except for the fact that it appeared that winter had set in for good. Snowflakes were already beginning to fall from the storm I had sensed building up yesterday.

This gold could be a godsend or a trail best left untaken. Which was it?

Having gold would arouse suspicion, but traveling on without reliable shelter and food could be a death sentence all of its own. The enemy would be expecting us, after so long of a chase, to keep heading south. This fortuitous discovery could be just the curveball we needed to make it home or end us up back in prison with no Earthly exit.

The snow abruptly started falling heavier and all traces of the sun were blocked out. The tiger abruptly got up and moved off into the darkness of the forest beyond the small clearing. God had once used ravens to feed Elijah in the wilderness, when he was hiding from the king, now I could add tigers to the list of animal kingdom procurement agent sources.

After disposing of the two carcasses I closed the door of the warm dugout and prepared for a hot meal, as the snow started to fall heavier and heavier.

Chatta looked around at those gathered around the fire. It wasn’t a fire ring filled with happy faces. The faces were vengeful. They had all been given the ultimatum of what each of them could expect for continued failure to capture the escapees.

Chatta had been sure that their queries would travel by way of the coastline and to that end he had concentrated his search efforts there. What kind of fool would head into the mountains and yet two days ago they had gotten a break. A scout had discovered a place where three fires had been made. That had wolf pack confrontation written all over it, which explained why someone would head into the mountains.

They’d used the tigers to throw off the wolves that had been hounding them. If the wolf pack hadn’t diverted them he would have had them long since, but now it made sense why they’d chosen the mountains.

Chatta was well versed with the mysteries of the elusive Siberian tiger, as he had hunted them off and on throughout his life. He knew of only one possible place of shelter in the immediate region. With the amount of snowfall there had been, they were only waiting now by the fire, for a chopper to pick them up in the morning to take them there. Tomorrow, it would all be over tomorrow.

Chapter Eighteen

Blood in the Snow

It had been a week of constant off and on snow during which I decided that it would be best to continue on our way to the south. We had met with no trouble, up till this point in our journey south, so it was best to continue on, as food was no longer a problem. Our tiger companion had brought two more deer by and dropped them off during the course of the week. We were all well rested and healthy and I decided to go on the way we had been. Trent didn’t like it, but he respected my decision and didn’t voice anything to the contrary.

The packs were ready to go and they were definitely heavier with the gold added to them. The ball had been about a third full of gold dust. In this part of the world or anywhere else for that matter it was a fortune. I didn’t care about the wealth of it though. Trent was right in suggesting that the gold could be extremely useful as a bribe and we may yet have need of such an advantage in our journey south. I just wished it didn’t weigh so much.