Part 6
Cal did not let go of the canvas.
Snake came closer one uneven step at a time, his rifle held steady despite the damage the bear had done to him. He looked less like a man now than a thing dragged out of the woods by hatred. Mud streaked his clothes. His breathing had a wet hitch in it. His eyes, pale and bright, stayed fixed on the tiger.
“Keep pulling,” he said again. “You’re almost useful.”
Cal’s fingers had cramped around the strip of coat sleeve. The tiger’s shoulders were partway out now, black mud sliding off him in heavy folds. His front paws rested on the firmer edge of the bog, but the rest of him was still trapped.
“You won’t get him out of here,” Cal said.
Snake smiled through split lips. “I got farther than my competition.”
“The state police will be here.”
“With what phone?”
Cal glanced at Snake’s belt. His satellite phone was clipped there, smeared with mud.
Snake noticed the look. “After,” he said. “Maybe I let you call after.”
They both knew the lie was there only because Snake enjoyed speaking it.
Cal pulled again. His back seized so sharply he almost dropped to his knees. The canvas stretched, threads popping, but the tiger slid another few inches. One foreleg came free. Then the other. The animal made no sound now. His eyes were open, unfocused, all the wild power of him locked inside a body too cold to obey.
Snake watched with hunger.
Cal thought of Ellen on the other side of the fence. He thought of all the years he had spent turning grief into a locked room and calling the lock discipline. He had hated tigers because hatred asked less of him than sorrow. It did not bring Ellen back. It did not make the world safer. It only kept him alone with the animal that had taken her, even when no tiger stood in front of him at all.
He wrapped the canvas tighter around his fists.
“No,” Snake said, amused. “Don’t get noble on me.”
Cal pulled.
The tiger came free with a wet, heavy sound, rolling onto the bank at Cal’s feet. For a moment the three of them formed a crooked line in the snow and mud: old man, exhausted tiger, wounded trafficker with a rifle. Cal fell backward onto one knee, chest heaving, his hands still locked in the ruined sleeve.
Snake laughed quietly.
“Well done,” he said. “You saved my merchandise.”
He stepped past Cal.
The rifle shifted from Cal’s chest toward the tiger’s head, not to shoot yet, only to claim. Snake looked down at the animal with the satisfaction of a man who had mistaken survival for victory.
“He’s worth more alive,” Snake said. “But if he won’t load, there are buyers who take pieces.”
Cal reached for the shotgun before remembering it lay empty in the mud behind him. The ax was still on the poplar. His knife was gone somewhere in the grass.
Snake saw the movement and turned the rifle back toward him. “Don’t.”
The tiger’s paw lay near Snake’s boot.
Snake nudged it aside with contempt, as if moving a fallen branch out of his path. It was not a hard kick. It did not need to be. The movement carried the smell of Snake’s blood and the pressure of threat over the animal’s face.
The tiger changed.
Not visibly at first. Cal saw it only because he was looking into the animal’s eyes. A dullness cleared. The pupils tightened. The body that had seemed emptied of strength gathered one last reserve from some ancient place below thought.
Snake leaned down, reaching for the strap around the tiger’s shoulders.
The tiger struck.
He did not rise. He did not roar. One front paw whipped upward with terrible speed and caught Snake high beneath the jaw. The rifle flew from his hands and skidded into the mud. Snake dropped backward as if the ground had been cut out from under him.
He did not get up.
For several seconds, Cal could not move. The bog, the trees, the snow, the bodies of men, the animal at his feet, all of it seemed held inside one long breath. He did not feel triumph. He felt only the awful stillness that comes after violence has spent itself and left the living to account for it.
The tiger lay on his side, panting.
Cal crawled to the rifle and pushed it out of reach. Then he took the satellite phone from Snake’s belt with fingers that barely worked. He should have called right away, but his eyes kept returning to the animal he had pulled from the mud.
The tiger looked back.
There was no gratitude in that gaze. Cal was glad for that. Gratitude would have been too human, and he had no right to ask it of him. There was only exhaustion, pain, and the strange, measuring awareness of a creature that had chosen, for one final second, the threat closer to him.
Cal sat in the freezing mud and lowered his head.
When he looked up again, the tiger was moving.
It took him a long time to stand. His front legs trembled first, then locked. His back end dragged, then gathered under him. Mud fell from his ribs. Steam rose from his coat in the cold air.
Cal did not reach for him.
The tiger stepped around Snake’s motionless body and paused near the first dark trees. He turned his head once. His eyes passed over Cal, the bog, the ruined strip of coat sleeve still lying in the grass. Then he limped into the woods. By the time the first sheriff’s lights washed blue across the trees, the tiger was gone…
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