Leopard Adventure

  ‘We’re getting close,’ he said to the others, who were strung out behind him. ‘I think the leopard is in that clump of oak trees.’

  Boris the Dog thought so too. He took it as a sign that it was time to run away. Amazon made a grab for his collar, but the dog was too fast.

  ‘Good riddance,’ said Frazer.

  Some time earlier, Amba had finally found what he was looking for.

  There, in front of him, were the female leopard and her two cubs.

  So, she thought she was clever, evading him for all this time. The den was a good one: the hollowed-out trunk of a once-mighty fallen larch. Well, now he had her, and those mewling cubs of hers, playing together in the sunshine.

  But Amba had to be very careful. A leopard was a formidable opponent. Not as dangerous, perhaps, as a full-grown brown bear, but capable, nevertheless, of inflicting serious damage with claw and tooth. Especially, of course, when she was defending her young. So there was no wild leap from the sly old tiger. He crept through the undergrowth so slowly that he looked to be perfectly immobile, even as he moved.

  And the leopard mother was sleepy. She had been up all night hunting. Normally her senses were so acute that not even a tiger would have been able to creep up on her.

  Amba was close now.

  He decided that this time he would go for the quick killing bite to the back of the neck – he didn’t want to be anywhere near those claws; if he went for the throat grip the leopard might do to him what he had done to the bear.

  It was time. He could smell her now – smell the hateful odour of a rival killer. A rival killer who was now going to play the much more satisfying role of … meal.

  He leapt.

  It was a good leap.

  It was better than good – it was perfect.

  He was going to land with his front claws sinking into the shoulders, and a micro-second later his canine teeth – ten centimetres of sharp white murder – would cut through the hair and skin, and then sever the leopard’s spine, bringing instant death.

  And then what fun it would be to toy with those cubs a little before he ate them too.

  But just in that moment before he landed he noticed something ever so slightly odd about this leopard.

  Odd, and somehow wrong …

  Makha and Dersu were almost as silent as the tiger as they crept through the forest. Frazer and Amazon couldn’t match their stealth, but they did their best.

  Frazer had turned the sound off on the radio receiver and was relying on the red lights to direct them: all five lights were blazing now.

  Amazon felt her pulse race, and tried to control it, as she knew that staying calm was the secret of accurate shooting. She had the X-Ark, loaded up with a fresh carbon dioxide canister and a tranq dart. There might only be one chance, and she had to take it.

  Makha put up his hand, and they all stopped dead. Then the old man turned and beckoned Amazon and Frazer forward. With infinite care he opened up a gap in the leaves and pointed a stubby finger.

  Amazon couldn’t see anything for a moment, and so she brought the X-Ark’s telescopic sight up to her eye. Everything was blurry. She twisted the focus ring.

  And then suddenly her eye found another eye: closed.

  It didn’t look right. It didn’t seem at all leopardy. And then the eye opened, yellow and intense and angry. It looked straight back at Amazon, and Amazon realized that this was no leopard.

  It was a tiger.

  An angry tiger, just woken from a fitful sleep.

  An angry tiger with scratches all over its face, as if it had recently been in a serious fight.

  With a savage snarl the tiger sprang towards her.

  ‘Shoot now!’ yelled Frazer, who, not looking through the scope, had a wider view of what was going on.

  The tiger was twenty metres away, and covering the ground with astonishing speed.

  Amazon had no time to think.

  She found the tiger’s shoulder in the scope and pulled the trigger.

  She was sure that her aim was good, but still the tiger came on.

  Had she missed? If she had, the consequences would be fatal. It was leaping; it would land among them, perhaps even right on top of Amazon. And then she felt a hard shove. It was Frazer. He’d pushed her aside, and the movement had placed him right under the claws.

  Frazer’s thinking had been clear. On this, her first mission, Amazon was under his protection, and if anyone was going to get mauled it wasn’t going to be her. Well, that’s how he would have explained it. In fact, he acted without any real thought at all, other than the selfless urge to protect.

  From the ground, Amazon saw a flash as Makha, suddenly a man again in his prime, pulled out his long hunting knife. He was going to fight the fiend hand-to-claw.

  She wanted to cry out, ‘No!’ She did not want either Frazer or the old man or even the tiger to be hurt. But nor did she want to die.

  And nor did Frazer. His eye had also caught the glint of Makha’s knife, so all he saw was a blur of black and gold as the tiger landed right in front of him. Instinctively, he hurled himself backwards, away from the claws and teeth, but as he fell he cracked his head on a rock.

  In books and films you often see people knocked unconscious with a blow to the head. In fact it’s very hard to knock someone out, and if you do there’s a very good chance you’ll kill them.

  So Frazer wasn’t knocked out by the crack to his skull, but he was dazed, and his head filled with light like an extraordinarily intense, if short-lived, firework display.

  But he was a fighter, and, through the fug that had invaded his brain after the fireworks went out, he kicked and punched frantically. And then he realized that he was kicking and punching at thin air.

  He opened his eyes.

  Amazon and Dersu were looking at him, while Makha stood over the body of the tiger lying at Frazer’s feet.

  For a second he thought that the old man had killed the beast, which filled him with as much misery as relief. He was supposed to be an animal saviour, not killer.

  And then he saw the dart in the tiger’s shoulder.

  ‘Good shot, Zonnie,’ he said, smiling through the pain.

  ‘Believe me,’ Amazon replied, ‘if I could have arranged it so that I saved your life by shooting you in the butt, then I would have.’

  Frazer stood up and felt gingerly at the back of his head. There was a lump the size of a quail’s egg, but no blood. He felt good for a couple of seconds, and then his brain began to work.

  Tiger.

  Not leopard.

  How?

  The four of them now stood round the magnificent animal, snoring contentedly. Or at least it sounded contented …

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said, although as soon as the words were out he’d begun to.

  ‘Does it mean that the leopard is still somewhere close?’ said Amazon.

  ‘I’ve a horrible feeling it does,’ replied Frazer.

  He picked up the radio receiver and pointed the aerial at the tiger. As soon as he flicked the ‘on’ switch, all five red lights burst into life and the unit issued forth a manic bleeping. Even though he already knew what this meant, Frazer couldn’t resist the morbid urge to move the aerial over the tiger’s belly. The beeps increased to the point where Frazer thought the unit was going to blow.

  Frazer and Amazon looked at each other.

  ‘Well,’ said Frazer. ‘We found her.’

  Amazon’s eyes were wet with tears. ‘All this for nothing.’

  There was a silence of a couple of seconds, and then Dersu spoke up.

  ‘The leopard had cubs.’

  ‘But wouldn’t the tiger have killed the cubs?’ There was hope in Amazon’s voice, but the hope was as fragile as a thread of spider’s silk.

  ‘Mother fight well,’ said Dersu, pointing at the scratches on the face of the tiger, and at some deeper gashes on the side. ‘Cubs may have been able to run away. If this is so, then my grandfather will find t
hem.’

  ‘What shall we do with this big guy?’ Frazer said, more to himself than anyone else.

  ‘I can smell the fire,’ said Amazon. ‘If we leave him here he may burn …’

  It was true. The smell of smoke was stronger than ever.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Frazer replied. ‘The tranquillizer will only keep him under for half an hour. The flames won’t be here by then. If he’s got any sense, he’ll get out of here. Like Bob Doolins said, tigers are excellent swimmers.’

  Dersu spoke with Makha. Then he turned to the others. ‘My grandfather does not think that Amba will run away. He thinks that now his spirit desires revenge. The tiger’s spirit is great and noble, but if he is offended, if his … honour is at stake, then he is an enemy without pity. My grandfather says that this is the same tiger with whom he had a conversation back at his home. He does not think that Amba will forgive.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ said Amazon, horrified by what she thought Dersu was proposing.

  Dersu shrugged. ‘My people respect Amba. But a human life is worth more than the life of even as great an animal as the tiger. Back when my father was young, we would have killed the tiger, and apologized to his spirit, and to the Great Spirit, and to the spirit of the fire. So, yes, we would have killed him. But this is not now our way. My grandfather says only that we must be careful.’

  ‘I think we’ve talked enough,’ said Frazer, putting the now redundant radio receiver back in his pack. ‘Let’s find those cubs.’

  Makha scanned the ground. In a few seconds he had found the tiger’s footprints in a patch of soft earth. He said something in his own language. Amazon and Frazer understood it without the need for a translation.

  ‘This way.’

  Now that the radio tracking device was put aside, the old hunter was again in his element. He led them on, finding here a broken blade of grass, there the hint of a paw print. And sometimes a spot of blood – although whether the blood was from the unfortunate leopard or the wounded tiger, not even Makha could tell.

  And then, after about half an hour, the trail went cold. Makha searched methodically, but he could find nothing.

  ‘Sometimes this can happen,’ said Dersu. ‘In winter always there is a trail, but now … it is hard.’

  Amazon looked at Frazer. ‘We’ve got to find the cubs. I can’t bear it if we don’t.’

  As his grandfather scanned the ground back and forth, Dersu began to look thoughtful.

  ‘I think that I would like to tell you about my father.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said Amazon. ‘I mean if it’s too painful …’

  ‘It is painful, but it is necessary. My mother and father were very poor. My father earned money by finding wild ginseng, but the forest was empty of ginseng. And he looked around, and saw that our people, the Udege, as well as the other tribes, the Nanai and the Ulch and the Oroch, were dying. He did not want me to grow up like him, as a poor man from a dying people in a hard country.

  ‘He wanted to send me to school in Moscow so that I could be a teacher or a scientist or some such person. But he had to get the money – a lot of money. So he went into the forest with his gun. My grandfather tried to stop him, but he could not. And my father tracked a tiger. And my father killed the tiger. He sold the tiger’s bones to the Chinese, and the skin to a Russian general in Vladivostok, and with the money he sent me away to school, although I did not want to go.

  ‘Because of what he did, my father was shunned by our people. Even my grandfather would not talk to him. And so he went to live in Vladivostok to hide his shame in the crowd. And because he was alone he found comfort in vodka. And one winter morning he was found, lying in the street, frozen to death.

  ‘This is why my grandfather and I try now to protect the forest, to atone for what my father did. I came back from school. I had learnt much, but also forgotten much. My grandfather and grandmother looked after me, and my grandfather taught me again the ways of the forest. This is my story, and the story of my father.’

  Amazon’s eyes were glistening. She wanted to say something, but she could not speak. It was too sad. Surprisingly, it was Frazer who spoke up.

  ‘Dersu, if we all carried around the sins of our fathers on our backs, then we’d all look like your grandmother. You’ve got your own life to lead, and it looks to me that you’re making a good job of it. And I’ve just had a brilliant idea. Why don’t you –’

  Frazer never finished his sentence, for at that moment they heard heavy steps, followed by a snuffling noise. For a moment Amazon thought that it might be the tiger, woken from its sleep and back on the warpath. But that fear didn’t last long.

  ‘Boris the Dog,’ she groaned as the big dog came into view. But she still couldn’t stop herself from smiling a little, and she squeezed his fat face and stroked his floppy ears, despite the drool that fell on her.

  The big cowardly dog had returned, no doubt feeling that it was safer to be in company in the woods.

  ‘I know he’s about as useless as a dog can get,’ said Frazer thoughtfully, ‘but couldn’t he employ that big wet nose of his to sniff out the trail?’

  ‘Worth a try,’ said Amazon without much enthusiasm. Boris wasn’t the sort of dog to inspire hope.

  She took hold of him firmly by the collar.

  ‘Come on, then, Boris, show us what you can do.’

  Boris looked at her uncomprehendingly, with his head on one side.

  ‘Leopard,’ she tried.

  Nothing.

  So she made a growling noise, trying to imitate a leopard’s roar.

  Still it didn’t sink in.

  ‘You might as well try to teach the dumb mutt algebra,’ grumbled Frazer.

  Makha was watching, half amused. Then Dersu spoke to his grandfather, explaining what was going on. The old tracker smiled and put his hands to his mouth. He then did a perfect leopard roar.

  The effect on Boris was immediate: he tried to run away. Luckily Amazon still had a good grip on his collar.

  Despite his algebra crack, Frazer decided to have a go.

  ‘Not big,’ he said to the dog, speaking very slowly and stretching out his arms wide. ‘Small. Baby.’ He brought his hands closer together to indicate what he meant.

  Amazon tutted loudly. It was her turn to be sarcastic. ‘Why not try spelling it out,’ she said. ‘S-M-A-L-L.’

  Of course it may just have been chance, or perhaps one of the circuits in the dog’s brain fired randomly, but just then Boris did look more alert. He started to sniff at the forest floor. He made one of his yawning whines, dribbled and drooled even more than usual, and started to drag Amazon along.

  ‘Maybe Boris isn’t so stupid after all,’ said Frazer.

  The four of them followed the dog for a couple of hundred metres. And then Makha stopped. He put his hand to his ear. They all listened. And, yes, there was a mewling sound, somewhere close.

  Boris heard it too, and reverted back to coward mode. Even a baby leopard was too much leopard for him, and once again he ran away.

  If they’d been paying closer attention, Amazon and Frazer might have noticed something slightly different about this latest act of cowardice, but they were already following the sound. It led them to a fallen tree, rotten and hollow. The sound came from within.

  Frazer knew that in normal circumstances what they were doing now would be deadly dangerous. A mother leopard would kill and kill again to protect her young. But the mother leopard was dead, and their mission was now to save the cubs. He reached blindly into the hollow trunk and felt the soft fur of a cub. He also felt a sharp scratch, and pulled his hand out.

  ‘Feisty!’ he said, smiling ruefully. He sucked at the scratch, which wasn’t bad, and reached again, more carefully this time, into the log. He found the scruff, and pulled out one of the cubs.

  Amazon could not stop herself from sighing at the sight of the beautiful little creature. It was a boy, and he seemed to think that it was his job to protect hi
s sister, even though she was bigger and stronger than him. He growled and batted at them with his paws, and tried to nip at Frazer’s fingers with his needle-sharp teeth.

  ‘Give him here,’ said Amazon, and Frazer was pleased to let the little fighter go.

  As soon as he was in Amazon’s arms, the cub relaxed. The truth was that he was cold and lonely and missed his mother, and somehow he knew that the creature holding him now would not harm him.

  Frazer reached in for the other cub. She took to Frazer just as her brother had taken to Amazon.

  Amazon’s cub started to suck at her finger. Its tongue was rough, and tickled, but the sensation was delicious.

  ‘Look, they’re starving,’ she said. ‘Is there anything we can give them?’

  Frazer was about to reply that he had some powdered milk in his pack, which they could mix up, and that perhaps it would do until they found something better. However, before he had the chance to speak, another voice, booming and huge, came from behind them.

  ‘Anything you can give? Why, yes, give them to me, ha ha.’

  Amazon spun round and saw the grinning face of Boris, and the drooling, treacherous face of Boris the Dog, who had clearly led his true master back to them.

  Boris the man looked dirty and dishevelled, and the part of his face not already covered by his huge moustache was thickly crusted with black stubble. She also noticed that he had a deep cut over one eye, still oozing a little blood.

  But it wasn’t the face that caught her attention. It was the gun – Boris’s rifle – that was pointing at her chest. Two more men loomed up at Boris’s side. Amazon hadn’t seen these guys before. They were dressed in the scruffy clothes of hunters who had apparently been in the woods for some time, but something about their silent menace and quiet efficiency made Amazon think that these were professionals, and not weekend hunters out to bag a deer for the pot. One had an AK-47 assault rifle, and the other carried a pump-action shotgun.

  Boris the Dog fawned and frolicked around Boris the man.