Next-to-Last of the Tiger Men and Mack’s Last Rhino (Two Short Stories) Read online

  “So…you’re a tigrero,” Bunch said. “Is that like a job or a title?”

  “It is…what is word…a calling. Like being a priest.”

  Linda glared at Bunch over her dinner of piranha fillets. “Ignore him, Chris, he’s just tryin’ to piss me off by pickin’ on you.”

  “I would never insult anyone at the dinner table,” Bunch protested with a grin. “So when does she graduate?”

  “Linda has learned all I have to teach,” Christophe said slowly, drinking from his dirty glass. He didn’t look at her. “What she needs to know now, she can only teach herself.”

  “And what’s that?” Bunch asked.

  Christophe spoke to Bunch but looked at Linda. “That she is more valuable than the tigre.”

  Linda scowled at them both. “It ain’t polite to psychoanalyze someone while they’re in the room, y’know.”

  “I don’t know that word,” Christophe said. “Your language should be thinned out. Too many complicated words.”

  “I agree,” Bunch said, and held out his glass for a refill. The canha tasted like warm, flat Sprite. “We got everything backwards in the US. The language is too fat and the chicks are too thin.”

  Christophe blinked red eyes. “You have a problem with skinny chickens in America?”

  “No, chicks. Girls. Like Linda. Look at her. She’s a skeleton with hair.”

  “Sim,” Christophe agreed. “She is too thin.”

  “Yeah, I like a woman you can grab onto.”

  “My first wife was like that, smooth and round as—”

  Suddenly Linda looked up. “Quiet, y’all. Someone’s comin’.”

  The words had barely left her lips before the two dogs scurried out from under the bed and went to the door. They growled in unison, like small lawn mowers.

  Bunch casually took his shotgun from the corner where it rested, while Linda scooped up her spear from the floor. They moved to opposite sides of the door. Christophe noted the ease with which they fell into their established roles without a single word exchanged. Bunch stayed out of sight as Linda pushed the jaguar skin aside.

  “It’s just a horse,” Linda said. Bunch followed her outside into the twilight.

  An old, swaybacked farm horse walked slowly up the path toward the shack. At first they saw no rider, then Bunch realized that what he thought was a rumpled saddle blanket was actually a human form sprawled across the horse’s back.

  Christophe joined them, weaving a little. “That is Constante’s old mare,” he said. “He and his wife have a farm down the road, between here and Xillora.”

  The horse reached them and stopped. Bunch’s rental mount whinnied a greeting. Bunch handed the newcomer’s reins to Christophe and stepped closer to the rider. He noticed the horse’s chest was stained with sweaty foam from a gallop that it apparently gave up before it reached them.

  The figure on the horse was an unconscious and very young woman. Bunch picked up her tiny, dangling hand and winced as he felt the warm blood that dripped from her fingertips. “She’s hurt.”

  “So’s the horse,” Linda said. On the opposite flank from Bunch, five deep slashes gouged the thick hide. Flies already buzzed in and out of them, laying their eggs and sucking up any available juices.

  Bunch reached up to pull the injured woman gently off the horse. When his hand touched her shoulder, she screamed. The horse reared, and one flailing hoof caught the unwary Christophe in the temple.

  “Shit!” Bunch yelled. He caught the girl as she tumbled from the horse, then dropped to the ground protectively on top of her. Linda grabbed the reins and turned the horse away from Bunch and Christophe. When the horse was clear, Linda threw the reins in the air, and the panicked animal galloped away down the trail.

  Linda carried Christophe inside and placed him on the old mattress he used for a bed. She covered him and checked his pupils. They were the same size, and his pulse was steady. She had no other way to gauge how seriously he’d been hurt, and they were hours from the nearest modern town. His recovery was out of her hands; it was, as Christophe would have said, in the hands—paws—of the Grande Jaguar.

  Bunch gently placed the injured girl facedown on the table. She couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen, although he noted her wedding ring. And they make fun of us in the South, he thought wryly. He stripped the tattered remains of her dress away and whistled when he saw her injuries. Her back was slashed so deeply, her scapula peeked out. “Lemme guess, a jaguar did this?”

  Linda peered over his shoulder and nodded. “A damn monster, too. Look how far apart those claw marks are. Christ, she should be dead.”

  “The night is young. Where’s the first-aid kit?”

  “Under the table. Everything’s under the table here.” She struck a match and lit the two oil lamps, since it was now almost fully dark outside. “Can I help?”

  “Reckon I’ve got it under control, I’ve stitched up enough people,” Bunch said as he swabbed the huge slashes with cotton balls soaked in hydrogen peroxide. “Bleedin’s almost stopped. Just hope it ain’t septic yet.”

  Bunch continued cleaning the wounds. Linda watched for a moment, satisfied that he did not in fact need her help, and walked back outside.

  Dust still filled the air from the horse’s panic. She walked to the top of the hill and peered up at the circle of sky above the treetops. The stars were much more dense here than in North America, and the constellations mostly unfamiliar. As unfamiliar, she thought, as she now was to herself.

  Capricious nature had taken her greatest asset, her self-confidence. Capturing the anteater should have been so simple, would have been so simple, if not for the typically rotten fortune all African hunters knew intimately. Bunch’s luck had always worked to counteract the Dark Continent’s positively Wagnerian variation on Murphy’s Law, but this time he was at home in Louisiana and Linda was on her own.

  She shot the anteater with a tranquilizer dart, then lost it for thirty minutes—the length of time the tranquilizer was designed to last. When she and her team finally found it again, she knew to fire a second dart to hold it, just as she always fired an insurance shot to make sure an animal was dead. The veterinarian who accompanied them could handle any potential overdose. But she’d jumped off the jeep and walked right over to tie the animal’s feet without even touching her gun, so engrossed in a joke she was telling that she didn’t pay attention. After all, she was Linda Fontana, the “Babe in the Woods.” She was practically a superhero.

  And the tranquilizer had worn off.

  Anteaters, by definition, feed on some of the smallest creatures in the world. But to get to those creatures deep in their burrows or protected by concrete-solid mounds, they were endowed by nature with a set of claws rivaling any of the big cats’. Linda had slipped the first loop of rope around one of those massive paws when the groggy, panicked anteater swung another one right at her head.

  Her instincts were second to none. She’d unconsciously felt the animal’s muscles move, and her own responded to throw her back out of the way. But one claw, one individual razor-sharp talon, caught the side of her face and neck. Blood spurted in great pulses from where the claw nicked her carotid artery.

  Nature’s lessons in humility usually ended in death, but this time luck watched over Linda, not Bunch. The veterinarian shot her up with just enough animal tranquilizer to slow her heart and prevent her from bleeding to death until they could reach medical help. And now Nature, after properly chastising Linda, had given her a chance at redemption: tackling a killer jaguar alone, with nothing but a spear, was something only a fully recovered, fully confident Linda Fontana could manage.

  But Christophe’s words cut through that confidence she clung to so desperately. What she needs to know now, she can only teach herself…that she is more valuable than the tigre.

  The girl awoke around midnight, alerting Linda and Bunch with a whimper. Bunch knelt so that she could see his face. “Hi, relax. You’re safe. Do you speak
English?”

  Her eyes were big, brown, and full of the kind of shocked numbness Bunch had seen way too often. She still lay facedown on the table and tried to press herself into the wood. Linda gently brushed a strand of black hair from her face.

  “Hi,” she said softly. “I’m Linda. Que é seu nome?”

  “Força,” she whispered.

  “Força?” Bunch repeated. “Is that what they call a sports car down here?”

  “It means ‘strength,’ you jackass,” Linda snapped. “I’d say the name fits—she got mauled by a jaguar and still came for help, that’s pretty damn strong.” Linda leaned closer to the girl and asked, “Você veio ver o Señor Joaquim?”

  Força’s head twitched in a nod.

  “Well, he’s injured…he’s ferido. I’m his pupil. Tell me what happened.”

  The girl still didn’t respond. “Tigre?” Linda prompted. “Jaguar?”

  Força trembled violently, rattling the table against the floor. Linda took the girl’s hand and said gently in Portuguese, “Tell me what happened. I can help.” For the first time in weeks, Linda’s gaze was strong and steady. The paralyzing terror left Força’s eyes, and she managed to tell her story.

  She and her young husband, Constante, owned a small farm in a dry valley a mile away. Since they had only a handful of cattle, every animal was precious. The previous month, a jaguar took one of their cows, and they wrote it off as bad luck. But in the past seven days, the jaguar had come back and decimated their tiny herd. Constante had gone off to kill it and had not returned. Força searched for him and found the jaguar instead, barely escaping its ambush. She did not know what had become of her husband.

  Once she’d told her story, she passed out again. But her pulse and breathing were regular and strong, and she had not developed a fever.

  Linda didn’t look at Bunch, but she didn’t have to. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said with certainty.

  Linda spun and put her whole weight behind a short punch aimed right at Bunch’s jaw. It connected with a solid thunk that she felt clear down her spine. He fell backward through the door, tearing down the jaguar skin, and landed on the ground outside with a thud.

  He glared up at her and yelled, “What the hell was that for?!”

  “I was tryin’ to knock you out so you wouldn’t follow me!” she snapped petulantly. “How hard is that head of yours, anyway?”

  “You ain’t goin’ after a man-eating jaguar without me,” Bunch said as he stood. “And I get to punch you back when this is over.”

  Linda ran a hand through her hair. A million conflicting emotions raced at full throttle through her mind. “This is my business, Bunch,” she said earnestly. “Not yours. Mine.”

  “Uh-uh, and I’ll tell you why. If I’d been there in Africa, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and you know it. We’re a team, and I let you down.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then laughed. “As hard as this is for your ego to take, Bunch, this has nothing to do with you. Besides, you were sick—”

  “I didn’t come all this way just ’cause your office manager couldn’t find the staples,” he snapped, “or to let you punch me out, no matter how much you might enjoy it. You’re here to make up for a mistake you made, and well…so am I.”

  Linda met his eyes. Embarrassed, furious with herself, she realized Bunch was somehow an essential part of her. Another part she had lost. “Shit,” she muttered.

  As if he knew her thoughts, he smiled and winked.

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re a pain.”

  Christophe’s two dogs, Leak and Serpiente, looked on expectantly as Linda took their leashes from the wall pegs at sunrise. Leak’s indeterminate origins led back through five generations of jaguar tracking on her mother’s side; the fathers were anyone’s guess. Serpiente, mostly dachshund, had the breed’s long body but an abnormally short face. They’d been trained since puphood for one skill, and they knew the leashes meant it was time to go to work. Linda snapped the eight-foot leads to the collars.

  She checked the spearhead and shaft of her zagaya. The weapon was in perfect shape, honed to her grip and throw by hours of practice. She double-checked the crossbar near the tip; this piece prevented the impaled cat from sliding all the way down the spear shaft to the hunter.

  In case Christophe awoke, Linda pinned an explanation to the jaguar-skin door. She knew he’d probably be furious, since the dogs were his only truly prized possessions, but she needed their expertise. Besides, the jaguar might kill a dozen people before Christophe recovered enough to hunt it himself.

  She also tucked the canha jug under his arm. His head would hurt plenty without the benefit of the hangover he would surely have if he didn’t get his usual canha when he woke up.

  They rode double on Bunch’s horse, the leashed dogs trotting obediently alongside, and followed Força’s directions to her farm outside Xillora. They bypassed the village to avoid awkward questions; news of a man-eating jaguar would have the same effect as shark rumors at a seaside resort. The difference was that it was unlikely people might accidentally encounter the shark as they fled from the beach.

  Constante and Força’s “ranch” was in even worse shape than Christophe’s shack. A collapsed, broken fence bordered the pitiful little garden and formed an oblong attempt at a corral. A couple of chickens poked around the yard, but there was no sign of any other domestic animals.

  They dismounted, and Bunch tied the horse to the fence. Serpiente and Leak tugged at their leashes. An eerie silence, familiar to both dogs and hunters, hung in the heavy air around them. Something lethal prowled nearby.

  Bunch loaded extra shells into loops on his belt, and he cracked the breach to verify the shotgun was still loaded. The metallic noise echoed off the silent trees and slopes. Linda stripped off her shirt so that nothing encumbered her smooth, well-practiced throws and jabs. Her white athletic bra was already damp with sweat.

  They found the first cow from its smell. Despite decomposition, the claw and fang marks in its hide were still clear. No meat had been taken; the jaguar had killed this cow just for the hell of it. Those who’d never dealt with animals firsthand claimed big cats didn’t do that, but it wasn’t the first time Linda and Bunch had seen this malicious behavior.

  Paw prints marked the muddy ground around the cow. The frequent rains had obliterated detail, but the cat’s immense size remained obvious. It didn’t leave much hope for Constante.

  The tracks led off to the west, toward the marsh that surrounded the property on three sides. The thick, low brush and impassable soggy ground were a perfect base for the cat’s hit-and-run attacks. Leak and Serpiente sniffed at the tracks and made no sound except for almost inaudible rumbling. Linda unsnapped the leashes.

  Instantly the dogs took off toward the west, disappearing silently into the trees and mist. Linda and Bunch trotted after them.

  Linda’s breath drew smoothly, and her skin glistened with easy perspiration. She’d trained for three months for this exact moment. Her eyes watched the ground ahead for obstacles, while her peripheral senses stayed alert for any movement. After a lifetime of tracking animals, she plainly saw the trail the dogs pursued. Even if it wasn’t fresh, it would surely cross a newer one and eventually lead them to the source. The jaguar wouldn’t abandon such a fertile hunting ground.

  The annoyed sound of several urubu vultures filled the air as Linda came around a thick stand of trees. She saw the two dogs ahead, worrying at something on the ground, as the big birds flapped away into the sky. She stopped when she realized what it was, and Bunch nearly ran into her.

  The insects that swarmed Constante’s body engulfed the dogs if they got too close, which made them yip in annoyance. Linda stared at the remains, her eyes involuntarily picking out the fatal bite wounds. The sheer size of the fang holes in the skull made her heart pound painfully against her chest.

  “You okay?” Bunch asked quietly.

  “I…” she started to say
, then everything went blurry. At first she thought she was passing out; then she realized, with a start of pure surprise, that she was crying. Her bottom lip trembled like a small child’s as big, swollen tears gushed down her face.

  Bunch stared. He’d seen Linda cry only a few times, and always after the crisis, never during. He didn’t know what to do. “Linda, wow, do you need to sit down or—?”

  She turned to him. Through the teary haze, she saw the compassion and gentleness in his eyes that were always there but that she never acknowledged. The depth of their friendship—the realization that he had sought her out in the depths of Amazonia for no reason other than their friendship—struck her as deeply as the zagaya spear did its prey. And all the fears and doubts she’d kept choked down since the anteater incident flooded out of her with her tears.

  “Ah. Got it,” he said, understanding as he always did the conflicting emotions within her. “Dang, here we were in the middle of a perfectly good Johnny Weissmuller movie, and you wanna turn it into a chick flick. Just don’t hug me, okay?”

  “Deal,” she said, and wiped at her nose and eyes.

  Suddenly the dogs began to growl, took a few steps away from the body, then bolted into the trees. Linda exchanged a glance with Bunch and took off after them. Knowing how important this hunt was to her, Bunch let her get a few seconds ahead, enough so that she vanished into the opaque greenery. He was about to run after her, but something brought him up short.

  It was the worst feeling imaginable for a solitary hunter in unfamiliar surroundings. Something was watching him from behind.

  A deep, purring growl rumbled very close.

  Bunch threw himself forward onto the ground and rolled onto his back as a red-and-gold blur seemingly the size of a station wagon shot over him, through the very air he’d just vacated. He rolled up on one knee, the shotgun ready at his waist, and confronted the largest jaguar imaginable, one old and smart enough to have doubled back on its own trail to ambush any pursuers.