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.