13 Tiger Adventure Read Free

rope. But it takes a man to shoot a gun.’
    ‘It’s the other way round,’ Hal said. ‘Anybody can pull a trigger. But it takes a bit of skill to throw a lasso. And the difference is that the gun gives you a dead animal, and the lasso gives you a live one.’
    Vic, after grumbling a little more, set out with the lasso over his shoulder.
    Then Roger spoke up. With the wisdom of a fourteen-year-old he scolded his brother five years older. ‘You dumb cluck! You’ll never see that two hundred again. And as for fifty dollars for every wild animal, a caterpillar is a wild animal, and you’ll have to pay him that if he brings one in.’
    ‘Nonsense,’ said Hal. ‘You’ve got to have more faith in human nature. Anyhow, what else could we do? The fine cleaned him out. He had to have something to live on. I’m guessing that he’s a city boy who has never had any experience in real hunting. He needs someone to teach him, and it seems that you and I will have to be the teachers.’
    Hal was right. Vic was a city boy, and like every city boy he longed for adventure. His home was in Cleveland, Ohio, near Western Reserve-Case University. He was a college man if you can call a fellow who has spent only four months in college a college man. One term at university was enough for him. He preferred to roam around Wake Park Lake across the road from the college and to follow a stream through the woods up to the lovely lakes of Shaker Heights. But even this was not enough. He wanted to see the world. So, one night, he helped himself to his father’s money with the excuse that it would have cost M$ father a lot of money to keep him in college, so why not take it and spend it on something even more educational - travel. He left a note saying that if his father had the urge to give him more money it could be sent to him care of the American Embassy in New Delhi, capital of India.
    Then lie walked out, hitch-hiked his way to New York and stowed away in a lifeboat on a freighter bound for Calcutta. His Indian ramblings led him finally to the Gir Forest where he bought a rifle and fancied himself as a great hunter like Jim Corbett or Ernest Hemingway. And here he was, armed with nothing but a silly rope.
    Vic, wandering through the forest, thinking about the meanness of Hal who gave him only two hundred dollars and offered only fifty dollars for every wild animal he brought in, nearly bumped into the largest and shyest deer in India. He didn’t know it was the famous sambar that makes its home on the mountainside four thousand to fourteen thousand feet up, but comes down at times to enjoy the shade of the Gir Forest.
    He saw that the animal had sharply pointed horns. The skin was a dark, smoky brown. The throat was covered with bristles and the tail was long.
    Now, if he only had his gun. He tried to lasso but the animal was already moving away and the rope merely slapped him on the back and fell off.
    Now a chital joined the sambar - Vic knew the chital because he had just killed one the night before. The two deer turned and looked defiantly at their tormentor. Deer stick together, help each other out.
    The sambar was as big as a horse and the chital as big as a pony. Then Vic saw a third deer, but this one was smaller than a rabbit. He was to learn later that it was called a mouse-deer. Vic didn’t know the correct name for it but he gave it a name, Tiny Tim.
    Tiny Tim ran and got squarely between the chital and the sambar. The giant deer lowered its head and licked the hide of its little friend.
    What an opportunity! Vic couldn’t possibly miss all of them. He threw his lasso, hoping it would snare the antlers of the giant or the chital. He didn’t care about Tiny Tim. ft was too small to matter.
    The lasso caught on the branch of a tree. At once a growl came from the same tree. Looking up, Vic saw a snarling leopard. It leaped to the ground and glared at Vic who decided that this was the last moment of his life. Luckily the sambar