nt heart.
Yet it was less the courage than his absolute obedience that entered
the man with a charge of feeling that instant. A minute later Skag
took another ten steps to the right.

In the deeper shadows, less than an hour afterward, he struck a match
to the little supper fire a hundred yards up the slope from the mouth
of the lair. Skag then loosened his hunting belt, dropping the weight
from him to the blanket with a sigh of content. The hardware had
chafed him all day and had only been really forgotten in the stresses
of action.

"I didn't pack that gun for tiger," he said softly. "Why, I would as
soon have shot our good Arab, Kala Khan, or put a bullet between Nut
Kut's eyes, as to stop that big fellow bringing young mutton home--to
please her! Won't Carlin love to hear that! Oh, yes, it's been a day,
son, one more day! I've loved it minute by minute, and you've
been--well, I can't think in words, when it comes to that."

The big fellow drowsed in the firelight, his four paws stretched evenly
toward the man.

In the morning and afternoon of the next two days Skag brought water to
the tigress and bathed her shoulder long. On the third day he could
not be sure that the male had left the lair until late afternoon, and
when he finally ventured to the mouth and his eyes grew accustomed to
the darkness within he saw that the tigress was watching him from the
deeper shadows--not prone, but on three feet.

He filled the gourd and weighted it with stones; then backed out.

"We're starting for Hurda to-night, son," he said to Nels. "I've left
her a drink or two, and by the time she needs more, she'll be able to
get to the river herself."

Carlin must have caught the reality of that moment of crisis from
Skag's telling--the moment when the male tiger might have charged but
didn't, because she succeeded in making Malcolm M'Cord see it, too.

"And you say there was no sign from the tiger, but that Hantee Sahib
knew when the instant was past?" the famous marksman repeated curiously.

Carlin nodded.

"But how did he know?"

"Ask him," she said.

"Huh," he muttered. "I might as well enquire of the Dane beastie."

CHAPTER XVI

_Fever Birds_

Carlin had been listless for a day or two. This was several weeks
after her forty-two hours on Mitha Baba. They were still living in
Malcolm M'Cord's bungalow. Skag woke in the night, not with a dream,
but rather with a memory. He was broad awake and r