Wild Country

Chapter Thirty-Six

The great boar had fed well on Garner land, wandering for days as he pleased and leaping barbed wire when he pleased, without taking a single animal the owner would miss. Bullsnake, rattler, succulent herb shoots, cattail roots at a pool fed by a creeklet. Ba'al had begun to avoid taking sheep and cattle when ranging over Wild Country with Childe on his back, and by now he was accustomed to a meat selection that ran heavily to varmints. Like most big omnivores he could thrive on any diet.

But he had bedded in high grasses near the pool, and the soil was soft enough to take an impression, and those impressions included dewclaw marks that lay at a ninety-degree angle to the prints of the hornlike hooves. To Cam Concannon, checking out the water thereabouts, it said "boar." But those hoofprints spanned as large as a man's open hand and that, in big block letters, said BA'AL.

Armed with instinct and experience, Ba'al knew the signs of unseasonably warm weather ahead — perhaps a few more hot days where he could bask in the sun and snore without a womanchild near to kick him for the noise. There was much to be said for traveling alone.

He was not alone for long. Ba'al could not know that Lieutenant Alec Wardrop had used his radio to arrange for a horse van, paying Garner Ranch a premium to meet him at the boundary of WCS land. It saved the hunter a half-day's ride and, by midafternoon, Wardrop had seen the huge prints. The cautious side of Wardrop's nature put chillbumps on his neck and arms. If those prints could be believed, he was hunting a beast whose head would send glad cries down musty halls in the British Museum. Unless it killed him first.

Should he try to interest Garner's ranch foreman in the hunt? Wardrop sensed that the man might cut the hunt short with gunfire, and from brief conversation he knew that Concannon was not all that familiar with Russian boar. No, this was his quest; his and the barb's. Ugly as a full chamber pot, still the little Spanish Barb had shown his mettle with two average boar on WCS land. Wardrop waved as Concannon steered the horse van back to an old wagon trail, and let the barb drink his fill at the creek. Then he guided his mount to the south a bit, following the lip of the ravine until it became a valley filled with scrub oak and cedar. Twice he flushed wild turkey, birds that sneaked through the underbrush like quail, then finally burst into the air like gigantic pheasant. They seemed very unlike the stupid domestic bird, with intelligence to match their size. From time to time, Wardrop idly wondered whether this heraldic boar might also be wiser than the normal-sized game of his experience.

Wardrop's excitement grew when he spotted more prints, inspected the chewed bases of uprooted shrubs near a limestone seep. One of the vast prints was slowly filling with water. Wardrop placed his splayed hand over the print and shuddered with excitement. He judged that print had been made within the hour, eyed the westering sun, and remounted quickly, expecting to raise his quarry before dark.

No joy. At dusk, Wardrop stood on a hilltop and scanned the valley with his pocket monocular. Somewhere out there below him, he felt sure, the Wardrop Trophy — he was already labeling it in his mind — was preparing to bed down. Or perhaps not; this boar was known to be a night marauder. It might use the tactics of Bengal tiger, he thought, feeling his hackles rise, and slowly scanned in a full circle. The Bengal was capable of laying down a spoor, then doubling back on a parallel course to ambush the hunter.

Uneasy about this possibility, Wardrop turned back. He had seen a rickety contraption with a platform nailed high in a medium-sized oak, now some distance behind. He found the deer blind again with more relief than he liked to admit. He hobbled the barb and let it graze, hanging his tack neatly in lower branches that spread like outflung arms from the oak trunk. The floor slanted, but with his bag inflated and a pouchful of steak and kidney pie in his belly, Wardrop managed nicely.

Except for the damned barb.

Several times that night, Wardrop heard the barb snort; heard hoofbeats drumming, not very effectively because of the hobbles. First one direction, then another. Because he kept that empty food pouch inside the deer blind, its own musky odor masked the stink of boar that the barb was smelling. And hearing.

Ba'al took his sweet time studying the stranger. The boar had slept earlier in the evening; would amble away to sleep again before morning, if nothing turned up to interest him more. He saw the shadowy haste of the little horse in the darkness; noted that it seemed to be lame; circled around to sample the wind from a better quarter. His nose told him that only one frightened horse and one relaxed rider were near. No stink of gun oil or powder residue, either, so he found nothing to arouse his anger. Ba'al decided against climbing into the lower branches of the oak for a look into the clapboard shed, though he had found it simple enough to do in the past. Let them go their way; he had made peace with one man and had grown wise enough, with age, to avoid wars without good reason.

So Alec Wardrop slept on and awoke refreshed. He never learned what it would have been like to feel the oak shaking, to rise from his mummybag in the dead of night far from any help and see peering in at him, in faint moonlight, the head of hell's own sergeant at arms.

Wardrop pulled the thermal tab on a tea bulb and waited for it to heat, stripping the wrap from slabs of herring and biscuit, and finished his breakfast before retrieving the barb. It was very near, still nervous as a nanny, and did not settle down until he had ridden it for several kilometers. Presently it began to misbehave again, and a few minutes later he knew why. He could smell the rank odor of pig. With years of experience in the breed, Wardrop knew the kinds of cover a Russian boar favored and knew also that he was, for the moment, on poorly chosen ground. When he saw the tracks again, they led to a higher elevation. Wardrop urged the barb up an animal trail, hearing it grunt with the effort. Ba'al was listening to it, too.

Ba'al had known for some time that the man was near, and swung up on the hillside for a look. Below, trotting across the meadow on his track, was the ugly little horse with its tall rider. He decided that the horse had lied; it was not lame at all. Something starlike gleamed in the sun above the man, something like a straight tusk of steel on a slender pole. Ba'al thought about that. If a thousand-pound boar can chuckle, perhaps that was the sound deep in his throat.

Wary as he was, Alec Wardrop did not know he was near his quarry until the barb shied, dancing, with a whinny of protest. He swung the reins, urging the barb to continue wheeling around, and then saw what was behind him; what he had passed moments before without sensing it because the wind was not in his favor. The barb saw it too, and screamed like a woman.

Ba'al had squatted low behind a stone outcrop to let them pass, then placed his forehooves on the rock and thrust up with his hindquarters. Alec Wardrop whirled and saw this apparition standing on its hind legs, its ears pricked forward, the yellow-red eyes glittering. It stood as high as his own head even while he was in the saddle, and it watched quietly as Wardrop fought the barb's panic.

The horse bolted, taking most of Wardrop's concentration, but he regained control within thirty yards. Wardrop's good sense told him to give the barb its head, let it run clear to San Antonio if it could. But then one end of the kerchief swept across Wardrop's face, a scarlet reminder, and then he shrugged the lance from his back and made the barb face its terror.

Then, too, Ba'al saw a threat he could appreciate in his own way. Wardrop held the long, light spear underhanded on his right, holding the reins with his left hand, the steel tusk aimed forward. He saw Ba'al's two yellow ivory weapons lowering, their incredible sweep fully as long as a man's forearm, and realized that if the boar charged, the barb must be allowed to move freely. The usual tactic meeting a boar's charge was for the horse to leap the boar, the rider spearing down between its withers. But this towering brute was easily as big as his horse. Traditional ways of dealing with pig, Wardrop saw with sudden wisdom, were going to be instantly suicidal here.

But it did not look as if the boar were going to charge. Wardrop had seen this often; a boar would usually run until blooded, and then it might do almost anything: run off a cliff, swim a river, or charge its tormentor. A trophy-sized boar at a hard charge had been known to injure an Indian elephant and could knock a horse sprawling. Or as legend said of the viceroy of India, his boar might literally leap over the horse to escape. This unbelievable mountain of muscle was fully twice the size of any other boar Wardrop had ever seen or heard of, its head larger than the barb's, its great shoulders and face crossed by old scars. Could a beast of this size perform a leap even more prodigious than his smaller kin?

His head whirling with dangerous options, Wardrop spurred the barb forward. No matter how quickly it moved, a boar needed some distance to achieve a hard charge. If the barb would take orders and charge first, Wardrop might sink the lancehead home just behind the creature's elbow with his first pass. The barb did respond and closed on their quarry with a rush. Alec Wardrop even had time to wonder whether this nightmare brute was too muscle-bound to move quickly.

Ba'al may have felt a certain flattery for a few seconds; no man had ever faced him using one of his own weapons, and this one had clearly chosen to approach him wearing a tusk. But this was a view he discarded when that tusk was lowered menacingly in his direction. Besides, the moment he went to all fours, his eyes were below those of the man. And sure enough, once his eye level became dominant, the man urged his mount forward. Ba'al had no earthly notion what was meant by the shout, but it readied them both for action.

"Marianne! Wohjataaa! …"

The barb knew to charge past so that his rider's lance arm was nearest to the quarry, and he was uncommonly smart — for a horse. He expected abrupt movement from the boar and was ready for it. He was not prepared for a beast that stood his ground, tail erect like a flag, whuffing a basso grunt and waiting for any damned thing that came his way.

Ba'al saw the lancehead reach for his body; wheeled to parry it with his nearside tusk; flicked upward with a toss of heavy neck muscles; saw the lancehead flash up as the barb thundered by.

Wardrop felt the lance shaft twist as tusk and steel clashed, and narrowly avoided slicing the barb's head with the wickedly sharp edge of the lancehead. The weighted butt of the lance might as well have been so much cotton fluff. With pressure of knees and the reins, he turned the courageous, frightened little barb still expecting the boar to explode into movement. Unruffled, alert, it stood and waited for him to deliver.

Briefly, insanely, Wardrop thought of hurling the lance overhand in his next pass. But in pigsticking you never let go of your lance. Never. It was as basic as honor and courage. Wardrop spurred the barb, with subtle knee pressure this time to guide it a bit farther from the quarry. Sooner or later he was bound to connect.

He had seen small boar leap backward, but never a trophy animal. He brought the lancehead in with its point a trifle high, hoping that a lightning thrust inward and down would at least draw blood.

It brought blood, all right.

Ba'al waited as if carved from limestone until he saw the lancehead arrowing down to his flesh, and then jerked backward as he flicked his head. He intended to bind the lance between his tusks and disarm this maniac, then send him packing. After all. when boar fought boar, losing was punishment enough. The winner seldom killed, and this man seemed happy to Tight in the manner of a boar. But Ba'al had not counted on the lancehead dropping so much, so abruptly.

Wardrop knew joy, and battle lust, as the lancehead entered the boar's mouth. He wrenched hard to free the point, seeing bright blood on the razor edge as he looked back; by that time the boar was behind him.

Ba'al realized the lancehead was between his jaws; clamped down; felt the steel's cruel passage through the soft flesh of his underlip. He did not release the pressure of his jaws but felt the slick, shiny steel slide from his teeth anyway. His own foamy saliva had reduced friction to almost nothing, but Wardrop was lucky to wrench the lance away without being unhorsed.

And now the boar did charge. He charged with a suddenness that put him alongside the harried little barb before it could turn, and while Wardrop was twisting from the waist to bring the lancehead around. He lowered the great head almost to the ground, flicked his head to the side, and delivered a terrible slash that could have taken Wardrop's leg off at the ankle.

Wardrop saw the move, kicked backward and up without losing the stirrup, and felt the cinch give way, sliced like cheese. In the same instant the barb felt the ivory scimitar enter its flank and screamed again, staggering. With the cinch flopping loose, Wardrop's saddle slipped from the barb like soap on tile. He managed to free himself from the stirrups, hit the ground standing, and rolled free, still grasping his lance as the barb went down.

Wardrop had seen a Masai with a four-meter assegai lion spear, using his foot to ground the spear butt against the ground to impale a lion as it leaped. Now, using his knee to secure the weighted butt of his lance, he waited for this devil to rush him.

Ba'al saw the man drop to one knee, two lance lengths away. He saw the barb and heard it, too, an agony that was not pleasant to hear, and now that he was taller than both of them he felt that dominance had been won. His sudden murderous furies of earlier times failed to take hold. Tasting his own blood and that of the barb as it ran down his right tusk, he considered the matter and decided it had been settled. Neither member of this team seemed in condition to challenge him again.

Alec Wardrop watched the huge boar bounce away, pink foam jouncing from its mouth like flecks of cotton candy, and knew that he had not seriously wounded the creature. At the moment he was damned glad of it. Ba'al moved like something on springs, in a distance-eating canter that took him out of sight. He was bleeding more than he knew, but he would know it when he had lost a few quarts of blood. Of that, Wardrop was certain. He moved over to the savaged little Spanish Barb, avoiding the forehoof that pawed pathetically back and forth. At least he still had the VHP radio in the pocket of his bush jacket.