Chapter Four is not coming along as well as I would like, so here's an interlude instead. It's actually something I cut from Chapter Three because it was just too long. I liked the scene well enough that I didn't want to trash it forever, so here it is.

Again, thanks to my reviewers and all my readers!

Interlude Two: An Assembly in His Honor
"Drink deep, Shere Khan, for when will you drink again? Sleep and dream of the kill."
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Jungle Book"

September 18, 1934
Matheran Hill Station

Denham insisted that they all pose for the pictures, and he filmed them as they arranged themselves for the camera. Culpeper took the photographs, several of them to make sure that at least one came out well. Laura stood at one edge with Salman and hoped she would get cut out. Robert joined Beaufort and Bridget in the middle, grinning like he did this sort of thing all the time.

They did this on the porch of the bungalow, after the tiger had been carried out from the jungle by the bearers. Later, the Americans stood on the front lawn, smoking and laughing – except for Beaufort. He went inside to use the telephone.

Salman and Laura stayed with the tiger and took its measurements for posterity. Bridget watched in fascination.

"What will be done with it?" she asked.

"We'll have it sent to Bombay," said Salman, "to a good taxidermist I know. He'll skin it and prepare the hide and ship it to Mr. Beaufort's estate in New York."

"He probably has a room for that kind of thing," Laura said.

"He does," Bridget replied. She crouched, a hand wrapped across her legs to keep her skirt from brushing the ground. "It's so beautiful. And bigger than I imagined."

"You can touch him if you like," Salman said.

Bridget's fingers uncurled and she ran her hand down the tiger's back. She petted him, as though he was nothing more than a sleeping cat.

Kneeling next to the tiger, Salman lifted the head and opened the mouth, peering at the teeth.

"I didn't realize they had such large teeth," Bridget said.

Salman smiled and opened the tiger's mouth wider. He stuck his index finger next to one of the big canine teeth; the tip of the tooth stuck over the edge of his grimy finger. "Not quite ten centimeters," he said admirably. "Some get bigger than that, but that's a pretty good size for this old man."

Laura made a note of the measurement.

"I suppose that's what makes them so dangerous," Bridget said, "with teeth like that."

"It's the whole package you have to worry about," replied Laura. "All of his 'fearful symmetry,' so to speak. Their size is their greatest weapon. The teeth are just one part of it."

Salman tapped the tip of the tooth and said, "What he'll do, you see, is get the victim into a suffocation bite around the neck and choke the life out of it. Even an animal larger than him won't be able to fight him; if it's an animal like a gaur – one of those wild walking beefsteaks you see wandering about – he'll sneak up behind it and get it by surprise. For smaller prey, he'll just break the back, and it's over real quick."

Bridget grimaced, but her eyes glowed with excitement rather than fear. "It must be messy."

"Not usually," Laura said with a shrug. "Most times, the kill is clean, and the only evidence you can find is a bit of trampled grass. The less blood, the less chance of attracting scavengers and other predators."

"But those teeth –"

"A creature only bleeds while its heart is still beating," Salman explained. "A tiger kills so quickly that she leaves little blood behind her. What she'll usually do is carry the kill away from the place where she attacked it."

"Oh," the girl said.

She must have run out of questions for the time being; they went about their work as she watched them, her arms resting on her knees. Using his index finger as an impromptu measuring stick, Salman rattled off number after number, pausing only long enough for Laura to scribble them onto her little yellow pad. It was just something to keep them busy, and Laura doubted anyone would find the information worth keeping.

When they finished, they remained in their kneeling positions around the tiger. Bridget continued to pet it.

"Was it a man-eater?" she asked.

"No," Salman said. "It came for the goat. It only attacked Mr. Beaufort because it felt threatened."

"I didn't really believe they attacked humans, but it's true, isn't it?"

Laura shrugged and put her pad and pencil into her little hunting pack. "It's a consequence of cohabitation. Some animals seem to make humans their preferred prey. Over in the Himalayas, a hunter named Corbett shot a tigress reputed to have killed over four hundred people."

"Really?"

"Only a man like Corbett could catch an animal like her. If Heller had tried his hand at it, he'd have gotten an arm bit off for the trouble."

Salman laughed at that.

"Have you ever seen a tiger kill a person?" Bridget asked.

The shikari's laughter stopped abruptly, and without a word, he stood up and walked away from the two women. Laura massaged the bridge of her nose.

"I'm sorry," Bridget said. "Should I not have asked that?"

"You didn't know," replied Laura. "A tiger killed his brother when they were just boys. The tiger would have attacked him if his brother hadn't intervened."

"Oh." She glanced at the other end of the porch, where Salman had been stopped by Beaufort, who had just come out of the bungalow. The two men were deep in discussion. "Is that why he hunts tiger?"

"He hunts tiger because he's good at it, and he's good at it because he loves the jungle and he's learned to listen to it." Laura got to her feet and offered her hand to Bridget; the girl used it to stand up. "Don't believe he's out here for revenge. If anything, he's trying to accept his fear."

"He seems so sure of himself."

"A good hunter is not fearless, Bridget. Nor does he conquer his fear. He must realize that the fear is a part of him and will always be a part of him. Fear keeps a man alive; it keeps him aware of his surroundings, and it keeps him from thinking he has won."

Bridget frowned and watched Laura throw a tarp over the tiger's body. "But hasn't he?"

"This time perhaps. But a good hunter always knows that the next time may not turn out the same."

Putting her arm around Bridget, Laura led her to the edge of the porch. In the yard, the Americans laughed at a story Robert was telling, using exaggerated gestures to accent his words. Laura couldn't hear what he was saying; the wind had picked up as the sun lowered in the sky, and it blew the men's voices down and into the jungle.

The rains began, an instant waterfall from the gray sky. The men rushed up to the porch from the yard, jostling each other and brushing water off their sports jackets and hats. Between the men bunched together, Laura caught glimpses of Salman and Beaufort, undisturbed in their conversation.

Laura mentions Jim Corbett, who hunted down a tigress believed to have killed over 400 people in the Kumaon regionin the Himalayas. Corbett wrote a book about his experiences as a hunter of tigers: Maneaters of Kumaon. In the book, he relates about ten stories of his encounters with the creatures. It's quite an interesting read, as is another of his books, Jungle Lore, which is more biographical in nature.Laura also mentions a man named Heller, who is of my own creation.