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He  who has suffered    you to  impose  on  him,    knows   you....

The tygers  of  wrath   are wiser   than    the horses  of  instruction.

WILLIAM BLAKE,

The Marriage    of  Heaven  and Hell

WAITING FOR A TIGER TO ATTACK IS LIKE WAITING FOR A

BOMB TO GO off. Nobody slept much. Trush was on tenterhooks, but
there was nothing he or his men could do until the sun rose on the
shortest day of the year. When it finally did, it was so cold out that it took
them nearly an hour just to get the trucks running. Once they were
mobile, Trush’s team drove into the village proper where they discovered
that no dogs or livestock were missing. Besides the barking of their dogs,
the cautiously emerging villagers had neither heard nor seen anything out
of the ordinary. Meanwhile, Lazurenko’s team picked up the tiger’s trail
where they had left off at dusk the previous afternoon. It was evident
from the tracks that the tiger had bypassed the village altogether. “I can’t
explain why,” said Trush, “but he did not go in.”
For some reason, despite the presence of a variety of easy prey, the
tiger had left the village alone, a decision that, under the circumstances,
would have taken extraordinary restraint, or caution. Perhaps he sensed
the Kungs and the men who were hunting him. Perhaps the village was
too crowded with evidence of man and guns. Perhaps the tiger was
looking for an easy, isolated kill.
The tiger headed west, back into the hills, following the bed of First
Creek. Burukhin was with Lazurenko and, when they saw where the
tracks were going, and how direct the tiger’s line of travel was, Burukhin
had a chilling realization: about four miles to the west, just over a low