took the first tracking shift with Trush, Shibnev, Pionka, and Gorborukov.
He led the way, breaking trail, while the dogs, including Trush’s Gitta,
ran ahead. The scent trail was cold, so for them this was just a jaunt
through the woods; nonetheless, they knew hunters, and they knew
something was up. Winter is killing season in the taiga and the dogs were
primed. The snow was about knee deep and between that, the fallen trees,
and the steep ground, it was hard going for man and horse alike. “You
can’t really walk in the taiga like they do in the movies: fanned out like
Germans hunting resistance fighters,” Shibnev explained. “If we’d done
that it would have taken two hours to go half a mile.”
Instead, they walked single file. It was a more efficient way to cover
ground, but it could cause serious problems if the tiger were to attack.
There had been the same problem at Markov’s: lined up like that along
the trail, they ran the risk of shooting each other instead of the tiger. But
there was no alternative in this terrain, so they walked in line, each man
about two body lengths behind the other, the dogs barking, bolting ahead
and then orbiting back to check in. Unless the tiger was laid up
somewhere—or waiting for them—they probably wouldn’t be catching
up to him that day anyway.
Given the temperature, the men wore surprisingly light clothes, and it
was so cold and dry that there was no need for rubber or nylon. Some
wore camouflage, but Trush chose more traditional clothing—homemade
pants and jacket fashioned from gray blanket wool called sukno. Hunters
like this material because it is quiet in the bush and, when it is this cold,
it sheds snow easily. On his feet, Trush wore ordinary boots, but Pionka
wore fleece moccasins like Andrei Pochepnya’s. Besides their rifles, a
belt knife, and a handful of extra shells, the men carried little on the trail.
Between them, they shared a rucksack containing a few snacks, a
Thermos or two of tea, a radio, and a compass. They brought no maps.
Burukhin was their map, and the tiger was their guide.
Like this, the men walked all day, stopping to rest only briefly. Every
half hour or so, one of them would pause and study the tiger’s tracks, just
to make sure they were as old as they had originally thought. Trush and
his men had suspected the tiger would head to high ground after crossing
ron
(Ron)
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