13 Tiger Adventure by Willard Price Read Free Book Online Page A

attacked it will pick up a stone in its nose and blow it out with a force great enough to kill a man.’
    The boys took this with a grain of salt, but they were ready to believe that the gaur was a very bad customer.
    ‘If he gets you on his horns.’ said the headman, ‘he will carry you for miles, no matter how heavy you are - then he will shake you off and may stamp you to death.’
    But Dad had ordered a gaur, and a gaur he should have. How could two boys capture such a formidable beast?
    ‘We’re apt to find him anywhere between here and six thousand feet up the mountain.’ Hal said. ‘We’ll use the truck. And we’ll take along a pole lasso.’
    A pole lasso consisted of a long pole with a loop of rope at the end. With luck, they might get this loop over the wide-spreading horns and then drive back to the cages and stow the beast away.
    It seemed simple, but it was going to be very difficult.
    They drove around most of the day and it was not until late in the afternoon that they came upon a herd of about a dozen gaur. They selected the biggest one and, poking him with the pole, made him run while the truck ran alongside.
    Hal was driving, Roger held the pole. He got the lasso over one horn but the animal shook it off.
    The gaur stopped, glaring at the truck, bellowed with rage, and charged.
    The great strong horns smashed into the truck which immediately rolled upside down with the two boys beneath It The animal seemed to think that the truck was alive. Again and again he crashed into it, his horns making deep holes in the iron hide of the monster.
    Then he remembered his tormentors and went about, snuffling loudly, bellowing, sending shivers of fear down two backbones. Time after time the angry beast hurled his two thousand pounds against the truck.
    Finally he turned the car over and there, in plain sight, were the two boys sitting on the ground.
    Now it was just ten seconds before they would both be dead, unless they acted as fast as lightning.
    The gaur came for them, his eyes blazing red, his roar sounding like thunder, but when he arrived the boys were in the truck, now upright, and all he could do was to give the truck some more punishment.
    Hal started the truck. The gaur followed close behind, determined to kill this big iron brute and the two humans who rode in it.’
    There is one animal that is not afraid of the gaur. It is the tiger. There was an explosion in the bushes and the big striped lord of the cat world leaped twenty feet to fasten its jaws on the gaur’s neck.
    The boys might have been thankful but they were not. They didn’t want a dead gaur. ‘Use the lasso,’ Hal shouted.
    Roger did so but the result was not too good. The loop at the end of the pole settled over the tiger’s neck.
    Just at present they didn’t want a tiger. They wanted a gaur. At any other time they would have been grateful for the tiger’s help, but not now. Roger pulled lustily. The tiger’s jaws relaxed and with the claws of his two front feet he jerked off the noose that was choking him. He gave up the idea of having a gaur for dinner and slunk away into the bushes.
    Now the gaur had lost not only some of its power but its sour too. It wasn’t chasing the truck with the same enthusiasm.
    It was easy to see why. The teeth of the tiger had cut deeply into the neck of the gaur and blood was trickling out.
    The beast turned its head to look after the tiger, and this was Roger’s opportunity. With its head turned, the three-foot horns and the head were all on one line, and with a flip of the noose the animal was captured.
    He was suffering from a deep gash in the neck and had no more thought of charging either the truck or the boys.
    He came along with his head hanging down and no more fight in him.
    A cage that was too small for an elephant but just the right size for the great hump-backed terror of the Gir Forest was waiting for him.
    The noose was still round his neck and the pole was fastened to the noose.