Kalus came forward steadily, and with a further greeting, began to cut
away at the untouched back legs (which a more experienced predator would
have eaten first, but which were ideal for his purposes). He worked
hard and diligently with the hunter's knife, trying at the same time
not to jerk the carcass, which might arouse the tiger, at intervals
shooing away the cub.
He felt as he did so an almost irrational need of haste, which went
beyond his concern for the tiger or the long journey home. He could not
have explained it. There was time to meet his ends. No, it was more
the aggressiveness of the act itself which put him on his guard. After
so many days of caution and yielding, to have been so bold, and come to
such a reward..... And whether superstition or sixth sense, his one
desire at that moment was to take his portion and be gone.
As the last stubborn tendon surrendered its hold of the second leg, he
straightened his back with a sudden glow of pride and happiness. He
wanted to walk right up to his companion, a thing which he had never
done, and box his ears in relief and brotherly affection.
But in the same instant the shadow behind his fears took flesh, as with
a mad crash a large grizzly split through a wall of bushes, not forty
feet away.
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