The tiger crouched on top of the cage, batting at the bars and trying to get in. I was lining up a shot when the mammoths showed up.
It had been amazingly easy to capture the mammoths, despite their size. The male stood 14 feet tall at the shoulder with great curved tusks and small round ears. The female was 12 feet tall. Both were covered with russet-brown hair. They’d been alone on the plain with their calf when we’d driven up in our caravan of cars, trucks and horses and had shown neither surprise nor dismay. Byrne had walked up to the six-foot-tall baby, slipped a rope around its neck and led it away. Mama and Daddy had followed. We fed them bales of hay and they seemed happy to go along. At night, they let our elephant handler put hawsers around their necks and stake them to the ground. The calf ran among us while we traveled, weaving between the vehicles and the horses. It took an effort not to hit him. At night, we put him in a metal cage.
Bremmer had spotted the saber-tooth around noon, pacing us and watching, too far away to shoot. The animal was the same tan as the grass and if he wasn’t in motion, he was invisible.
Byrne had told me the hawsers and stakes would moor a small ocean liner. He was wrong. The male mammoth padded into the clearing surrounding the cage still trailing the rope. He reached out with his trunk, grabbed the saber-tooth by a back leg and slammed him on the ground like he was swatting a fly. A great puff of dust billowed out. The tiger was game and tried to get at the mammoth. The bull picked him up again, swung him in an arc over his head and slammed him into the ground a second time. He got into a rhythm, wham on one side, wham on the other, and repeat. Clouds of dust rose into the air and started drifting away on the gentle breeze. After the first dozen body slams, the saber-tooth lost coordination and started hitting the ground hard. After a few more, he looked like a rag doll.
Byrne ran up, holding a pair of jeans and his boots. He started dressing. “They were already loose when I got there,” he said.
The female mammoth walked up to the cage and the calf squealed in greeting. We backed off to give her some room. She put a foot on the corner of the steel cage and it turned from a cube to a trapezoid to a pile of junk. Mama and baby wrapped their trunks together.
The bull was just about done with the saber-tooth. The tiger was still alive but all his zip was gone. The mammoth dragged him toward the edge of the camp, flailing him from side to side to build some momentum, then took a couple of steps on the backswing and smacked the tiger into the bole of a tree.
If a field goal is getting the ball between the uprights, the mammoth performed an inverse field goal on the tiger: the saber-tooth got the upright between the balls. The predator curled over himself and made a high keening sound. The bull let him go and shuffled closer. He wrapped his trunk around one of the oversized canines and dragged the tiger across to the trunk of a tree lying beside the camp. He slammed the saber-tooth’s giant incisors against the trunk, put a foot on the back of his head and, by a combination of tapping and pushing, drove the teeth several inches into the wood.
Dad, mama and junior held a brief conversation of trumpets and grunts. Then, with some prodding and pushing from mama, junior ran to our woodpile, selected a branch and trotted over to the saber-tooth. Baby gave him a shot. The big cat grunted. It must have been like taking a baseball bat shot from Ted Williams. After a few more whacks with the stick, the calf dropped it, stepped on the predator’s back and peed on him. Then he ran back to mama.
The adults conferred while pulling off each other’s halters and removing the baby’s. As they started away, junior picked up his leash, waving it like a blue ribbon he’d won at the county fair.
Dad stopped to look at us, shook his head and followed his family into the darkness. Apparently we weren’t the kind of playmates he wanted for his son. Then they were gone.
The saber-tooth lay limp on the ground. I raised the rifle and drew a bead on him. Bremmer put his hand on the barrel and pushed it down.
“Wouldn’t be sporting,” he said. “Let’s see how he takes it.”
The animal worked his head from side to side, pushing on the log with his front paws, occasionally stopping to rest. Finally he tore his fangs loose and laid his head on the log, breathing hard. After a minute, he rolled in the dirt, probably to get rid of the piss smell, got up and began a very slow, knock-kneed shuffle out of the camp. Before he passed out of the light, he turned and gave us a heads-up stare. I swear he wanted our agreement never to speak of this moment again. Then he was gone. I think I heard him fall down again before he was out of earshot.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “He had a tough enough day without somebody shooting him. Come on.” I moved my shoulder and poked at it with a finger. I made a noise.
“Rifle butt catch you wrong?” asked Bremmer.
“Yeah.”
“You’re gonna stiffen up before morning and I ain’t wiping your butt. I got some liniment that might help, though.”
We walked over to one of the trucks and he pulled a brown bottle out of his saddlebags. “Rub this on it. Stings like crazy and smells like crap, but you’ll be able to move in the morning. Right
