Free The Tiger by John Vaillant

gently onto the back of the loggers’ bulldozer, it was as rigid as a mannequin.
    Only afterward, when the exit tracks were followed, did it become clear the tiger had never left the site. Despite the presence of heavy machinery and half a dozen men, it had remained nearby, watching, just as it had the day before. As one taiga hunter said, “The tiger will see you a hundred times before you see him once.”
    One of the most striking details of this case is that Khomenko had only two visible wounds on his body: a single claw mark on his face and some lacerations on his broken hand. The tiger had no interest in Khomenko as food, and probably had never intended even to scratch him. It turned out later that this tiger had a defective claw that did not retract with the others. This was probably the claw that wounded Khomenko’s face, and it was also by this faulty claw that Yuri Trush would identify this tiger’s prints, track it down, and shoot it from the top of a farm tractor. Far more difficult for Trush, though, would be walking up to that crooked house filled with all those anxious faces, and knocking on the door. “I was overwhelmed,” said Trush. “My eyes filled with tears. At that moment, when I saw their circumstances, I felt sorry for the man, not for the tiger.”
    It was the timing that had been especially cruel: on January 26, Trush had stopped Khomenko and seriously considered disarming him. On the 29th, Khomenko met the tiger.
    Now, nearly two years later, Markov was dead and, once again, lives would be saved or lost depending on how Trush read his hunches. While he, Lazurenko, and Gorborukov studied the melted, trampled snow, trying to take the measure of both man and tiger, it was left to Deputy Bush and Markov’s grieving friends to gather Markov’s remains onto the blanket that Zaitsev had been carrying for that purpose. All of these men were hunters; they had seen animal kills and had butchered animals themselves. But Markov was a man—a close friend—and now it was as if he had exploded, shattered into pieces by this brutal, frigid life. The task of gathering, of re-membering, was almost too much to bear so the men worked slowly, numb and mechanical. “Try to get all the bones,” mumbled Onofrecuk, more to himself than anyone else. “Let’s try to get as many as we can for the grave.”
    There is a costly wisdom in this, the stoic execution of deeds that must be done. It is a survival skill that is closely linked to Fate, and Fate has always been a potent force in Russia, where, for generations, citizens have had little control over their own destinies. Fate can be a bitch, but, as Zaitsev, Dvornik, and Onofrecuk had discovered, it can also be a tiger. By then, it was clear to everyone present that this wasn’t forest business as usual; there was more going on here than bad luck or carelessness. What had Markov done to bring this upon himself? Markov’s friends, the same ones who hid his shotgun before Inspection Tiger arrived, had a pretty good idea.
    Sorting through the heap of blood-stiffened clothing, Deputy Bush pulled out a knife sheath—empty—and then a small military first-aid kit, the only pieces of equipment that weren’t torn off or left behind. “Where’s the knife?” asked Bush.
    “Somewhere in the woods,” answered Onofrecuk, quickly. “In the snow.”
    Bush was young, but he was no fool; in all likelihood, the knife and gun were together—wherever they were. The deputy let it go, and opened the first-aid kit. There were no bandages or medicines inside, only cigarettes. When the gathering was done, Gorborukov and Deputy Bush escorted Markov’s friends back to the cabin with Markov’s remains, but Trush and Lazurenko stayed behind. Together, they followed the tiger’s exit trail through ankle-deep powder. The trail was hot—that is, as fresh as it could possibly be without actually laying eyes on the animal. Snow has a muffling effect on all sounds, but in the case