Page 32 - English Reader - 8

I decided to take her by surprise, and stood up suddenly, in time to see not the forktail on her

doorstep, but the leopard bounding away with a grunt of surprise! Two urgent springs, and it had
crossed the stream and plunged into the forest.
I was as astonished as the leopard, and forgot all about the forktail and her nest. Had the leopard
been following me again? I decided against this possibility. Only man-eaters follow humans, and, as
far as I knew, there had never been a man-eater in the vicinity of Mussoorie.

During the monsoon the stream became a rushing torrent, bushes and small trees were swept away,

and the friendly murmur of the water became a threatening boom. I did not visit the place too often,
as there were leeches in the long grass.
One day I found the remains of a barking deer which had only
been partly eaten. I wondered why the leopard had

not hidden the rest of his meal, and decided that
it must have been disturbed while eating.

Then, climbing the hill, I met a party
of hunters resting beneath the oaks.
They asked me if I had seen a leopard.
I said I had not. They said they knew
there was a leopard in the forest.

Leopard skins, they told me, were selling
in Delhi at over 1,000 rupees each. Of
course there was a ban on the export
of skins, but they gave me to understand

that there were ways and means... I thanked
them for their information and walked on,
feeling uneasy and disturbed. The hunters had
seen the carcass of the deer, and they had seen the leopard’s pug-marks, and they kept
coming to the forest. Almost every evening I heard their guns banging away; for they were ready to
fire at almost anything.

“There’s a leopard about,” they always told me. “You should carry a gun.”

“I don’t have one,” I said.

There were fewer birds to be seen, and even the langurs had moved on. The red fox did not show
itself; and the pine martens, who had become quite bold, now dashed into hiding, at my approach.
The smell of one human is like the smell of any other.

And then the rains were over and it was October; I could lie in the sun, on sweet-smelling grass,
and gaze up through a pattern of oak leaves into a blinding blue heaven. And I would praise God for
leaves and grasses and the smell of things, the smell of mint and bruised clovers, and the touch of
things—the touch of grass and air and sky, the touch of the sky’s blueness.

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