Tiger Trouble Read online

  ‘Where are the tigers?’ I asked.

  ‘When the night is finish, i have put in the other box,’ Kasime said.

  ‘You should have woken me.’

  ‘You are too much sleeping,’ he said. Then he pulled something from behind his back. ‘Here it is what I have bringed.’

  It was my autographed cricket ball.

  ‘You’re a legend!’ I cried. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘I have been back to Mr Gutta’s car before you are waking up.’

  ‘That’s miles away!’

  ‘It is on Mrs Gutta’s bicycle that I go,’ he explained.

  ‘She let you?’ I asked.

  ‘Their shed I can open.’

  ‘Did you find any of my other stuff?’

  Kasime lowered his eyes. ‘Only the ball it is there. Your other things Mr Gutta has taken. I am very shamed.’

  ‘The other stuff doesn’t matter,’ I said, turning the ball in my fingers. ‘This has been signed by all the Australian cricket players. Look, there’s Michael Clarke.’

  Kasime didn’t seem interested. He’d lifted one corner of the plastic sheeting to see out into the courtyard.

  ‘Now we must very quickly be going before someone is come,’ he whispered. ‘I have leaved Mrs Gutta’s bicycle in the alley for us to ride.’

  I stuffed the cricket ball into one of the big leg pockets of my cargo pants. ‘Do you think we can all fit on a bicycle?’

  ‘You can be having the seat,’ Kasime said. ‘I will go behind you on the basket.’

  ‘Will there be room for the cubs?’

  Kasime looked confused. ‘I am not understanding this cubs?’

  ‘The baby tigers,’ I said. ‘We’re taking them with us.’

  ‘You are crazy!’

  ‘They don’t belong in a box, Kasime. And not in some rich man’s house, either. They belong in the wild.’

  He shook his head. ‘It is not your business, Mr Samfox.’

  ‘It is my business,’ I said. ‘I belong to an international organisation called Youth For Wildlife. We –’

  ‘Shhh!’ said Kasime.

  The blue door opened and Mrs Gutta came bustling into the courtyard carrying two large metal bowls. She opened the cubs’ box and placed both bowls inside.

  My stomach rumbled. It made me think of breakfast. And my family. Right now they would be getting stuck into a big three-course breakfast back at our hotel. But not Mum – she’d be too worried to eat. Worried about me. I had to get back there as soon as I could.

  But I wasn’t going anywhere without the tigers.

  Mrs Gutta watched them for a while, then picked up the bucket and went back inside. She’d left the lid open. Now was my chance.

  But before I could move, Mr Gutta appeared. A set of keys jingled in his right hand. Crossing to the tall iron gate, he unlocked it and swung it open. I heard the rumble of an engine. Mr Gutta stood to one side as a big, covered-in truck reversed slowly into the courtyard. Two men jumped out. They greeted Mr Gutta with quick handshakes. One had a black beard and wore a white turban. He seemed to be the one in charge. The other man was much younger and wore a red Pepsi hat.

  Pepsi Man unclipped the canvas cover at the rear of the truck and swung the heavy tailgate down. The three men loaded the tiger cubs’ box onto the back, watched by Mrs Gutta. Her husband called to her and she brought out two white plastic buckets with lids. They loaded them into the truck, too, and Pepsi Man closed the tailgate. Turban Man gave Mr Gutta a fat envelope and they shook hands again.

  All this happened very quickly. Less than five minutes had passed since Mr Gutta opened the gate. Crouched in our hiding place, Kasime and I watched the two men climb back into the truck. I’d lost my chance to rescue the cubs and it was too late to go for help. Once they drove out of the courtyard into the traffic chaos of Delhi, it was bye-bye baby tigers.

  With a clunk of gears and a cloud of black smoke from its exhaust pipe, the truck rumbled out of sight. Mr Gutta began closing the gate.

  Time to move.

  Pushing the plastic sheeting aside, I exploded out of the box like a horse leaving the starting gates at the Melbourne Cup. Mr Gutta tried to stop me, but I ducked under his outstretched arm. I found myself in a narrow lane. The truck was already twenty metres away, picking up speed. I sprinted after it, ignoring Mr Gutta’s angry shouts. No way could he catch me.

  And no way could I catch the truck. It was still accelerating. I didn’t have a hope.

  But I’d forgotten we were in Delhi. As soon as the truck reached the end of the quiet lane and turned left onto a busy road, the situation changed. Suddenly it was caught in heavy traffic. Nobody was going faster than ten kilometres per hour. Except me. Zigzagging through the chaos of tooting vehicles, I caught up to the truck and hooked my hands over the tailgate. It was higher than my head. For a couple of seconds I dangled there, legs running in midair, before I got my feet onto the bumper. It took a moment to unhook a metre-wide section of the canvas flap that closed off the back of the truck, then I went in head-first over the tailgate. Made it!

  ‘Mr Samfox!’ a familiar voice called.

  Huh?

  Two sets of small brown fingers were hooked over the tailgate. I pushed the canvas open and looked down. Kasime was dangling below me.

  ‘Mr Samfox!’ he gasped. ‘Please be helping me up.’

  11

  VERY MUCH TROUBLE

  I hauled Kasime into the back of the truck. Even for his small size, he was surprisingly light.

  ‘Why did you follow me?’ I asked, as we hooked the canvas flap back into place.

  The back of the truck was filled with wooden boxes and large squashy sacks that looked like wheat bags. There wasn’t much room for Kasime and me.

  ‘Because we are friends, Mr Samfox,’ he puffed, still struggling to regain his breath. ‘And because you are getting in very bad trouble.’

  There was a squeal of brakes. The truck came to a complete stop.

  Uh-oh. Turban Man or Pepsi Man must have heard us talking. I wriggled behind one of the big soft sacks and Kasime did the same. Hardly daring to breathe, we waited for someone to open the tailgate and climb in looking for us.

  Kasime was right, I thought. I was in very bad trouble. So was Kasime.

  And so were Turban Man and Pepsi Man – I’m an orange belt in karate.

  But compared to everyone else’s problems, it was the tiger cubs’ problems that worried me most.

  So I sweated it out. I didn’t move. I prayed we wouldn’t be discovered.

  And got my wish. There was a clunk of gears and we started moving again. Phew! It was just the traffic jam that had stopped the truck. Turban Man and Pepsi Man didn’t know they had two extra passengers.

  Pushing the sacks aside, we checked out our surroundings. As well as the big sacks, the back of the truck was loaded with large wooden boxes. Stencilled on each box was TEA, FINEST PRODUCT OF INDIA. The box we were looking for was jammed into one corner. Next to it were the two white plastic buckets with lids that Mrs Gutta had brought outside. They must have contained food for the cubs’ journey to wherever Turban Man and his pal were taking them.

  My mission was to make sure the cubs didn’t get there. I lifted the lid of their box.

  ‘Eeew!’ I gasped. ‘You guys stink!’

  The box was filthy. One of the food bowls was still in there, tipped upside-down. There were bits of half-chewed meat and other stuff I didn’t want to look at too closely in the corners. Flies buzzed around me as I passed one of the cubs to Kasime.

  ‘They don’t even have any water,’ I said, picking up the second little tiger. ‘Mr Gutta and his buddies should be locked up.’

  Kasime sat with his back against the tea chests, cleaning his cub’s matted fur with a corner of one of the sacks.

  ‘Do not scratch, Raju,’ he said softly.

  I looked at him. ‘It’s got a name?’

  Kasime seemed embarrassed. ‘Last night this o
ne has become my friend. I have call him Raju. It is the name of my brother.’

  His dead brother, I thought. All his family were killed in the tsunami. Poor Kasime.

  ‘Does this one have a name?’ I asked.

  Kasime looked at my little tiger. I saw the glisten of a tear in his eyes. ‘She will be Rani,’ he said.

  I didn’t ask if that was his sister’s name.

  ‘Hello, Rani,’ I said to the female cub, cleaning her up, too. ‘How would you like to go back to the jungle?’

  ‘There is no jungle in Iran,’ Kasime said.

  ‘What’s Iran got to do with it?’ I asked.

  ‘It is going to Iran, these tiger babies.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I have listen to Mr Gutta when he is talking to the one who drives this truck,’ explained Kasime. ‘A very rich man in Iran – a prince, I think – he is buying these tigers to live in his very big palace.’

  I stroked between Rani’s ears. ‘Well, he’s going to be disappointed when his tigers don’t arrive,’ I said.

  ‘You are making very much trouble, Mr Samfox,’ said Kasime. ‘These are very bad men’.

  ‘You don’t have to help me if you don’t want.’

  Instead of answering me, Kasime spoke to Raju. ‘How are you liking to go back to the jungle?’

  12

  SPRUNG!

  I wished I had a map. Iran was somewhere to the northwest of India. But I wasn’t sure how far. Pakistan – an entire country! – lay in between. That meant two border crossings. I didn’t have my passport. Kasime probably didn’t even own one. Not that it mattered. He and I weren’t crossing any borders. The first opportunity we got, we were going to jump out of the truck and escape. And we’d be taking Raju and Rani with us.

  But first the truck had to stop.

  We had missed several opportunities in the stop-start traffic of Delhi. Now we’d left the overcrowded city streets behind and the truck had sped up. I peeped through a tiny hole in the canvas. Trees flashed by. There were bamboo fences and wide furrowed paddocks where bare-legged men steered wooden ploughs behind slow-moving buffaloes. Some distance away, a passenger train inched through the green and brown landscape like a long, mechanical caterpillar. We were heading northwest, I judged, observing the direction of the morning sun. Towards Pakistan. And away from Delhi, where my parents and Nathan would be growing frantic with worry.

  Harry and Jordan wouldn’t be worried. The twins were five years old and looked up to me like I looked up to Nathan. In their eyes, I was a hero – someone who could get out of any situation. You don’t worry about someone like that. Unless you’re his parents or his big brother. Or the person himself.

  But I knew the truck would have to pull over eventually. As soon as the wheels stopped turning, Kasime and I would scramble out over the tailgate and hit the ground running.

  But how do you run when you’re carrying a tiger cub?

  Kasime had the answer. ‘Put them in the bags,’ he said, nudging one of the big squashy sacks piled around us.

  Good thinking. While Kasime held the cubs, I unstitched the binding at the top of two of the sacks. They were full of fine orange powder. It smelled a bit peppery. Carefully, I emptied the sacks into the big box the cubs had been in. I wasn’t careful enough. A mist of fine orange dust swirled up in my face. It stung my eyes and burned the inside of my nose, making me splutter and sneeze.

  ‘What is this stuff?’ I gasped, wiping my eyes.

  Kasime’s eyes and nose were runny, too. ‘I am thinking it is very hot spice,’ he sniffed.

  Holding my breath, I unhooked the canvas flap at the back of the truck to clear the air. When we’d stopped sneezing, Kasime and I shook the empty spice sacks over the tailgate to get the last of the lethal orange powder out of them. An unlucky man on a motorbike was following close behind the truck. He quickly pulled to the side of the road and began sneezing.

  Raju and Rani were affected by the spice as well. Their eyes were running. They blinked and rubbed their faces with their over-sized paws.

  ‘We must give them water,’ Kasime said.

  We opened their food buckets. Sure enough, one was half full of water. It looked delicious. But I’d been warned about drinking tap water in India – it’ll make you sick. Unless you’re a local, or a tiger. Cupping some in my hands, I gave Rani a drink. Kasime did the same for Raju. Then Kasime drank some himself. He’d lived in India all his life – his stomach could handle it. But I couldn’t risk it, even though I’d had nothing to drink since last night’s rain.

  I was hungry, too. So was Kasime. It was nearly lunchtime and we hadn’t had anything to eat all day.

  I peered doubtfully into the second bucket. It was filled with the pink soupy stuff Mrs Gutta had fed to the cubs earlier. It looked gross. But still …

  Don’t even think about it! warned the little voice in my head. The last thing I needed was food poisoning.

  I watched Kasime have a taste.

  ‘You’ll make yourself sick,’ I warned. ‘It’s tiger food.’

  He patted his stomach and gave a little growl. ‘Make me strong like baagh,’ he joked, licking his lips. Then he fed some of the horrible-looking stuff to Raju.

  I fed some to Rani. She slurped it hungrily out of my cupped hand. Her tongue felt raspy like a cat’s. ‘Eat up,’ I said, giving her some more. ‘Who knows when you’ll get your next feed.’ I wondered when I’d get my next feed.

  ‘Kasime, how far is –’ I began.

  ‘Shhhh!’ he silenced me.

  There were voices outside. Lots of them. Men and women speaking Hindi. A baby crying. Someone was chanting the same phrase over and over, like a shopkeeper attracting customers. I could smell meat cooking, and other spicy food.

  We were in a town.

  Kasime and I had been too busy feeding the cubs and thinking about food to notice the truck slowing down.

  Suddenly it stopped altogether.

  ‘Quick!’ I whispered, wiping my hand clean on my shorts. ‘Get the tigers into the sacks!’

  It was easier said than done. Raju and Rani didn’t want to go into the dark, pepper-tainted sacks. So they hissed and clawed and fought like … well, like tigers. It took nearly a minute. Way too long.

  I had just closed Raju’s sack when the canvas flap at the rear of the truck rustled open.

  Sprung!

  13

  OUT FOR THE COUNT

  Turban Man and Pepsi Man seemed surprised to see Kasime and me kneeling in the back of their truck with two wriggling brown sacks. But they reacted quicker than we did.

  ‘Yeh kya hai?’ shouted Turban Man, and grabbed Kasime’s arm.

  Pepsi Man grabbed my arm.

  But Pepsi Man made a mistake. He grabbed my right arm, not my left one. The cubs’ box was on my left. But it no longer had baby tigers in it. Instead, it was three-quarters full of orange powder – the hot peppery spice from the two sacks that now held the cubs. I reached in, scooped up a handful and tossed it in Pepsi Man’s face. A split second later, I threw a second handful in Turban Man’s face.

  It must have stung. Both men howled in pain and let go. Side-by-side, they staggered backwards, hands over their faces, into a circle of curious onlookers who had gathered to see what was happening.

  ‘Challo!’ said Kasime.

  This time he didn’t need to translate. Vaulting over the tailgate, I leapt to the ground. I tried to ignore all the curious onlookers watching us as Kasime passed the sacks down to me. Then he jumped down, too. But he landed awkwardly, falling on one knee. He was up again in two seconds, but we’d lost our advantage.

  Turban Man looked like someone from a cartoon as he rushed out of the crowd with his hands outstretched. His face was bright orange and his eyes were bloodshot. His mouth was a wide black hole with a pink tongue waggling in the middle as he tried to shout and sneeze at the same time. The noise that came out sounded a bit like a Pekinese dog barking.

  The sc
ene would have been funny in a cartoon, but in real life it was scary. Turban Man looked out of control. I was still holding the two sacks with the tiger cubs in them. But my feet were free. A karate snap kick to Turban Man’s mid-section stopped him in his tracks. The crowd let out a collective gasp, ‘Aaaah!’, as he sank to his knees, still making the Pekinese sound.

  Where was Pepsi Man?

  There was a flash of orange in the corner of my eye. I spun around. It was the same scary cartoon scene – orange face, bloodshot eyes, big snarling mouth. But there was one major difference – instead of coming at me with his bare hands, Pepsi Man had a brick.

  He must have picked it up off the side of the road. And he’d seen what had happened to Turban Man, so he was more careful. He stalked slowly towards me, with the brick raised. I backed away, wishing my hands were free, but unwilling to give up the tiger cubs. I didn’t think Pepsi Man would really hit me with the brick, but it wasn’t a risk I wanted to take. Walking backwards, I led him in a wide semi-circle. I’d seen something that he hadn’t. Kasime had climbed back into the rear of the truck and released both the catches that held its big, heavy tailgate open. Holding it in place, Kasime caught my eye over Pepsi Man’s shoulder and pointed down. I saw what he wanted me to do.

  Slowly I circled back towards the truck, being careful not to go too close to Turban Man. He was struggling to his feet. Now I was cornered. The truck was behind me and both men were in front of me. They advanced on me with looks on their orange clown-faces that you’d never see on the faces of real clowns, their bloodshot eyes locked with mine. When I backed up against the truck’s tailgate, they thought they had me.

  Dropping suddenly to the ground, I wriggled underneath the truck and dragged the cubs behind me. But I couldn’t go very far because the axle blocked my retreat.

  I was trapped.

  My pursuers lowered themselves onto their hands and knees and crawled in after me. One had a brick, the other just had his bare hands. But they were big hands. The grins on both men’s sweaty orange faces were identical. I’d seen nicer grins on sharks.