Journeying to Jowlagiri, where the Sub-Collector had told me the trouble had begun, I pieced together the facts of the story, deducing that this was no tiger but a tigress, and the one that had been robbed of her mate by the poachers and later wounded by Leonard's plucky but unfortunate shot. From Jowlagiri I tramped to Sulekunta in the hope of coming across the fresh pug marks of the marauder, but I was unlucky, as no kills had occurred at that place in recent days, and what tracks there were had been obliterated by passing herds of cattle. Moving on to Gundalam, twenty-three miles away at the southern limit

of the affected area, I decided to pitch camp, since it was at this cattle-pen that the majority of kills had been reported, seven herdsmen being accounted for in the last four

months.

Three fat buffalo calves had been very thoughtfully provided as bait by my friend the Sub-Collector; I proceeded to tie them out at likely spots in the hope of securing a kill. The first I tethered a mile down the river bordering Gundalam at that time of the year a mere trickle of water at a point where the river was joined by a tributary named Sige Halla, down which the tigress was reported to keep her beat; the second I tied along the path to the neighbouring village of Anchetty, four miles away; the remaining calf I secured close to the watershed, whence both herds men and cattle obtained their daily supply of drinking

water.

Having myself attended to the securing and comfort of these three baits, I spent the next two days in tramping the forest in every direction, armed with my .405 Winchester, in the hope of picking up fresh pug marks, or perhaps of seeing the man-eater herself. Early in the morning of the second day I located the foot-prints of the tigress in the soft sand of the Gundalam river. She had descended in the night, walked along the river past the watershed and my buffalo bait, which, as was evident by her foot-prints, she had stopped to look at but had not even touched and up and across a neighbouring hill on her way to Anchetty. Here the ground became too hard for further tracking.

The third morning found me searching again, and I had just returned to camp, preparatory to a hot bath and early lunch, when a group of men, accompanied by the headman

of Anchetty, arrived to inform me that the tigress had killed a man early that morning at a hamlet scarcely a mile south of Anchetty. Apparently a villager, hearing restless

sounds from his penned cattle, had gone out at dawn to investigate and had not returned. Thereafter his brother and son had followed to find out the cause of his absence, and at the outskirts of the cattle-pen had found the man's blanket and staff, and, indistinct in the hard earth, the law marks of the tigress's hind-feet as she reared to attack her victim. Being too alarmed to follow, they had fled to the hamlet and thence to Anchetty, where, gathering strength in numbers and accompanied by the head-man, they had hastened to find me.

Foregoing the bath and swallowing a quick lunch, we hastened to Anchetty and the hamlet. From the spot where the tigress had attacked and as was evident by the fact that no sound had been made by the unfortunate man had killed her victim, tracking became arduous and slow, owing to the hard and stony nature of the ground. In this case, the profusion of thorny bushes among the shrubbery assisted us; for, on casting around, we found shreds of the man's loincloth impaled on the thorns as the tigress carried him away. Had the circumstances not been so tragic, it was instructive to learn how the sagacious animal had endeavoured to avoid such thorns and the obstruction they would have offered.

Some 300 yards away she had dropped her burden beneath a thicket at the foot of a small fig-tree, probably intending to start her meal. Then she had changed her mind, or perhaps been disturbed, for she had picked her victim up again and continued her retreat towards a deep nullah that ran southwards towards the main Cauvery River, some thirty miles away.

Thereafter, tracking became easier, for the tigress had changed her hold from the man's neck and throat; this had accounted for the lack of blood-spoor. Now she held him by

the small of his back. Drops of blood, and smears across the leaves of bushes and thickets, now made it comparatively easy for us to follow the trail, and in another hundred yards we had found the man's loincloth, which had completely unwound itself and was hanging from a protruding sprig of thorn.

Contd.