Chapter 367

The Prison Planet

Morales, sitting with his back to the bole of the giant tree, slept fitfully, awakening to every unusual sound or the loud rustle of the wind in the leaves. Around midnight, a grunt startled him to full wakefulness, but a quiet squeal told him what was below him. Leaning over, he looked down to see dark shapes on the ground, and a moment later, one of the hogs moved into an area lit by the moonlight, allowing him a better view of the animal.

What the hell are they doing out here in the middle of the night? But hang around, guys. Maybe ol' saber-tooth will dine on pork tonight and forget about Lobo and me. Morales had noticed that the ground under the tree was practically covered with what would be called acorns on Earth. After a half hour, he heard the herd of hogs moving away before he drifted deeper into sleep.

A couple of hours later, just when he was beginning to hope, Lobo shifted to lay his head on Morales' legs. When he reached to pet the wolf, he felt the rumble of a quiet growl coming from his friend. Oh, shit. But after a few minutes without anything further, he was about to say something to Lobo when he heard the cat's hunting cough.

"Fuck you, you son-of-a-bitch," he said under his breath, still hoping the cat would pass them by.

The saber-tooth let out a screaming roar that Morales figured was designed to terrify its prey and make them break cover. Well, the terrifying part sure as hell worked, he thought as he came to his feet in order to brace himself so he could look down the tree better. Two big eyes, reflecting red in the moonlight, stared up the tree at him.

"Go away to live another day, Pussycat. If you come up here, you're going to meet a shit storm of sharp objects headed your way," he yelled down to the cat.

The feline stood on its hind legs, its front feet reaching an appalling distance up the trunk, and ... roared. The sound had so much volume and intensity that Morales could feel the tree vibrate, or maybe it was his own lungs responding to the vibrating air, but he was glad he had enough foresight not to have built their nest on the bottom limb. However the sound should be categorized, he could well understand someone pissing on themselves after hearing it up close. But instead of cowering, he leaned a little farther out and yelled, "Fuck you, Asshole! Go your ass away from here while you still can. I'm tired of you constantly coming around and pissing at my front door; now you've even followed me out here."

The cat roared back and dragged his claws down the trunk, bark and wood slivers flying. "You're not at the top of the food chain anymore," Morales yelled, "so if you try to come up here, I'll give you something that's going to be hard to digest."

While Morales had been trading insults with the cat, Lobo alternated trying to look over the edge or staring through the bottom cracks, all the while adding his own noises – sounds that Morales had never heard the wolf utter before. They were a mixture of growling bark and a chuffing sound. Overall, it sounded ... ugly and full of hate. Morales hoped those sounds would never be directed at him.

After a couple of minutes of roaring and shredding tree bark, the saber-tooth made one last pass with his claws before hiking his leg and pissing on the tree. With a spewing hiss, he disappeared from view. It took a moment for the rancid smell of the urine to reach Morales. "Ah, shit," he grumbled, then louder, "Piss somewhere else, Asshole."

When there had been no movement from below for a time, Morales again sat with his back against the bole of the tree. Lobo continued to lie staring through the cracks, refusing to come sit against his master's legs.

A tense half hour had gone by when the cat suddenly flashed into view before leaping high up the tree, managing to catch a foreleg over the first big limb. Roaring out a challenge, it scrambled to pull itself over the limb and on up the trunk, Lobo going crazy trying to get to him.

Later, Morales had no memory of coming to his feet, but he did remember bracing his foot on an adjacent limb so he could shoot straight down, the cat squalling and the wolf answering with noises that were equally as terrifying in their own way. The cat's thrashing as it sought purchase on the limb meant that its head was constantly in motion. Waiting for a still target was one of the hardest things Morales had ever done, but he knew that the shot might well determine whether he lived or died.

Finally, the cat managed to slam the claws of its left front paw into the tree to get purchase and leverage enough to continue upward. At that point, he looked up, opened that giant mouth and roared. There was just enough moonlight for Morales to look down the stock of the crossbow where he knew the sights were, center the area between the cat's gleaming tusks, and pull the trigger. He knew that the crossbow was far from silent, but he never heard it fire over the racket the cat and Lobo were making – the human totally focused on where he wanted the bolt to go. But the crossbow obviously fired, because the cat shut down mid-roar, a second later making a wet-sounding cough.

Morales turned the crossbow loose to dangle from its short lanyard while he grabbed his bow from a nearby limb, penetrator arrow already nocked, and returned his attention to the cat. But before he could bring the bow to full draw, the saber-tooth slid back, bark flying everywhere as its claws shredded their way downward.

On the ground, it put a foot on the trunk and looked back up the tree. Morales leaned out a little farther, his bow catching a stream of moonlight. For a second, he could see the bright orange dot of the front sight, centered it on the cat's head and let the arrow go.

The shot with the crossbow had been ten feet or less. No way to miss, but this was thirty-five or forty feet. Later, he decided it was more luck than skill. Oh it was an easy shot in daylight, but moonlight was another thing entirely. Luck was with him, not that the crossbow bolt in the cat's lungs would not have eventually put paid to the beast, but the arrow with the penetrator tip hit the saber-tooth right between the eyes. Its skull, especially from the front, was thicker than the buffalo's, and the penetrator did not go nearly as deep, but it did go in. Whatever the arrow hit in the cat's brain was enough, for it stopped mid-roar and slowly collapsed. After a few seconds, its body twitched and its back feet kicked once, hard.

Morales already had another arrow nocked and was standing, his feet spread wide across the two limbs, but the cat didn't move. Lobo, however, was so frustrated by his inability to join the battle that he gnawed on a limb, hiked a leg and pissed over the side of the nest.

Morales didn't know how long he stood with his bow at half draw, but he finally let out a sigh, slacked the bow and carefully took the step to be fully back in the nest.

"Shit, Lobo. Shit!" he muttered as he cocked and reloaded his crossbow. Then the shakes set in.

Lobo was still staring over the side, his restraining rope pulled to its maximum extension. After a moment, he turned to his master, a certain look on the animal's face, even noticeable in the weak light.

"Nope. We're not going down until full daylight. That's two of the males we've killed. Where are the females? And again, how many of the damn tigers are there, anyway? Have we killed the only two in the area, or are there more of them? I don't want to find out that there is a female waiting for me to come down this tree. We'll bide our time and check him out after full light."

It was as if the wolf understood him. Lobo whined and shook his head from side to side while making a sound that was easily understood as disagreement.

"You can bite his ass later, Boy. We play our game, not theirs."

Morales sat with his back to the trunk again and took a canteen off his belt, fumbling the cap. Thanking his lucky stars the cap had a short cord attached so it couldn't be lost, he poured water in his hand for the wolf. When Lobo had all he wanted, Morales took a long drink. "Fuuucccckkk," he shakily said, drawing out the word as he capped his canteen. "We lived through another one, Boy."

Morales tried to doze, and Lobo eventually put his head down on his paws, but there was no sleep in either of them. At false dawn, the human dragged out the last of their trail food to share with the wolf, but he waited until the sun was fully up before preparing to descend. What do I do with our nest? If I leave it up here, I'll have a safe place to go to if I come back to the area, but I don't want to leave all that parachute cord here to rot and go to waste. After thinking a moment, he continued aloud. "I'll take the nest apart, but leave the poles up here tied into a bundle. That way, I won't lose much of my cord and for a time, at least, I'll have a nest here ready to assemble if need be. Of course, the poles will rot over time, and so will the cord, but I think that's the best option for now."

But first, he had to get the case back on the ground. Having learned his lesson last time, he had studied a knot that could be loosed by a hard jerk on the line.

After telling the wolf what he was going to do, he climbed down the tree. On the ground, he checked the cat to make absolutely certain it was dead, then walked a big circle around the area to make sure there was no large animal waiting for him to turn his back. Everything seemed safe, so he braced himself and jerked the knot loose in order to lower the case down.

Looking back up the tree, "Now for my buddy."

Back at the nest, he attached the hook of the block and tackle to Lobo's harness before untying the rope that kept him safely in the nest. "Ready to go down, Boy?"

The wolf looked at him and whined, obviously not thrilled about the trip down any more than he had been about the one coming up. As Morales swung the animal out over the drop, he noticed that Lobo had his eyes closed again.

After the wolf was safely on the ground, Morales had to climb down to remove the hook, makeshift harness and seine.

When Lobo was released, he sniffed the cat from one end to the other, paying particular attention to the arrow sticking out of the beast's forehead. Just as the wolf raised a leg, Morales scolded him. "Don't you dare piss on him. Getting that hide off and retrieving my bolt is going to be hard enough without having piss on the pelt to get my hands in. Go over there and piss," he ordered the wolf, pointing.

Lobo whined, but did as he was told. Morales wasn't even amazed when the wolf obeyed his order.

"Shit, this is getting old," he gasped out as he pulled himself into the nest a few minutes later in order to dismantle it. After taking the nest apart, he tied the poles into a big bundle and secured them to the two limbs that had supported the nest, then returned the rest of the parachute cord to his pack. With the block and tackle hung over his shoulder, he started down for the last time. I hope we never have to do this again, but until I'm sure all the cats are gone from the area, I'm not going to spend a night in the open if I can help it.

When he reached the lowest limb, he tied the top part of the block and tackle to it, before continuing on down.

"It's a bitch skinning one of these big bastards, but at least he was nice enough to die with a tree handy so I could pull his ass into the air. But first, I need to get my arrow out of his skull." The razor-sharp hatchet blade split the skull easily enough, and he set about the gruesome task of moving the brains around so he could unscrew the penetrator from the arrow shaft. "Gotta bring back a bucket so I can keep these to help tan his skin." Hands sunk into brains, he chuckled aloud. "Funny how every animal comes with just the right amount of brains to cure its own hide – with a little piss added, of course."

After retrieving his arrow, he wiped it and his hands clean on the grass, then tying the cat's back legs together, he raised the animal up high enough to get started with the skinning. As the task progressed, he raised the big beast higher as necessary. When the cat was about halfway skinned, he split its belly open and began the second gruesome task of the morning by digging through its insides to find his crossbow bolt, which turned out to be embedded in its lungs.

Bolt and his hands wiped as clean as he could manage under the circumstances, he continued with the skinning. "Still a bitch to skin one of these monsters, but it sure beats the hell out of trying to skin one on the ground like I had to with the last cat."

At last, the heavy and bloody job was over, the hide folded into a big bundle by the tree.

"One more trip up to the lowest limb to get the block and tackle and we'll be on our way, Lobo," he told the wolf as he slammed his right spike in the tree and began his last bit of climbing for a long time, he hoped.