Trouble in the Hills pt. 1

To the jungle, nothing was amiss. The various birds sang their usual songs, like broody neighboors bickering back and forth over their borders. Langurs scuttled about on the branches, looking for morsels of food here and there. A few barking deerm known as muntjac, cautiously picked their way through the carpet of green, nibbling on the foliage, freezing like living statues whenever any sound seemed out of place. They were quite tiny animals, one might suspect them for but children of a full sized animal. Those not used to this type would be surprised to learn that they were indeed full grown, their reddish fur somehow helping them blend in splendidly with the green of leaves and grass. The trees clustered about like sentinals, shrouding the jungle in shadow as if trying to hide deep and dark secrets.
Which it very well might be. A faint russling in the deep undergrowth, hardly a whisper to our human ears, made the muntjac freeze instantly, their heads swiveling in the direction of the sound. Thirty seconds passed, and another faint russle came from the thick bushes, to the sharp ears of the muntjac, clearly an animal larger than themselves. A branch bent lower under the movement of some creature moving in their direction. Muntjac, skittish at the best of times, were less than willing to stay and see what it was. If something wished to be hidden from them, then it more than likely wished to harm them. The lead deer barked sharply, their universal manner of warning their compatriots, and any other animal in hearing distance, sounding the alarm that something had startled them. The muntjac turned and quickly pranced into the darker shadows of the jungle, their leaps and bounds carrying them with surprising speed out of view. In seconds the tiny deer were gone, evaporating into the arms of the jungle.

A sigh escaped the bushes as a man stood, dissapointed with his lack of stealth. Gopala ran a hand through his hair, combing some of the small sticks and dry leaves from it. The man was of average height, slightly underweight to most eyes, his coppery skin darkened from years of working in the harsh Indian sun, appearing like cured leather. His clothing was humble and brown, showing years of use. Most noticably however was the muzzle loading musket hanging from his worn hands, a piece of copper wire wound around the barrel to keep it mounted to the gouged wooden stock. Gopala muttered something unflattering under his breath, irritated that the muntjac had the lack of manners to have alerted every animal within a mile of his location.
"Dirty beasts. Why don't they reveal my quarry, rather than me?" he mused. Gopala, meaning "cow protector" in Hindu, was clearly no experienced hunter. His father had given him his name, hoping it might give him an advantage in watching the bullock herds he was responsible for as a child. Cow protector, ha! He felt his name had lost meaning in recent times, for he'd done a poor job of watching his own bullocks as of late. A tiger had been marauding the Indian countryside the last 10 months, affectionately named The Bandit. Despite the jungles and cultivated fields being thick with game, The Bandit seemed far more pleased with catching fat bullocks than the other animals that abounded here. More worrying though, was that The Bandit seemed to be getting a taste for the flesh of man. The last 5 months Gopala had heard that 11 people had been killed and eaten by The Bandit. Whether this was true or not Gopala didn't know. The Bandit certainly wasn't the only tiger haunting these jungles within this range. Most tigers were content to keep to themselves, feeding on their usual fair. Every now and then though one would take to killing stock, which very quickly made it an agent of destruction. A wealthy man might be brought to poverty in a matter of months. For the rural people here, lifestock was solid wealth. It represented food, status, and money. But a quick bite to the neck from a tiger could quickly deprive a man of his hard work. As bad as that was though, a man-eater was nothing short of a menace. When a maneater was on the prowl, people were afraid to leave their homes to work, to get food, or to even fetch water. An entire village of more than a hundred people would appear like a ghost town, afraid to merely open their doors for fear of being pounced upon and devoured. Luckily for all of India, man-eating tigers were fairly rare. Some even seemed to lose interest in man meat after a short time.

Regardless of whether a man-eater was on the prowl or not, Gopala had a job to do. There was a stock killer in the jungle at this moment, and it was his job to kill it before it killed the rest of his stock. Already eight of his thirty bullocks had been killed, which was more than his father had lost in a decade. Gopala wouldn't let himself be run off, or have his animals slaughtered. He wouldn't be driven into poverty, forcing his wife and children to relocate and forced to do menial labor. He wouldn't be driven to the rail lines to lay down tracks and wooden beams for the trains. That wasn't for him, or his children.
He exited the thick bushes, not bothering with stealth for the moment, and sat on a nearby rock. He looked over the musket. The metal of the barrel was worn and partly rusted. The wooden stock had deep gouges, scored from innumberable bumps against rock, trees and thorns. The original sights had long ago been worked loose and had been replaced by a notch and fin battered into place. Calling it crude would have been an complimentary exaggeration. Despite this however, it could still fire an ounce of lead and hit anything within thirty hards, and could reasonably kill it. Gopala had used it several times before for driving away a small group of dholes and getting a small amount of extra meat.
After a few minutes of thinking of what he should do next, Gopala stood and began walking down a slight incline, towards the river. The hammer on the muzzle loader was pulled back menacingly.