The Sultan's Tigers (11 page)

My uncle didn't bother asking any of these questions. “We don't need a guide,” he said. “We just need a taxi.”

“Come this way. Follow me. I will guide you for taxi.”

I wouldn't have followed some random guy who came up to me in the street, but my uncle seemed perfectly happy to trust him, so we let the guide lead us around the corner to a shady spot where a yellow auto-rickshaw was parked by the side of the road. I could see a pair of bare feet poking out of the window; the driver must have been having a nap inside his vehicle. Our guide whistled. The driver sat up and poked his head out. To my surprise, he was just a kid. He looked about the same age as me, and maybe a year or two younger. I'm thin, but this guy was so skinny that his bones would have snapped in a strong breeze. “You want one taxi?” he called to us. “I am ready and available for hire! Please to come aboard!”

My uncle gave a few rupees to our guide, who bowed his head gratefully. “Thank you so much, sir. If you change your mind and wish for full Tipu tour, you will please come to find me. I have expert knowledge of all relevant historical monuments.”

The kid was already ushering us eagerly toward his rickshaw. “Welcome in my taxi,” he said. “Please, you will go where? To the Tipu Palace? The gardens? You will have one stop for restaurant? You are hungry? You are thirsty? You want to buy good jewels? I know best shop.”

“Calm down, kid. We don't want to buy anything.” Uncle Harvey's phone had a map. A flashing blue dot showed our current position. He pointed to where we wanted to go. “Can you take us here?”

“No problem, I will take you anywhere, you just tell me where.” The kid peered at the tiny screen. “What is the name of this place?”

“I don't know.”

“You do not know where you are going?”

“We want to head north. Somewhere around here,” said my uncle, gesturing vaguely again at the tiny map on the tiny screen of his tiny phone.

Unsurprisingly, the kid was confused. “Round there means round where?”

“Don't worry about that,” said Uncle Harvey. “We'll know when we get there.”

“No problem. We will find it. If you please to come aboard.”

We clambered inside his rickshaw, which wobbled under our weight. A long crack ran across the entire length of the windshield. Stuffing wisped through slashes in the seats. There were no doors and no seat belts, just a rail to hang on to. It looked decrepit and dangerous and entirely fantastic. I wanted to drive it myself. Later I'd have to ask our driver if I could give it a shot.

Once the motor was puttering away and the rickshaw was ready to go, the kid turned around and grinned at us. “You are comfy?”

“Yes, thanks,” said my uncle.

“The cushion is good?”

I nodded. “Perfect.”

“Good. My name is Suresh.”

He waited for a moment as if he was expecting us to tell him our names in exchange, but my uncle just said, “Could you switch on the meter?”

“Meter no working,” said Suresh.

“Oh, yeah. I've heard that one before.”

“It is true, sir. But not a problem. You will pay what you want.”

“No, thanks,” said my uncle. He swung one leg out of the rickshaw. “If you won't switch on your meter, we'll find another cab.”

“But I am telling you already, the meter is not working!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, Tom. We're outta here.”

“Wait a minute.” I turned to the kid. “What did you mean, we'd pay what we wanted? How would that work?”

“Like I say, you pay what you want. You like my service, you give me good money. You no like, you no pay.”

“You mean, we'd get a free ride?”

“Yes! India is a free country. Free economy. Free enterprise. You pay what you want.”

“That's crazy,” said Uncle Harvey. “What if you drive us for the whole day and go a hundred miles, but we only give you ten rupees?”

“It is for you to choose. I am telling you, sir, this is the best system.”

“Fine. If that's how you want to play it, that's how we'll play it.” My uncle shifted himself back into the cab. “It sounds insane to me, but it's your cab. You can do what you like.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Suresh revved the throttle. The rickshaw jerked forward, spluttered down the road, and swept us into the lines of traffic toward our tiger.

We soon left the town
behind and drove through the countryside, heading north. Palm trees sprang out of the earth like big hands gesturing at the sky. White bullocks pulled wooden plows through the fields. We passed a man on a horse, clip-clopping slowly up the road, and I had a vision of Horatio Trelawney riding this way more than two hundred years ago, the sounds of the battle still ringing in his ears.

I turned to my uncle. “Can I see the letter?”

“Which letter?”

“The last one. The one about the hill. I'd like to check what Horatio said.”

“Good idea.” He unzipped his bag, pulled out the treasure box, and unfolded the final letter so we could both read it.

 

I might have ridden twenty, or I might have ridden thirty miles, it was not easy to know. The landscape was so hilly and the roads so rough that any accurate figure is beyond me.

 

Horatio had left only the vaguest directions for us to follow: head north for something between twenty and thirty miles. Stop when you come to a small hill topped with a rickety stone shrine. Then climb to the top.

 

To my astonishment, I found a small shrine on the top of the hill.

 

We just had to hope it was still there.

Our rickshaw whizzed us through a village of small houses with straw roofs. Suresh blasted his horn, scattering children and chickens, then the dust whirled and they were gone.

The road went on and on. My throat was dry. My butt ached. Only a finger-thin cushion lay between me and the hard seat, and the uneven surface bounced us about mercilessly.

My hands hurt too. I had to cling on to the metal struts or I would have been thrown out of the rickshaw whenever we went over a bump.

But I couldn't stop grinning.

Driving in a funny little vehicle halfway between a van and a scooter, heading into a strange landscape, baked by the sun, hunting for treasure—what could be better than this?

The same sights repeated again and again, fields and trees and oxen and cyclists, the monotony broken only by the occasional car careening down the road toward us, furiously hooting its horn, ordering us out of its way, then roaring past and leaving our little rickshaw in a cloud of dust. There was only one law on these roads: biggest is best.

Uncle Harvey had been looking over Suresh's shoulder, keeping an eye on the odometer, and suddenly announced, “We've gone eighteen miles. It should be soon.”

Horatio had taken an entire morning to ride this route on his horse. Even in our battered, spluttering three-wheeled rickshaw, we'd done the same journey in less than an hour.

We took a side each, Uncle Harvey on the left and me on the right, and peered at the landscape.

Five minutes passed. Then another five. The road curved. And I saw what we were looking for.

I nudged my uncle. “That's it.” I spoke in a low voice, not wanting Suresh to hear me. “Look. Do you see?”

Uncle Harvey crowded over to my side of the rickshaw and peered out of the open doorway. Together we stared at the hill. It was exactly as Horatio had described, a small, steep mound springing straight out of the dusty plain.

Now we just had to climb up there, find the hole in the ground, dig up the tiger—and we'd be rich.

Uncle Harvey waited for us to come right up to the hill, then tapped Suresh on his shoulder. “We'll stop here, please.”

“Here, sir?” shouted Suresh.

“Yes. Here.”

We glided to a standstill by the side of the road.

Uncle Harvey and I stepped out. The heat was astonishing. While the rickshaw was moving, a breeze had been cooling us down, but stepping out of it onto the road was like putting your head in an oven.

Suresh watched us curiously. He asked, “You will go where?”

“Up there.” I pointed to the top of the hill.

“Why?”

I wasn't sure how to answer, but luckily Uncle Harvey took over. “We want to see the view. Will you wait for us here, please? We won't be long.”

“You will leave your bag?” asked Suresh. “Is safe with me.”

“That's not a bad idea,” said Uncle Harvey. He pulled a few valuables out of the bag, zipped it up, and dumped it on the back seat. “You're not going to steal it, are you?”

“No, sir!” Suresh looked shocked at the very idea. “I am your driver, not a thief! I will keep it safe for you.”

“Just checking. See you later.”

I thought about my bag, now in Marko's possession. What was in there? Anything I needed? Clothes. Shoes. Two books. The charger for my phone. Toothbrush, toothpaste. The only thing I'd actually miss was my favorite T-shirt, a nice blue one with a picture of a skull on it. For a horrible moment, I thought he might steal it for himself, but then I realized it would be much too small for him. I was glad about that. There was something really gross about the thought of Marko wearing my best T-shirt.

As we walked away from the road, Suresh squatted in the shade cast by his rickshaw and stared at us. I could imagine the questions going through his mind. What were we doing? Why would anyone get out of a nice comfortable rickshaw in the middle of nowhere and start climbing a hill at the hottest time of day?

You just wait. We'll be back with two million dollars.

Obviously I didn't say that. I just grinned at him and kept walking.

Uncle Harvey set a brisk pace. His legs were longer than mine and I soon dropped behind. I had to climb the hill staring at his back, watching the first prickles of sweat appear under his armpits, then widen into puddles.

The sunlight beat down on my face. I could hear my mom's voice.
Where's your hat? What about sunblock? Haven't you heard of skin cancer?
Yadda, yadda, yadda. The same old stuff that moms have to say.

Actually, if she
had
said all that stuff, she would have been right. I really needed a hat. And some sunblock. And, more than anything, water. The sun was slicing through my skull like a blowtorch, and soon I was sweating almost as much as my uncle.

Forget it. We were almost at the top. Just a few more minutes. Then the agony would be over. A million dollars would soon make up for a bit of sunburn.

Up we went, side by side, silent, neither of us wanting to waste our breath on conversation.

Up and up and up.

Up and up and up.

We stumbled to the top of the hill, panting and sweat-sodden, and emerged on the summit, and found . . .

. . . nothing.

The hilltop was flat and empty. There wasn't the slightest sign that a shrine had ever been built here. Where had it gone?

What had happened in the past two hundred years?

According to Horatio's letter, his shrine hadn't been much. From his description, I'd imagined nothing more than a hole in the ground. But I couldn't even see a hole up here.

How would we find it again? How could we ever discover where it had been? Would we have to dig up this entire hill for ourselves?

We didn't even have a spade.

“I guess we climbed the wrong hill,” said my uncle.

“It might be the right one.” I was trying to stay positive. “It fits Horatio's description.”

“Yes, but so do they all.”

“What do you mean, ‘they all'?”

“Look.”

Until that moment, all my attention had been fixed on the summit where we were standing, searching for the remnants of a well, a spring, a deep, dark hole that might have hidden a tiger for two hundred years. Now I looked around us.

From the height of this hill, I could see the undulating landscape stretching in every direction. There must have been forty more hills almost identical to ours, and those were only the ones that we could see. If we drove up the road, we'd probably find hundreds more, valley after valley giving way to summit after summit, every one exactly as Horatio had described.

I was daunted for a moment. I don't mind admitting that. I had a few seconds of worry: Had we messed up? Should we have stayed at home? Was this whole thing a waste of time? What if the letters were forgeries? What if the whole thing was a trick dreamed up by Grandpa to steal a rich man's money? Had we been stupid enough to fall for one of Grandpa's cons?

Then I told myself not to be such a loser. We had a whole week here in India. That was long enough to climb every hill for miles around. And if it was a con, who cared? Being here was still a lot more interesting than being with my family or going back to school.

I turned to my uncle. “Shall we try the next one?”

“Sure. Race you to the bottom.”

We drove north,
parked the rickshaw, said goodbye to Suresh again, and climbed another hill. By the time we got to the top, I was drenched in sweat. It wasn't the one we were looking for. We walked down, drove on, got out, climbed the next. Nothing. Then one more. Nothing. And yet another. Nothing there, either.

Suresh must have thought we were insane, but he never questioned what we were doing, just did as we asked and drove us down the road till we told him to stop again, then sat in the shade of a tree and watched us struggle up yet another rock-strewn gradient.

That hill, the sixth of them, was the most difficult so far. I don't know if the slope was actually steeper or if I was just getting tired, but it was a real struggle to get to the top. And a bitter disappointment to find it empty. There was nothing there at all. Not even a tree. Just a few windswept shrubs, none of them hiding a hole or a pile of rocks.