Agent Out of Time

Deshavi laughed shaking her head no.

"Well then out with it." I pressed, as I wanted to know what had brought forth the first laugh that I'd heard from her in a long time.

"I was just thinking how it must have been in the garden before everything went wrong. How it must've been possible to approach such a beast as our tiger here, without fear. I'd love nothing more than to scratch his big belly right now and pet him."

I glanced back out at the tiger, who was sprawled in the snow belly up. I didn't even like cats, but I had to admit that a belly rub looked tempting on the big tiger at the moment.

"Do you think the miner raised him up from a cub?" Trent asked.

I nodded, "At first I thought the miner did poaching on the side, but now I think he was against it. He probably found this one as a cub beside its mother caught in a trap and decided to raise it instead of letting the poachers have it."

Trent looked over at me curiously, "Why do you think he wasn't a poacher? He may have just been raising the cub to a bigger size before killing it for its hide or selling it to a zoo."

"Because he trained this tiger to know what a trap was and I unwittingly enforced the training, when I sprang the trap with my stick. Another reason being for my hypothesis is that the miner's leg was snapped by a tiger trap. It's the kind of revenge that a poacher would take out on someone messing with their trap lines. He likely died of blood poisoning, from the penetration of the rusty metal teeth, of the trap than he did from the broken leg."

Trent nodded thoughtfully and then rejoined with his own statement, "I've done my own investigating while you've been out hunting. Our miner was mining for gold. It looks like the seam of it that he was mining was all played out and yet he stayed. Now why do you suppose that he did that?"

"To raise the tiger." Deshavi responded softly.

Trent nodded, "So he stayed, which means that the gold he mined also stayed. Now where do you think the best place to hide a fortune in gold around here would be?" Trent asked knowingly.

"A tiger's play toy." I said, as the truth of the heavy weight of the ball occurred to me. I had just thought it to be sand rattling around inside of it.

"Exactly." Trent responded. "Now with such a tidy little fortune in gold we could bribe our way out of here if need be."