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The tigrero, in this case, arms himself with a short spear, the shaft of which is made of a strong hard wood, either a guaiacum, or a piece of the split trunk of one of the hardwood palms.
The tigrero usually depends upon fire-arms for destroying his noble game; but where his shot fails, and it is necessary to come to close quarters, he will even attack the jaguar with his machete a species of half-knife half-sword, to be found in every Spanish-American cottage from California to Chili. Very often the jaguar is hunted without the gun.
They knew that the killing of the animal should have been left to them; but, as they had given their guide no notice of this, they said nothing, but looked on leaving the tigrero to manage matters after his own way. It was evident that he intended to attack the bear, and in a peculiar fashion.
It was the bear without a particle of breath in his body; but, lest he might recover it again, the tigrero leaped from his horse, stepped up to the prostrate bear, and buried his machete between the ribs of the unconscious animal. That, he said, was the way they captured bears in his part of the country.
At a particular season of the year, corresponding to the summer of our own country, he makes a roving expedition to the lower regions; and for what purpose? This was the very question which Alexis put to the tigrero. The answer was as curious as laconic: "Comer la cabeza del negro." "Ha, ha! to eat the negro's head!" repeated Ivan, with an incredulous laugh.
The young hunters, and Pouchskin too, were about getting ready to fire upon him; when, to their surprise, they saw the tigrero, who was mounted on a prancing little horse, spur out in front of them, and gallop towards the bear.
Neither was there any longer a mystery about the "negro's head;" for the rounded fruit, with its wrinkled coriaceous pericarp suggesting a resemblance to the little curly knots of wool on the head of an African was evidently the object to which the tigrero had applied the ambiguous appellation.
In this way went horse and bear for half a mile over the plain; the spectators following after to witness the ending of the affair. About that there was nothing particular: for when the tigrero at length halted, and the party got up to the ground, they saw only an immobile mass of shaggy hair so coated with dust as to resemble a heap of earth.
Of course, the skin of this particular bear was not suitable for the purpose for which one was required; and the tigrero kept it for his own profit.
It is evident, therefore, that jaguar-hunting would not pay, if there was only the pelt to depend upon; but the tigrero looks to another source of profit the bounty. In the hotter regions of Spanish America, the Brazils as well there are many settlements to which the jaguar is not only a pest, but a terror.
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