The Second Jungle Book
“That is not the cry of the Forerunner,” answered Gray Brother. “It is
some great killing. Listen!”
It broke out again, half sobbing and half chuckling, just as though the
jackal had soft human lips. Then Mowgli drew deep breath, and ran to the
Council Rock, overtaking on his way hurrying wolves of the Pack.
Phao and Akela were on the Rock together, and below them, every nerve
strained, sat the others. The mothers and the cubs were cantering off to
their lairs; for when the pheeal cries it is no time for weak things to
be abroad.
They could hear nothing except the Waingunga rushing and gurgling in
the dark, and the light evening winds among the tree-tops, till suddenly
across the river a wolf called. It was no wolf of the Pack, for they
were all at the Rock. The note changed to a long, despairing bay; and
“Dhole!” it said, “Dhole! dhole! dhole!” They heard tired feet on the
rocks, and a gaunt wolf, streaked with red on his flanks, his right
fore-paw useless, and his jaws white with foam, flung himself into the
circle and lay gasping at Mowgli’s feet.
“Good hunting! Under whose Headship?” said Phao gravely.
“Good hunting! Won-tolla am I,” was the answer. He meant that he was
a solitary wolf, fending for himself, his mate, and his cubs in
some lonely lair, as do many wolves in the south. Won-tolla means an
Outlier--one who lies out from any Pack. Then he panted, and they could
see his heart-beats shake him backward and forward.
“What moves?” said Phao, for that is the question all the Jungle asks
after the pheeal cries.
“The dhole, the dhole of the Dekkan--Red Dog, the Killer! They came
north from the south saying the Dekkan was empty and killing out by the
way. When this moon was new there were four to me--my mate and three
cubs. She would teach them to kill on the grass plains, hiding to
drive the buck, as we do who are of the open. At midnight I heard them
together, full tongue on the trail. At the dawn-wind I found them stiff
in the grass--four, Free People, four when this moon was new. Then
sought I my Blood-Right and found the dhole.”
“How many?” said Mowgli quickly; the Pack growled deep in their throats.
“I do not know. Three of them will kill no more, but at the last they
drove me like the buck; on my three legs they drove me. Look, Free
People!”
He thrust out his mangled fore-foot, all dark with dried blood. There
were cruel bites low down on his side, and his throat was torn and
worried.
“Eat,” said Akela, rising up from the meat Mowgli had brought him, and
the Outlier flung himself on it.
“This shall be no loss,” he said humbly, when he had taken off the first
edge of his hunger. “Give me a little strength, Free People, and I also
will kill. My lair is empty that was full when this moon was new, and
the Blood Debt is not all paid.”
Phao heard his teeth crack on a haunch-bone and grunted approvingly.
“We shall need those jaws,” said he. “Were there cubs with the dhole?”
“Nay, nay. Red Hunters all: grown dogs of their Pack, heavy and strong
for all that they eat lizards in the Dekkan.”
What Won-tolla had said meant that the dhole, the red hunting-dog of the
Dekkan, was moving to kill, and the Pack knew well that even the tiger
will surrender a new kill to the dhole. They drive straight through the
Jungle, and what they meet they pull down and tear to pieces. Though
they are not as big nor half as cunning as the wolf, they are very
strong and very numerous. The dhole, for instance, do not begin to call
themselves a pack till they are a hundred strong; whereas forty wolves
make a very fair pack indeed. Mowgli’s wanderings had taken him to
the edge of the high grassy downs of the Dekkan, and he had seen the
fearless dholes sleeping and playing and scratching themselves in the
little hollows and tussocks that they use for lairs. He despised and
hated them because they did not smell like the Free People, because they
did not live in caves, and, above all, because they had hair between
their toes while he and his friends were clean-footed. But he knew, for
Hathi had told him, what a terrible thing a dhole hunting-pack was. Even
Hathi moves aside from their line, and until they are killed, or till
game is scarce, they will go forward.
Akela knew something of the dholes, too, for he said to Mowgli quietly,
“It is better to die in a Full Pack than leaderless and alone. This is
good hunting, and--my last. But, as men live, thou hast very many more
nights and days, Little Brother. Go north and lie down, and if any live
after the dhole has gone by he shall bring thee word of the fight.”
“Ah,” said Mowgli, quite gravely, “must I go to the marshes and catch
little fish and sleep in a tree, or must I ask help of the Bandar-log
and crack nuts, while the Pack fight below?”
“It is to the death,” said Akela. “Thou hast never met the dhole--the
Red Killer. Even the Striped One----”
“Aowa! Aowa!” said Mowgli pettingly. “I have killed one striped ape, and
sure am I in my stomach that Shere Khan would have left his own mate for
meat to the dhole if he had winded a pack across three ranges. Listen
now: There was a wolf, my father, and there was a wolf, my mother, and
there was an old gray wolf (not too wise: he is white now) was my father
and my mother. Therefore I--” he raised his voice, “I say that when the
dhole come, and if the dhole come, Mowgli and the Free People are of
one skin for that hunting; and I say, by the Bull that bought me--by the
Bull Bagheera paid for me in the old days which ye of the Pack do not
remember--_I_ say, that the Trees and the River may hear and hold fast
if I forget; _I_ say that this my knife shall be as a tooth to the
Pack--and I do not think it is so blunt. This is my Word which has gone
from me.”
“Thou dost not know the dhole, man with a wolf’s tongue,” said
Won-tolla. “I look only to clear the Blood Debt against them ere they
have me in many pieces. They move slowly, killing out as they go, but in
two days a little strength will come back to me and I turn again for the
Blood Debt. But for YE, Free People, my word is that ye go north and eat
but little for a while till the dhole are gone. There is no meat in this
hunting.”
“Hear the Outlier!” said Mowgli with a laugh. “Free People, we must go
north and dig lizards and rats from the bank, lest by any chance we meet
the dhole. He must kill out our hunting-grounds, while we lie hid in the
north till it please him to give us our own again. He is a dog--and the
pup of a dog--red, yellow-bellied, lairless, and haired between every
toe! He counts his cubs six and eight at the litter, as though he were
Chikai, the little leaping rat. Surely we must run away, Free People,
and beg leave of the peoples of the north for the offal of dead cattle!
Ye know the saying: ‘North are the vermin; south are the lice. WE are
the Jungle.’ Choose ye, O choose. It is good hunting! For the Pack--for
the Full Pack--for the lair and the litter; for the in-kill and the
out-kill; for the mate that drives the doe and the little, little cub
within the cave; it is met!--it is met!--it is met!”
The Pack answered with one deep, crashing bark that sounded in the night
like a big tree falling. “It is met!” they cried. “Stay with these,”
said Mowgli to the Four. “We shall need every tooth. Phao and Akela must
make ready the battle. I go to count the dogs.”
“It is death!” Won-tolla cried, half rising. “What can such a hairless
one do against the Red Dog? Even the Striped One, remember----”
“Thou art indeed an Outlier,” Mowgli called back; “but we will speak
when the dholes are dead. Good hunting all!”
He hurried off into the darkness, wild with excitement, hardly looking
where he set foot, and the natural consequence was that he tripped full
length over Kaa’s great coils where the python lay watching a deer-path
near the river.
“Kssha!” said Kaa angrily. “Is this jungle-work, to stamp and tramp and
undo a night’s hunting--when the game are moving so well, too?”
“The fault was mine,” said Mowgli, picking himself up. “Indeed I was
seeking thee, Flathead, but each time we meet thou art longer and
broader by the length of my arm. There is none like thee in the Jungle,
wise, old, strong, and most beautiful Kaa.”
“Now whither does THIS trail lead?” Kaa’s voice was gentler. “Not a
moon since there was a Manling with a knife threw stones at my head and
called me bad little tree-cat names, because I lay asleep in the open.”
“Ay, and turned every driven deer to all the winds, and Mowgli was
hunting, and this same Flathead was too deaf to hear his whistle, and
leave the deer-roads free,” Mowgli answered composedly, sitting down
among the painted coils.
“Now this same Manling comes with soft, tickling words to this same
Flathead, telling him that he is wise and strong and beautiful, and
this same old Flathead believes and makes a place, thus, for this same
stone-throwing Manling, and--Art thou at ease now? Could Bagheera give
thee so good a resting-place?”
Kaa had, as usual, made a sort of soft half-hammock of himself under
Mowgli’s weight. The boy reached out in the darkness, and gathered in
the supple cable-like neck till Kaa’s head rested on his shoulder, and
then he told him all that had happened in the Jungle that night.
“Wise I may be,” said Kaa at the end; “but deaf I surely am. Else I
should have heard the pheeal. Small wonder the Eaters of Grass are
uneasy. How many be the dhole?”
“I have not yet seen. I came hot-foot to thee. Thou art older than
Hathi. But oh, Kaa,”--here Mowgli wriggled with sheerjoy,--“it will be
good hunting. Few of us will see another moon.”
“Dost THOU strike in this? Remember thou art a Man; and remember what
Pack cast thee out. Let the Wolf look to the Dog. THOU art a Man.”
“Last year’s nuts are this year’s black earth,” said Mowgli. “It is true
that I am a Man, but it is in my stomach that this night I have said
that I am a Wolf. I called the River and the Trees to remember. I am of
the Free People, Kaa, till the dhole has gone by.”
“Free People,” Kaa grunted. “Free thieves! And thou hast tied thyself
into the death-knot for the sake of the memory of the dead wolves? This
is no good hunting.”
“It is my Word which I have spoken. The Trees know, the River knows.
Till the dhole have gone by my Word comes not back to me.”
“Ngssh! This changes all trails. I had thought to take thee away with me
to the northern marshes, but the Word--even the Word of a little, naked,
hairless Manling--is the Word. Now I, Kaa, say----”
“Think well, Flathead, lest thou tie thyself into the death-knot also. I
need no Word from thee, for well I know----”
“Be it so, then,” said Kaa. “I will give no Word; but what is in thy
stomach to do when the dhole come?”
“They must swim the Waingunga. I thought to meet them with my knife in
the shallows, the Pack behind me; and so stabbing and thrusting, we a
little might turn them down-stream, or cool their throats.”
“The dhole do not turn and their throats are hot,” said Kaa. “There will
be neither Manling nor Wolf-cub when that hunting is done, but only dry
bones.”
“Alala! If we die, we die. It will be most good hunting. But my stomach
is young, and I have not seen many Rains. I am not wise nor strong. Hast
thou a better plan, Kaa?”
“I have seen a hundred and a hundred Rains. Ere Hathi cast his
milk-tushes my trail was big in the dust. By the First Egg, I am older
than many trees, and I have seen all that the Jungle has done.”
“But THIS is new hunting,” said Mowgli. “Never before have the dhole
crossed our trail.”
“What is has been. What will be is no more than a forgotten year
striking backward. Be still while I count those my years.”
For a long hour Mowgli lay back among the coils, while Kaa, his head