All the Mowgli Stories (Macmillan Collector's Library)

‘I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said that the Red Flower blossomed at the gate of the village, and men sat about it carrying guns. Now I know, for I have good cause,’—Akela looked down at the old dry scars on his flank and side,—‘that men do not carry guns for pleasure. Presently, Little Brother, a man with a gun follows our trail—if, indeed, he be not already on it.’

‘But why should he? Men have cast me out. What more do they need?’ said Mowgli angrily.

‘Thou art a man, Little Brother,’ Akela returned. ‘It is not for us, the Free Hunters, to tell thee what thy brethren do, or why.’

He had just time to snatch up his paw as the skinning-knife cut deep into the ground below. Mowgli struck quicker than an average human eye could follow, but Akela was a wolf; and even a dog, who is very far removed from the wild wolf, his ancestor, can be waked out of deep sleep by a cart-wheel touching his flank, and can spring away unharmed before that wheel comes on.

‘Another time,’ Mowgli said quietly, returning the knife to its sheath, ‘speak of the Man-Pack and of Mowgli in two breaths—not one.’

‘Phff! That is a sharp tooth,’ said Akela, snuffing at the blade’s cut in the earth, ‘but living with the Man-Pack has spoiled thine eye, Little Brother. I could have killed a buck while thou wast striking.’

Bagheera sprang to his feet, thrust up his head as far as he could, sniffed, and stiffened through every curve in his body. Gray Brother followed his example quickly, keeping a little to his left to get the wind that was blowing from the right, while Akela bounded fifty yards up wind, and, half-crouching, stiffened too. Mowgli looked on enviously. He could smell things as very few human beings could, but he had never reached the hair-trigger-like sensitiveness of a Jungle nose; and his three months in the smoky village had set him back sadly. However, he dampened his finger, rubbed it on his nose, and stood erect to catch the upper scent, which, though it is the faintest, is the truest.

‘Man!’ Akela growled, dropping on his haunches.

‘Buldeo!’ said Mowgli, sitting down. ‘He follows our trail, and yonder is the sunlight on his gun. Look!’

It was no more than a splash of sunlight, for a fraction of a second, on the brass clamps of the old Tower musket, but nothing in the Jungle winks with just that flash, except when the clouds race over the sky. Then a piece of mica, or a little pool, or even a highly-polished leaf will flash like a heliograph. But that day was cloudless and still.

‘I knew men would follow,’ said Akela triumphantly. ‘Not for nothing have I led the Pack.’

The four cubs said nothing, but ran down hill on their bellies, melting into the thorn and under-brush as a mole melts into a lawn.

‘Where go ye, and without word?’ Mowgli called.

‘H’sh! We roll his skull here before mid-day!’ Gray Brother answered.

‘Back! Back and wait! Man does not eat Man!’ Mowgli shrieked.

‘Who was a wolf but now? Who drove the knife at me for thinking he might be Man?’ said Akela, as the four wolves turned back sullenly and dropped to heel.

‘Am I to give reason for all I choose to do?’ said Mowgli furiously.

‘That is Man! There speaks Man!’ Bagheera muttered under his whiskers. ‘Even so did men talk round the King’s cages at Oodeypore. We of the Jungle know that Man is wisest of all. If we trusted our ears we should know that of all things he is most foolish.’ Raising his voice, he added, ‘The Man-cub is right in this. Men hunt in packs. To kill one, unless we know what the others will do, is bad hunting. Come, let us see what this Man means toward us.’

‘We will not come,’ Gray Brother growled. ‘Hunt alone, Little Brother. We know our own minds. The skull would have been ready to bring by now.’

Mowgli had been looking from one to the other of his friends, his chest heaving and his eyes full of tears. He strode forward to the wolves, and, dropping on one knee, said: ‘Do I not know my mind? Look at me!’

They looked uneasily, and when their eyes wandered, he called them back again and again, till their hair stood up all over their bodies, and they trembled in every limb, while Mowgli stared and stared.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘of us five, which is leader?’

‘Thou art leader, Little Brother,’ said Gray Brother, and he licked Mowgli’s foot.

‘Follow, then,’ said Mowgli, and the four followed at his heels with their tails between their legs.

‘This comes of living with the Man-Pack,’ said Bagheera, slipping down after them. ‘There is more in the Jungle now than Jungle Law, Baloo.’

The old bear said nothing, but he thought many things.

Mowgli cut across noiselessly through the Jungle, at right angles to Buldeo’s path, till, parting the undergrowth, he saw the old man, his musket on his shoulder, running up the trail of overnight at a dog-trot.