The Jungle Book (22 page)

It broke out again, half sobbing and half chuckling, just as though the jackal had soft human lips. Then Mowgli drew a 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 to their lairs;
for when the
Pheeal
cries it is no time for weak things to be abroad.

They could hear nothing except the Wainganga gurgling in the dark and the evening winds among the treetops, till suddenly across the river a wolf called. It was no wolf of the pack, for those were all at the Rock. The note changed to a long despairing bay; and “Dhole!” it said, “Dhole! Dhole! Dhole!” In a few minutes they heard tired feet on the rocks, and a gaunt, dripping wolf, streaked with red on his flanks, his right forepaw 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. Won-tolla means an outlier—one who lies out from any pack. When he panted they could see his heart shake him backwards and forwards.

“What moves?” said Phao, for that is the question all the jungle asks after the
Pheeal
.

“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. 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 three legs they drove me. Look, Free People!”

He thrust out his mangled forefoot, 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; the outlier flung himself on it famishing.

“This shall be no loss,” he said humbly when he had taken off the 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 their cubs with the dhole?”

“Nay, nay. Red hunters all: grown dogs of their pack, heavy and strong.”

That meant that the dhole, the red hunting dog of the Dekkan, was moving to fight, and the wolves 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. Mowgli’s wanderings had taken him to the edge of the high grassy downs of the Dekkan, and he had often seen the fearless dholes sleeping and playing and scratching themselves among 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. Hathi himself moves aside from their line, and until they are all killed, or till game is scarce, they go forward killing as they go.

Akela knew something of the dholes, too; he said to Mowgli quietly: “It is better to die in the full pack than leaderless and alone. It 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 wolf 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 eat nuts while the pack fights 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. 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,” Won-tolla cried. “I look only to clear my 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 my Blood Debt. But for
ye
, Free People, my counsel is that ye go north and eat but little for a while till the dhole are gone. There is no sleep in this hunting.”

“Hear the Outlier!” said Mowgli with a laugh. “Free People, we must go north and eat lizards and rats from the bank, lest by 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 tree falling. “It is met,” they cried.

“Stay with these,” said Mowgli to his 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 coils 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 cablelike 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 seen yet. I came hotfoot to thee. Thou art older than Hathi. But, oh, Kaa”—here Mowgli wriggled with joy—“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 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! That 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 Wainganga. I thought to meet them with my knife in the shallows, the pack behind me; and so stabbing and thrusting we might turn them downstream, or cool their throats a little.”

“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 has the dhole crossed our trail.”

“What is has been. What will be is no more than a forgotten year striking backwards. Be still while I count those my years.”

For a long hour Mowgli lay back among the coils, playing with his knife, while Kaa, his head motionless on the ground, thought of all that he had seen and known since the day he came from the egg. The light seemed to go out of his eyes and leave them like stale opals, and now and again he made little stiff passes with his head to right and left, as though he were hunting in his sleep. Mowgli dozed quietly, for he knew that there is nothing like sleep before hunting, and he was trained to take it at any hour of the day or night.

Then he felt Kaa grow bigger and broader below him as
the huge python puffed himself out, hissing with the noise of a sword drawn from a steel scabbard.

“I have seen all the dead seasons,” Kaa said at last, “and the great trees and the old elephants and the rocks that were bare and sharp-pointed ere the moss grew. Art
thou
still alive, manling?”

“It is only a little after moonrise,” said Mowgli. “I do not understand—”

“Hssh! I am again Kaa. I knew it was but a little time. Now we will go to the river, and I will show thee what is to be done against the dhole.”

He turned, straight as an arrow, for the main stream of the Wainganga, plunging in a little above the pool that hid the Peace Rock, Mowgli at his side.

“Nay, do not swim. I go swiftly. My back, Little Brother.”

Mowgli tucked his left arm round Kaa’s neck, dropped his right close to his body and straightened his feet. Then Kaa breasted the current as he alone could, and the ripple of the checked water stood up in a frill round Mowgli’s neck and his feet were waved to and fro in the eddy under the python’s lashing sides. A mile or so above the Peace Rock the Wainganga narrows between a gorge of marble rocks from eighty to a hundred feet high, and the current runs like a millrace between and over all manner of ugly stones. But Mowgli
did not trouble his head about the water: no water in the world could have given him a moment’s fear. He was looking at the gorge on either side and sniffing uneasily, for there was a sweetish-sourish smell in the air, very like the smell of a big anthill on a hot day. Instinctively he lowered himself in the water, only raising his head to breathe, and Kaa came to anchor with a double twist of his tail round a sunken rock, holding Mowgli in the hollow of a coil, while the water raced by.

“This is the Place of Death,” said the boy. “Why do we come here?”

“They sleep,” said Kaa. “Hathi will not turn aside for the Striped One. Yet Hathi and the Striped One together turn aside for the dhole, and the dhole they say turns aside for nothing. And yet for whom do the Little People of the Rocks turn aside? Tell me, Master of the Jungle, who is the Master of the Jungle?”

“These,” Mowgli whispered. “It is the Place of Death. Let us go.”

“Nay, look well, for they are asleep. It is as it was when I was not the length of thy arm.”