Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (383 page)

This was not a question in which Mowgli concerned himself, for, as he said, he had eaten sour fruit, and he knew the tree it hung from; but when Phao, son of Phaona (his father was the Gray Tracker in the days of Akela’s headship), fought his way to the leadership of the Pack, according to the Jungle Law, and the old calls and songs began to ring under the stars once more, Mowgli came to the Council Rock for memory’s sake. When he chose to speak the Pack waited till he had finished, and he sat at Akela’s side on the rock above Phao. Those were days of good hunting and good sleeping. No stranger cared to break into the jungles that belonged to Mowgli’s people, as they called the Pack, and the young wolves grew fat and strong, and there were many cubs to bring to the Looking-over. Mowgli always attended a Looking-over, remembering the night when a black panther bought a naked brown baby into the pack, and the long call, “Look, look well, O Wolves,” made his heart flutter. Otherwise, he would be far away in the Jungle with his four brothers, tasting, touching, seeing, and feeling new things.

One twilight when he was trotting leisurely across the ranges to give Akela the half of a buck that he had killed, while the Four jogged behind him, sparring a little, and tumbling one another over for joy of being alive, he heard a cry that had never been heard since the bad days of Shere Khan. It was what they call in the Jungle the pheeal, a hideous kind of shriek that the jackal gives when he is hunting behind a tiger, or when there is a big killing afoot. If you can imagine a mixture of hate, triumph, fear, and despair, with a kind of leer running through it, you will get some notion of the pheeal that rose and sank and wavered and quavered far away across the Waingunga. The Four stopped at once, bristling and growling. Mowgli’s hand went to his knife, and he checked, the blood in his face, his eyebrows knotted.

“There is no Striped One dare kill here,” he said.

“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.”