Kaa, the big Rock Python, had changed his skin for perhaps the two
hundredth time since his birth; and Mowgli, who never forgot that he
owed his life to Kaa for a night's work at Cold Lairs, which you may
perhaps remember, went to congratulate him. Skin-changing always makes
a snake moody and depressed till the new skin begins to shine and look
beautiful. Kaa never made fun of Mowgli any more, but accepted him, as
the other Jungle People did, for the Master of the Jungle, and brought
him all the news that a python of his size would naturally hear. What
Kaa did not know about the Middle Jungle, as they call it,--the life
that runs close to the earth or under it, the boulder, burrow, and the
tree-bole life,--might have been written upon the smallest of his
scales.
That afternoon Mowgli was sitting in the circle of Kaa's great coils,
fingering the flaked and broken old skin that lay all looped and
twisted among the rocks just as Kaa had left it. Kaa had very
courteously packed himself under Mowgli's broad, bare shoulders, so
that the boy was really resting in a living arm-chair.
"Even to the scales of the eyes it is perfect," said Mowgli, under his
breath, playing with the old skin. "Strange to see the covering of
one's own head at one's own feet!"
"Aye, but I lack feet," said Kaa; "and since this is the custom of all
my people, I do not find it strange. Does thy skin never feel old and
harsh?"
"Then go I and wash, Flathead; but, it is true, in the great heats I
have wished I could slough my skin without pain, and run skinless."
"I wash, and _also_ I take off my skin. How looks the new coat?"
Mowgli ran his hand down the diagonal checkerings of the immense
back. "The Turtle is harder-backed, but not so gay," he said
judgmatically. "The Frog, my name-bearer, is more gay, but not so
hard. It is very beautiful to see--like the mottling in the mouth of a
lily."
"It needs water. A new skin never comes to full color before the first
bath. Let us go bathe."
"I will carry thee," said Mowgli; and he stooped down, laughing, to
lift the middle section of Kaa's great body, just where the barrel was
thickest. A man might just as well have tried to heave up a two-foot
water-main; and Kaa lay still, puffing with quiet amusement. Then the
regular evening game began--the boy in the flush of his great
strength, and the Python in his sumptuous new skin, standing up one
against the other for a wrestling-match--a trial of eye and strength.
Of course, Kaa could have crushed a dozen Mowglis if he had let
himself go; but he played carefully, and never loosed one tenth of his
power. Ever since Mowgli was strong enough to endure a little rough
handling, Kaa had taught him this game, and it suppled his limbs as
nothing else could. Sometimes Mowgli would stand lapped almost to his
throat in Kaa's shifting coils, striving to get one arm free and
catch him by the throat. Then Kaa would give way limply, and Mowgli,
with both quick-moving feet, would try to cramp the purchase of that
huge tail as it flung backward feeling for a rock or a stump. They
would rock to and fro, head to head, each waiting for his chance, till
the beautiful, statue-like group melted in a whirl of black-and-yellow
coils and struggling legs and arms, to rise up again and again. "Now!
now! now!" said Kaa, making feints with his head that even Mowgli's
quick hand could not turn aside. "Look! I touch thee here, Little
Brother! Here, and here! Are thy hands numb? Here again!"
The game always ended in one way--with a straight, driving blow of the
head that knocked the boy over and over. Mowgli could never learn the
guard for that lightning lunge, and, as Kaa said, there was not the
least use in trying.
"Good hunting!" Kaa grunted at last; and Mowgli, as usual, was shot
away half a dozen yards, gasping and laughing. He rose with his
fingers full of grass, and followed Kaa to the wise snake's pet
bathing-place--a deep, pitchy-black pool surrounded with rocks, and
made interesting by sunken tree-stumps. The boy slipped in,
Jungle-fashion, without a sound, and dived across; rose, too, without
a sound, and turned on his back, his arms behind his head, watching
the moon rising above the rocks, and breaking up her reflection in the
water with his toes. Kaa's diamond-shaped head cut the pool like a
razor, and came out to rest on Mowgli's shoulder. They lay still,
soaking luxuriously in the cool water.
"It is _very_ good," said Mowgli at last, sleepily. "Now, in the
Man-Pack, at this hour, as I remember, they laid them down upon hard
pieces of wood in the inside of a mud-trap, and, having carefully shut
out all the clean winds, drew foul cloth over their heavy heads, and
made evil songs through their noses. It is better in the Jungle."
A hurrying cobra slipped down over a rock and drank, gave them "Good
hunting!" and went away.
"Sssh!" said Kaa, as though he had suddenly remembered something. "So
the Jungle gives thee all that thou hast ever desired, Little
Brother?"
"Not all," said Mowgli, laughing; "else there would be a new and
strong Shere Khan to kill once a moon. Now, I could kill with my own
hands, asking no help of buffaloes. And also I have wished the sun to
shine in the middle of the Rains, and the Rains to cover the sun in
the deep of summer; and also I have never gone empty but I wished
that I had killed a goat; and also I have never killed a goat but I
wished it had been buck; nor buck but I wished it had been nilghai.
But thus do we feel, all of us."
"Thou hast no other desire?" the big snake demanded.
"What more can I wish? I have the Jungle, and the favor of the Jungle!
Is there more anywhere between sunrise and sunset?"
"Now, the Cobra said--" Kaa began.
"What cobra? He that went away just now said nothing. He was hunting."
"It was another."
"Hast thou many dealings with the Poison People? I give them their own
path. They carry death in the fore-tooth, and that is not good--for
they are so small. But what hood is this thou hast spoken with?"
Kaa rolled slowly in the water like a steamer in a beam sea. "Three or
four moons since," said he, "I hunted in Cold Lairs, which place thou
hast not forgotten. And the thing I hunted fled shrieking past the
tanks and to that house whose side I once broke for thy sake, and ran
into the ground."
"But the people of Cold Lairs do not live in burrows." Mowgli knew
that Kaa was talking of the Monkey People.
"This thing was not living, but seeking to live," Kaa replied, with a
quiver of his tongue. "He ran into a burrow that led very far. I
followed, and having killed, I slept. When I waked I went forward."
"Under the earth?"
"Even so, coming at last upon a White Hood [a white cobra], who spoke
of things beyond my knowledge, and showed me many things I had never
before seen."
"New game? Was it good hunting?" Mowgli turned quickly on his side.
"It was no game, and would have broken all my teeth; but the White
Hood said that a man--he spoke as one that knew the breed--that a man
would give the breath under his ribs for only the sight of those
things."
"We will look," said Mowgli. "I now remember that I was once a man."
"Slowly--slowly. It was haste killed the Yellow Snake that ate the
sun. We two spoke together under the earth, and I spoke of thee,
naming thee as a man. Said the White Hood (and he is indeed as old as
the Jungle): 'It is long since I have seen a man. Let him come, and
he shall see all these things, for the least of which very many men
would die.'"
"That _must_ be new game. And yet the Poison People do not tell us
when game is afoot. They are an unfriendly folk."
"It is _not_ game. It is--it is--I cannot say what it is."
"We will go there. I have never seen a White Hood, and I wish to see
the other things. Did he kill them?"
"They are all dead things. He says he is the keeper of them all."
"Ah! As a wolf stands above meat he has taken to his own lair. Let us
go."
Mowgli swam to bank, rolled on the grass to dry himself, and the two
set off for Cold Lairs, the deserted city of which you may have heard.
Mowgli was not the least afraid of the Monkey People in those days,
but the Monkey People had the liveliest horror of Mowgli. Their
tribes, however, were raiding in the Jungle, and so Cold Lairs stood
empty and silent in the moonlight. Kaa led up to the ruins of the
queen's pavilion that stood on the terrace, slipped over the rubbish,
and dived down the half-choked staircase that went underground from
the center of the pavilion. Mowgli gave the snake-call--"We be of one
blood, ye and I,"--and followed on his hands and knees. They crawled a
long distance down a sloping passage that turned and twisted several
times, and at last came to where the root of some great tree, growing
thirty feet overhead, had forced out a solid stone in the wall. They
crept through the gap, and found themselves in a large vault, whose
domed roof had been also broken away by tree-roots so that a few
streaks of light dropped down into the darkness.
"A safe lair," said Mowgli, rising to his firm feet, "but over far to
visit daily. And now what do we see?"
"Am I nothing?" said a voice in the middle of the vault; and Mowgli
saw something white move till, little by little, there stood up the
hugest cobra he had ever set eyes on--a creature nearly eight feet
long, and bleached by being in darkness to an old ivory-white. Even
the spectacle-marks of his spread hood had faded to faint yellow. His
eyes were as red as rubies, and altogether he was most wonderful.
"Good hunting!" said Mowgli, who carried his manners with his knife,
and that never left him.
"What of my city?" said the White Cobra, without answering the
greeting. "What of the great, the walled city--the city of a hundred
elephants and twenty thousand horses, and cattle past counting--the
city of the King of Twenty Kings? I grow deaf here, and it is long
since I heard their war-gongs."
"The Jungle is above our heads," said Mowgli. "I know only Hathi and
his sons among elephants. Bagheera has slain all the horses in one
village, and--what is a King?"
"I told thee," said Kaa softly to the Cobra--"I told thee, four moons
ago, that thy city was not."
"The city--the great city of the forest whose gates are guarded by the
King's towers--can never pass. They builded it before my father's
father came from the egg, and it shall endure when my son's sons are
as white as I! Salomdhi, son of Chandrabija, son of Viyeja, son of
Yegasuri, made it in the days of Bappa Rawal. Whose cattle are _ye_?"
"It is a lost trail," said Mowgli, turning to Kaa. "I know not his
talk."
"Nor I. He is very old. Father of Cobras, there is only the Jungle
here, as it has been since the beginning."
"Then who is _he_," said the White Cobra, "sitting down before me,
unafraid, knowing not the name of the King, talking our talk through a
man's lips? Who is he with the knife and the snake's tongue?"
"Mowgli they call me," was the answer. "I am of the Jungle. The Wolves
are my people, and Kaa here is my brother. Father of Cobras, who art
thou?"
"I am the Warden of the King's Treasure. Kurrun Raja builded the stone
above me, in the days when my skin was dark, that I might teach death
to those who came to steal. Then they let down the treasure through
the stone, and I heard the song of the Brahmins my masters."
"Umm!" said Mowgli to himself. "I have dealt with one Brahmin already,
in the Man-Pack, and--I know what I know. Evil comes here in a
little."
"Five times since I came here has the stone been lifted, but always to
let down more, and never to take away. There are no riches like these
riches--the treasures of a hundred kings. But it is long and long
since the stone was last moved, and I think that my city has
forgotten."
"There is no city. Look up. Yonder are roots of the great trees
tearing the stones apart. Trees and men do not grow together," Kaa
insisted.
"Twice and thrice have men found their way here," the White Cobra
answered savagely; "but they never spoke till I came upon them groping
in the dark, and then they cried only a little time. But ye come with
lies, Man and Snake both, and would have me believe the city is not,
and that my wardship ends. Little do men change in the years. But _I_
change never! Till the stone is lifted, and the Brahmins come down
singing the songs that I know, and feed me with warm milk, and take me
to the light again, I--I--_I_, and no other, am the Warden of the
King's Treasure! The city is dead, ye say, and here are the roots of
the trees? Stoop down, then, and take what ye will. Earth has no
treasure like to these. Man with the snake's tongue, if thou canst go
alive by the way that thou hast entered at, the lesser Kings will be
thy servants!"
"Again the trail is lost," said Mowgli, coolly. "Can any jackal have
burrowed so deep and bitten this great White Hood? He is surely mad.
Father of Cobras, I see nothing here to take away."
"By the Gods of the Sun and Moon, it is the madness of death upon the
boy!" hissed the Cobra. "Before thine eyes close I will allow thee
this favor. Look thou, and see what man has never seen before!"
"They do not well in the Jungle who speak to Mowgli of favors," said
the boy, between his teeth; "but the dark changes all, as I know. I
will look, if that please thee."
He stared with puckered-up eyes round the vault, and then lifted up
from the floor a handful of something that glittered.
"Oho!" said he, "this is like the stuff they play with in the
Man-Pack: only this is yellow and the other was brown."
He let the gold pieces fall, and moved forward. The floor of the vault
was buried some five or six feet deep in coined gold and silver that
had burst from the sacks it had been originally stored in, and, in the
long years, the metal had packed and settled as sand packs at low
tide. On it and in it, and rising through it, as wrecks lift through
the sand, were jeweled elephant-howdahs of embossed silver, studded
with plates of hammered gold, and adorned with carbuncles and
turquoises. There were palanquins and litters for carrying queens,
framed and braced with silver and enamel, with jade-handled poles and
amber curtain-rings; there were golden candlesticks hung with pierced
emeralds that quivered on the branches; there were studded images,
five feet high, of forgotten gods, silver with jeweled eyes; there
were coats of mail, gold inlaid on steel, and fringed with rotted and
blackened seed-pearls; there were helmets, crested and beaded with
pigeon's-blood rubies; there were shields of lacquer, of
tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-hide, strapped and bossed with red gold
and set with emeralds at the edge; there were sheaves of
diamond-hilted swords, daggers, and hunting-knives; there were golden
sacrificial bowls and ladles, and portable altars of a shape that
never see the light of day; there were jade cups and bracelets; there
were incense-burners, combs, and pots for perfume, henna, and
eye-powder, all in embossed gold; there were nose-rings, armlets,
head-bands, finger-rings, and girdles past any counting; there were
belts, seven fingers broad, of square-cut diamonds and rubies, and
wooden boxes, trebly clamped with iron, from which the wood had fallen
away in powder, showing the pile of uncut star-sapphires, opals,
cat's-eyes, sapphires, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and garnets within.
The White Cobra was right. No mere money would begin to pay the value
of this treasure, the sifted pickings of centuries of war, plunder,
trade, and taxation. The coins alone were priceless, leaving out of
count all the precious stones; and the dead weight of the gold and
silver alone might be two or three hundred tons. Every native ruler
in India to-day, however poor, has a hoard to which he is always
adding; and though, once in a long while, some enlightened prince may
send off forty or fifty bullock-cart loads of silver to be exchanged
for Government securities, the bulk of them keep their treasure and
the knowledge of it very closely to themselves.
[Illustration]
But Mowgli naturally did not understand what these things meant. The
knives interested him a little, but they did not balance so well as
his own, and so he dropped them. At last he found something really
fascinating laid on the front of a howdah half buried in the coins. It
was a three-foot ankus, or elephant-goad--something like a small
boat-hook. The top was one round shining ruby, and twelve inches of
the handle below it were studded with rough turquoises close together,
giving a most satisfactory grip. Below them was a rim of jade with a
flower-pattern running round it--only the leaves were emeralds, and
the blossoms were rubies sunk in the cool, green stone. The rest of
the handle was a shaft of pure ivory, while the point--the spike and
hook--was gold-inlaid steel with pictures of elephant-catching; and
the pictures attracted Mowgli, who saw that they had something to do
with his friend Hathi the Silent.
The White Cobra had been following him closely.
"Is this not worth dying to behold?" he said. "Have I not done thee a
great favor?"
"I do not understand," said Mowgli. "The things are hard and cold, and
by no means good to eat. But this"--he lifted the ankus--"I desire to
take away, that I may see it in the sun. Thou sayest they are all
thine? Wilt thou give it to me, and I will bring thee frogs to eat?"
The White Cobra fairly shook with evil delight. "Assuredly I will give
it," he said. "All that is here I will give thee--till thou goest
away."
"But I go now. This place is dark and cold, and I wish to take the
thorn-pointed thing to the Jungle."
"Look by thy foot! What is that there?"
Mowgli picked up something white and smooth. "It is the bone of a
man's head," he said quietly. "And here are two more."
"They came to take the treasure away many years ago. I spoke to them
in the dark, and they lay still."
"But what do I need of this that is called treasure? If thou wilt give
me the ankus to take away, it is good hunting. If not, it is good
hunting none the less. I do not fight with the Poison People, and I
was also taught the Master-word of thy tribe."
"There is but one Master-word here. It is mine!"
Kaa flung himself forward with blazing eyes. "Who bade me bring the
Man?" he hissed.
"I surely," the old Cobra lisped. "It is long since I have seen Man,
and this Man speaks our tongue."
"But there was no talk of killing. How can I go to the Jungle and say
that I have led him to his death?" said Kaa.
"I talk not of killing till the time. And as to thy going or not
going, there is the hole in the wall. Peace, now, thou fat
monkey-killer! I have but to touch thy neck, and the Jungle will know
thee no longer. Never Man came here that went away with the breath
under his ribs. I am the Warden of the Treasure of the King's City!"
"But, thou white worm of the dark, I tell thee there is neither king
nor city! The Jungle is all about us!" cried Kaa.
"There is still the Treasure. But this can be done. Wait a while, Kaa
of the Rocks, and see the boy run. There is room for great sport here.
Life is good. Run to and fro a while, and make sport, boy!"
Mowgli put his hand on Kaa's head quietly.
"The white thing has dealt with men of the Man-Pack until now. He does
not know me," he whispered. "He has asked for this hunting. Let him
have it." Mowgli had been standing with the ankus held point down. He
flung it from him quickly, and it dropped crossways just behind the
great snake's hood, pinning him to the floor. In a flash, Kaa's weight
was upon the writhing body, paralyzing it from hood to tail. The red
eyes burned, and the six spare inches of the head struck furiously
right and left.
"Kill!" said Kaa, as Mowgli's hand went to his knife.
"No," he said, as he drew the blade; "I will never kill again save for
food. But look you, Kaa!" He caught the snake behind the hood, forced
the mouth open with the blade of the knife, and showed the terrible
poison-fangs of the upper jaw lying black and withered in the gum. The
White Cobra had outlived his poison, as a snake will.
"_Thuu_" ("It is dried up"),[1] said Mowgli; and motioning Kaa away,
he picked up the ankus, setting the White Cobra free.
[1] Literally, a rotted out tree-stump.
"The King's Treasure needs a new Warden," he said gravely. "Thuu, thou
hast not done well. Run to and fro and make sport, Thuu!"
"I am ashamed. Kill me!" hissed the White Cobra.
"There has been too much talk of killing. We will go now. I take the
thorn-pointed thing, Thuu, because I have fought and worsted thee."
"See, then, that the thing does not kill thee at last. It is Death!
Remember, it is Death! There is enough in that thing to kill the men
of all my city. Not long wilt thou hold it, Jungle Man, nor he who
takes it from thee. They will kill, and kill, and kill for its sake!
My strength is dried up, but the ankus will do my work. It is Death!
It is Death! It is Death!"
Mowgli crawled out through the hole into the passage again, and the
last that he saw was the White Cobra striking furiously with his
harmless fangs at the stolid golden faces of the gods that lay on the
floor, and hissing, "It is Death!"
They were glad to get to the light of day once more; and when they
were back in their own Jungle and Mowgli made the ankus glitter in the
morning light, he was almost as pleased as though he had found a bunch
of new flowers to stick in his hair.
"This is brighter than Bagheera's eyes," he said delightedly, as he
twirled the ruby. "I will show it to him; but what did the Thuu mean
when he talked of death?"
"I cannot say. I am sorrowful to my tail's tail that he felt not thy
knife. There is always evil at Cold Lairs--above ground or below. But
now I am hungry. Dost thou hunt with me this dawn?" said Kaa.
"No; Bagheera must see this thing. Good hunting!" Mowgli danced off,
flourishing the great ankus, and stopping from time to time to admire
it, till he came to that part of the Jungle Bagheera chiefly used, and
found him drinking after a heavy kill. Mowgli told him all his
adventures from beginning to end, and Bagheera sniffed at the ankus
between whiles. When Mowgli came to the White Cobra's last words, the
Panther purred approvingly.
"Then the White Hood spoke the thing which is?" Mowgli asked quickly.
"I was born in the King's cages at Oodeypore, and it is in my stomach
that I know some little of Man. Very many men would kill thrice in a
night for the sake of that one big red stone alone."
"But the stone makes it heavy to the hand. My little bright knife is
better; and--see! the red stone is not good to eat. Then _why_ would
they kill?"
"Mowgli, go thou and sleep. Thou hast lived among men, and--"
"I remember. Men kill because they are not hunting;--for idleness and
pleasure. Wake again, Bagheera. For what use was this thorn-pointed
thing made?"
Bagheera half opened his eyes--he was very sleepy--with a malicious
twinkle.
"It was made by men to thrust into the head of the sons of Hathi, so
that the blood should pour out. I have seen the like in the street of
Oodeypore, before our cages. That thing has tasted the blood of many
such as Hathi."
"But why do they thrust into the heads of elephants?"
"To teach them Man's Law. Having neither claws nor teeth, men make
these things--and worse."
"Always more blood when I come near, even to the things the Man-Pack
have made," said Mowgli, disgustedly. He was getting a little tired of
the weight of the ankus. "If I had known this, I would not have taken
it. First it was Messua's blood on the thongs, and now it is Hathi's.
I will use it no more. Look!"
The ankus flew sparkling, and buried itself point down thirty yards
away, between the trees. "So my hands are clean of Death," said
Mowgli, rubbing his palms on the fresh, moist earth. "The Thuu said
Death would follow me. He is old and white and mad."
"White or black, or death or life, _I_ am going to sleep, Little
Brother. I cannot hunt all night and howl all day, as do some folk."
Bagheera went off to a hunting-lair that he knew, about two miles off.
Mowgli made an easy way for himself up a convenient tree, knotted
three or four creepers together, and in less time than it takes to
tell was swinging in a hammock fifty feet above ground. Though he had
no positive objection to strong daylight, Mowgli followed the custom
of his friends, and used it as little as he could. When he waked
among the very loud-voiced peoples that live in the trees, it was
twilight once more, and he had been dreaming of the beautiful pebbles
he had thrown away.
"At least I will look at the thing again," he said, and slid down a
creeper to the earth; but Bagheera was before him. Mowgli could hear
him snuffing in the half light.
"Where is the thorn-pointed thing?" cried Mowgli.
"A man has taken it. Here is the trail."
"Now we shall see whether the Thuu spoke truth. If the pointed thing
is Death, that man will die. Let us follow."
"Kill first," said Bagheera. "An empty stomach makes a careless eye.
Men go very slowly, and the Jungle is wet enough to hold the lightest
mark."
They killed as soon as they could, but it was nearly three hours
before they finished their meat and drink and buckled down to the
trail. The Jungle People know that nothing makes up for being hurried
over your meals.
"Think you the pointed thing will turn in the man's hand and kill
him?" Mowgli asked. "The Thuu said it was Death."
"We shall see when we find," said Bagheera, trotting with his head
low. "It is single-foot" (he meant that there was only one man), "and
the weight of the thing has pressed his heel far into the ground."
"Hai! This is as clear as summer lightning," Mowgli answered; and they
fell into the quick, choppy trail-trot in and out through the checkers
of the moonlight, following the marks of those two bare feet.
"Now he runs swiftly," said Mowgli. "The toes are spread apart." They
went on over some wet ground. "Now why does he turn aside here?"
"Wait!" said Bagheera, and flung himself forward with one superb bound
as far as ever he could. The first thing to do when a trail ceases to
explain itself is to cast forward without leaving your own confusing
foot-marks on the ground. Bagheera turned as he landed, and faced
Mowgli, crying, "Here comes another trail to meet him. It is a smaller
foot, this second trail, and the toes turn inward."
Then Mowgli ran up and looked. "It is the foot of a Gond hunter," he
said. "Look! Here he dragged his bow on the grass. That is why the
first trail turned aside so quickly. Big Foot hid from Little Foot."
"That is true," said Bagheera. "Now, lest by crossing each other's
tracks we foul the signs, let each take one trail. I am Big Foot,
Little Brother, and thou art Little Foot, the Gond."
Bagheera leaped back to the original trail, leaving Mowgli stooping
above the curious narrow track of the wild little man of the woods.
"Now," said Bagheera, moving step by step along the chain of
footprints, "I, Big Foot, turn aside here. Now I hide me behind a rock
and stand still, not daring to shift my feet. Cry thy trail, Little
Brother."
"Now, I, Little Foot, come to the rock," said Mowgli, running up his
trail. "Now, I sit down under the rock, leaning upon my right hand,
and resting my bow between my toes. I wait long, for the mark of my
feet is deep here."
"I also," said Bagheera, hidden behind the rock. "I wait, resting the
end of the thorn-pointed thing upon a stone. It slips, for here is a
scratch upon the stone. Cry thy trail, Little Brother."
"One, two twigs and a big branch are broken here," said Mowgli, in an
undertone. "Now, how shall I cry _that_? Ah! It is plain now. I,
Little Foot, go away making noises and tramplings so that Big Foot may
hear me." He moved away from the rock pace by pace among the trees,
his voice rising in the distance as he approached a little cascade.
"I--go--far--away--to--where--the--noise--of--falling--water--covers--
my--noise; and--here--I--wait. Cry thy trail, Bagheera, Big Foot!"
The panther had been casting in every direction to see how Big Foot's
trail led away from behind the rock. Then he gave tongue:
"I come from behind the rock upon my knees, dragging the thorn-pointed
thing. Seeing no one, I run. I, Big Foot, run swiftly. The trail is
clear. Let each follow his own. I run!"
Bagheera swept on along the clearly marked trail, and Mowgli followed
the steps of the Gond. For some time there was silence in the Jungle.
"Where art thou, Little Foot?" cried Bagheera. Mowgli's voice answered
him not fifty yards to the right.
"Um!" said the panther, with a deep cough. "The two run side by side,
drawing nearer!"
They raced on another half mile, always keeping about the same
distance, till Mowgli, whose head was not so close to the ground as
Bagheera's, cried: "They have met. Good hunting--look! Here stood
Little Foot, with his knee on a rock--and yonder is Big Foot indeed!"
Not ten yards in front of them, stretched across a pile of broken
rocks, lay the body of a villager of the district, a long,
small-feathered Gond arrow through his back and breast.
"Was the Thuu so old and so mad, Little Brother?" said Bagheera
gently. "Here is one death, at least."
"Follow on. But where is the drinker of elephant's blood--the red-eyed
thorn?"
"Little Foot has it--perhaps. It is single-foot again now."
The single trail of a light man who had been running quickly and
bearing a burden on his left shoulder, held on round a long, low spur
of dried grass, where each footfall seemed, to the sharp eyes of the
trackers, marked in hot iron.
Neither spoke till the trail ran up to the ashes of a camp-fire hidden
in a ravine.
"Again!" said Bagheera, checking as though he had been turned into
stone.
The body of a little wizened Gond lay with its feet in the ashes, and
Bagheera looked inquiringly at Mowgli.
"That was done with a bamboo," said the boy, after one glance. "I have
used such a thing among the buffaloes when I served in the Man-Pack.
The Father of Cobras--I am sorrowful that I made a jest of him--knew
the breed well, as I might have known. Said I not that men kill for
idleness?"
"Indeed, they killed for the sake of the red and blue stones,"
Bagheera answered. "Remember, I was in the King's cages at Oodeypore."
"One, two, three, four tracks," said Mowgli, stooping over the ashes.
"Four tracks of men with shod feet. They do not go so quickly as
Gonds. Now, what evil had the little woodman done to them? See, they
talked together, all five, standing up, before they killed him.
Bagheera, let us go back. My stomach is heavy in me, and yet it heaves
up and down like an oriole's nest at the end of a branch."
"It is not good hunting to leave game afoot. Follow!" said the
panther. "Those eight shod feet have not gone far."
No more was said for fully an hour, as they worked up the broad trail
of the four men with shod feet.