For a wolf no said Tabaqui But for myself a dry bone is a good feast Who are the Gidur-log the Jackal People to pick and choose He scuttled to the back of the cave He found the bone of a buck with some meat on it and sat cracking the end merrily All thanks for this good meal he said licking his lips Then he said spitefully Shere Khan the Big One has shifted his hunting grounds He has told me that he will hunt among these hills for the next moon Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River twenty miles away He has no right Father Wolf began angrily By the Law of the Jungle he has no right to change without warning He will frighten every head of game within ten miles And I have to kill for two these days Mother Wolf said quietly He has been lame in one foot from his birth That is why he has only killed cattle Now the villagers of 6
the Waingunga are angry with him and he has come here to make our villagers angry Indeed we are very grateful to Shere Khan Shall I tell him of your gratitude said Tabaqui Out snapped Father Wolf Out and hunt with your master I go said Tabaqui quietly Below in the valley that ran down to a little river Father Wolf heard a noise It was the snarly singsong whine of a tiger who has caught nothing The fool said Father Wolf To begin a night’s work with that noise Does he think our buck are like his fat steer It is neither steer nor buck he hunts tonight said Mother Wolf It is Man Man said Father Wolf showing all his white teeth Are there not enough beetles and frogs that he must eat Man The Law of the Jungle never orders anything without a reason It forbids every beast to eat 8
Man except when he is showing his children how to kill Man-killing means the arrival of white men on elephants with guns and brown men with gongs rockets and torches Then everybody in the Jungle suffers The beasts say man-eaters become mangy and lose their teeth It is true A purr grew louder and ended in a full Aaarh of the tiger’s charge Then there was a howl an untigerish howl from Shere Khan He has missed said Mother Wolf Something is coming uphill Get ready The bush rustled a little Father Wolf dropped his haunches ready to leap He made his bound before he saw what it was he was jumping at Then he tried to stop himself He shot straight up into the air for four or fi ve feet landing almost where he left the ground A man’s cub he snapped Directly in front of him stood a naked brown baby holding on to a low branch He looked up into Father Wolf’s face and laughed 9
