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.

It was clear, hot daylight now, and Bagheera said,
"I smell smoke."

Men are always more ready to eat than to run, Mowgli answered,
trotting in and out between the low scrub bushes of the new
Jungle they were exploring. Bagheera, a little to his left,
made an indescribable noise in his throat.

"Here is one that has done with feeding," said he. A tumbled
bundle of gay-coloured clothes lay under a bush, and round it
was some spilt flour.

"That was done by the bamboo again," said Mowgli. " See! that
white dust is what men eat. They have taken the kill from this
one,--he carried their food,--and given him for a kill to Chil,
the Kite."

"It is the third," said Bagheera.

"I will go with new, big frogs to the Father of Cobras, and feed
him fat," said Mowgli to himself. "The drinker of elephant's
blood is Death himself--but still I do not understand!"

"Follow!" said Bagheera.

They had not gone half a mile farther when they heard Ko,
the Crow, singing the death-song in the top of a tamarisk under
whose shade three men were lying. A half-dead fire smoked in the
centre of the circle, under an iron plate which held a blackened
and burned cake of unleavened bread. Close to the fire, and
blazing in the sunshine, lay the ruby-and-turquoise ankus.


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