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,


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