their long,
backward-sweeping horns and savage eyes, rose out of their byres, one
by one, and followed him, and Mowgli made it very clear to the
children with him that he was the master. He beat the buffaloes with
a long, polished bamboo, and told Kamya, one of the boys, to graze
the cattle by themselves, while he went on with the buffaloes, and to
be very careful not to stray away from the herd.

An Indian grazing-ground is all rocks, and scrubs, and tussocks, and
little ravines, among which the herds scatter and disappear. The
buffaloes generally keep to the pools and muddy places, where they
lie wallowing or basking in the warm mud for hours. Mowgli drove them
on to the edge of the plain where the Waingunga came out of the
jungle; then he dropped from Rama's neck, trotted off to a bamboo
clump and found Gray Brother. 'Ah,' said Gray Brother, 'I have waited
here very many days. What is the meaning of this cattle-herding
work?'

'It is an order,' said Mowgli; 'I am a village herd for a while. What
news of Shere Khan?'

'He has come back to this country, and has waited here a long time
for thee. Now he has gone off again, for the game is scarce. But he
means to kill thee.'

'Very good,' said Mowgli. 'So long as he is away do thou or one of
the four brothers sit on that rock, so that I can see thee as I come
out of the village. When he comes back wait for me in the ravine by
the _dhak_-tree in the centre of the plain. We need not walk into
Shere Khan's mouth.'

Then Mowgli picked out a shady place, and lay down and slept while
the buffaloes grazed round him. Herding, in India, is one of the
laziest things in the world. The cattle move and crunch, and lie
down, and move on again, and they do not even low. They only grunt,
and the buffaloes very seldom say anything, but get down into the
muddy pools one after another, and work their way into the mud till
only their noses and staring china-blue eyes show above the surface,
and then they lie like logs. The sun makes the rocks dance in the
heat, and the herd-children hear one kite (never any more) whistling
almost out of sight overhead, and they know that if they died, or a
cow died, that kite would sweep down, and the next kite miles away
would see him drop and follow, and the next, and the next, and
almost before they were dead there would be a score of hungry kites
come out of nowhere. Then they sleep and wake and sleep again, and
weave little baskets of dried gras