k, I went back along our trail to the
village, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and lying down, to make
a mixed trail in case one should follow us. But when I had fouled the
trail so that I myself hardly knew it again, Mang, the Bat, came hawking
between the trees, and hung up above me." Said Mang, "The village of the
Man-Pack, where they cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet's nest."

"It was a big stone that I threw," chuckled Mowgli, who had often amused
himself by throwing ripe paw-paws into a hornet's nest, and racing off
to the nearest pool before the hornets caught him.

"I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said that the Red Flower blossomed
at the gate of the village, and men sat about it carrying guns. Now _I_
know, for I have good cause,"--Akela looked down at the old dry scars
on his flank and side,--"that men do not carry guns for pleasure.
Presently, Little Brother, a man with a gun follows our trail--if,
indeed, he be not already on it."

"But why should he? Men have cast me out. What more do they need?" said
Mowgli angrily.

"Thou art a man, Little Brother," Akela returned. "It is not for US, the
Free Hunters, to tell thee what thy brethren do, or why."

He had just time to snatch up his paw as the skinning-knife cut deep
into the ground below. Mowgli struck quicker than an average human
eye could follow but Akela was a wolf; and even a dog, who is very far
removed from the wild wolf, his ancestor, can be waked out of deep sleep
by a cart-wheel touching his flank, and can spring away unharmed before
that wheel comes on.

"Another time," Mowgli said quietly, returning the knife to its sheath,
"speak of the Man-Pack and of Mowgli in TWO breaths--not one."

"Phff! That is a sharp tooth," said Akela, snuffing at the blade's
cut in the earth, "but living with the Man-Pack has spoiled thine eye,
Little Brother. I could have killed a buck while thou wast striking."

Bagheera sprang to his feet, thrust up his head as far as he could,
sniffed, and stiffened through every curve in his body. Gray Brother
followed his example quickly, keeping a little to his left to get the
wind that was blowing from the right, while Akela bounded fifty yards up
wind, and, half-crouching, stiffened too. Mowgli looked on enviously.
He could smell things as very few human beings could, but he had never
reached the hair-trigger-like sensitiveness of a Jungle nose; and his
three months in the smoky village had set him ba