"Follow, then," said Mowgli, and the four followed at his heels with
their tails between their legs.

"This comes of living with the Man-Pack," said Bagheera, slipping down
after them. "There is more in the Jungle now than Jungle Law, Baloo."

The old bear said nothing, but he thought many things.

Mowgli cut across noiselessly through the Jungle, at right angles to
Buldeo's path, till, parting the undergrowth, he saw the old man, his
musket on his shoulder, running up the trail of overnight at a dog-trot.

You will remember that Mowgli had left the village with the heavy weight
of Shere Khan's raw hide on his shoulders, while Akela and Gray Brother
trotted behind, so that the triple trail was very clearly marked.
Presently Buldeo came to where Akela, as you know, had gone back and
mixed it all up. Then he sat down, and coughed and grunted, and made
little casts round and about into the Jungle to pick it up again, and,
all the time he could have thrown a stone over those who were watching
him. No one can be so silent as a wolf when he does not care to be
heard; and Mowgli, though the wolves thought he moved very clumsily,
could come and go like a shadow. They ringed the old man as a school
of porpoises ring a steamer at full speed, and as they ringed him they
talked unconcernedly, for their speech began below the lowest end of the
scale that untrained human beings can hear. [The other end is bounded by
the high squeak of Mang, the Bat, which very many people cannot catch at
all. From that note all the bird and bat and insect talk takes on.]

"This is better than any kill," said Gray Brother, as Buldeo stooped
and peered and puffed. "He looks like a lost pig in the Jungles by the
river. What does he say?" Buldeo was muttering savagely.

Mowgli translated. "He says that packs of wolves must have danced round
me. He says that he never saw such a trail in his life. He says he is
tired."

"He will be rested before he picks it up again," said Bagheera coolly,
as he slipped round a tree-trunk, in the game of blindman's-buff that
they were playing. "NOW, what does the lean thing do?"

"Eat or blow smoke out of his mouth. Men always play with their mouths,"
said Mowgli; and the silent trailers saw the old man fill and light
and puff at a water-pipe, and they took good note of the smell of the
tobacco, so as to be sure of Buldeo in the darkest night, if necessary.

Then a little knot of charcoal-burners came down the