produce the Wolf-demon at any minute, without his
escort. He, therefore, would accompany them, and if the sorcerer's child
appeared--well, he would show them how the best hunter in Seeonee dealt
with such things. The Brahmin, he said, had given him a charm against
the creature that made everything perfectly safe.

"What says he? What says he? What says he?" the wolves repeated every
few minutes; and Mowgli translated until he came to the witch part of
the story, which was a little beyond him, and then he said that the man
and woman who had been so kind to him were trapped.

"Does Man trap Man?" said Bagheera.

"So he says. I cannot understand the talk. They are all mad together.
What have Messua and her man to do with me that they should be put in
a trap; and what is all this talk about the Red Flower? I must look
to this. Whatever they would do to Messua they will not do till Buldeo
returns. And so----" Mowgli thought hard, with his fingers playing round
the haft of the skinning-knife, while Buldeo and the charcoal-burners
went off very valiantly in single file.

"I go hot-foot back to the Man-Pack," Mowgli said at last.

"And those?" said Gray Brother, looking hungrily after the brown backs
of the charcoal-burners.

"Sing them home," said Mowgli, with a grin; "I do not wish them to be at
the village gates till it is dark. Can ye hold them?"

Gray Brother bared his white teeth in contempt. "We can head them round
and round in circles like tethered goats--if I know Man."

"That I do not need. Sing to them a little, lest they be lonely on the
road, and, Gray Brother, the song need not be of the sweetest. Go with
them, Bagheera, and help make that song. When night is shut down, meet
me by the village--Gray Brother knows the place."

"It is no light hunting to work for a Man-cub. When shall I sleep?" said
Bagheera, yawning, though his eyes showed that he was delighted with the
amusement. "Me to sing to naked men! But let us try."

He lowered his head so that the sound would travel, and cried a long,
long, "Good hunting"--a midnight call in the afternoon, which was quite
awful enough to begin with. Mowgli heard it rumble, and rise, and fall,
and die off in a creepy sort of whine behind him, and laughed to himself
as he ran through the Jungle. He could see the charcoal-burners huddled
in a knot; old Buldeo's gun-barrel waving, like a banana-leaf, to every
point of the compass at once. Then Gray Brother gave the Ya-