are men from the beginning.
Now, Tabaqui knew as well as anyone else that there is nothing so
unlucky as to compliment children to their faces. It pleased him to see
Mother and Father Wolf look uncomfortable.
Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made, and then
he said spitefully:
Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt
among these hills for the next moon, so he has told me.
Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River, twenty
miles away.
He has no right! Father Wolf began angrily-- By the Law of the Jungle
he has no right to change his quarters without due warning. He will
frighten every head of game within ten miles, and I--I have to kill for
two, these days.
His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for nothing, said
Mother Wolf quietly. He has been lame in one foot from his birth. That
is why he has only killed cattle. Now the villagers of the Waingunga are
angry with him, and he has come here to make our villagers angry.
They will scour the jungle for him when he is far away, and we and our
children must run when the grass is set alight. Indeed, we are very
grateful to Shere Khan!
Shall I tell him of your gratitude? said Tabaqui.
Out! snapped Father Wolf. Out and hunt with thy master. Thou hast
done harm enough for one night.
I go, said Tabaqui quietly. Ye can hear Shere Khan below in the
thickets. I might have saved myself the message.
Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran down to a little
river he heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of a tiger who has
caught nothing and does not care if all the jungle knows it.
3