on the back of Rama, the great herd bull. The slaty-blue buffaloes,
with their long, backward-sweeping horns and savage eyes, rose out 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 scrub 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 center 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
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