r customs,
their mates, and their puppies. There is no speech in the world so
rancorous and so stinging as the language the Jungle People use to show
scorn and contempt. When you come to think of it you will see how this
must be so. As Mowgli told Kaa, he had many little thorns under his
tongue, and slowly and deliberately he drove the dholes from silence to
growls, from growls to yells, and from yells to hoarse slavery ravings.
They tried to answer his taunts, but a cub might as well have tried to
answer Kaa in a rage; and all the while Mowgli's right hand lay crooked
at his side, ready for action, his feet locked round the branch. The big
bay leader had leaped many times in the air, but Mowgli dared not risk
a false blow. At last, made furious beyond his natural strength, he
bounded up seven or eight feet clear of the ground. Then Mowgli's hand
shot out like the head of a tree-snake, and gripped him by the scruff
of his neck, and the branch shook with the jar as his weight fell back,
almost wrenching Mowgli to the ground. But he never loosed his grip, and
inch by inch he hauled the beast, hanging like a drowned jackal, up on
the branch. With his left hand he reached for his knife and cut off the
red, bushy tail, flinging the dhole back to earth again. That was all he
needed. The Pack would not go forward on Won-tolla's trail now till they
had killed Mowgli or Mowgli had killed them. He saw them settle down
in circles with a quiver of the haunches that meant they were going
to stay, and so he climbed to a higher crotch, settled his back
comfortably, and went to sleep.

After three or four hours he waked and counted the Pack. They were all
there, silent, husky, and dry, with eyes of steel. The sun was beginning
to sink. In half an hour the Little People of the Rocks would be ending
their labours, and, as you know, the dhole does not fight best in the
twilight.

"I did not need such faithful watchers," he said politely, standing up
on a branch, "but I will remember this. Ye be true dholes, but to my
thinking over much of one kind. For that reason I do not give the big
lizard-eater his tail again. Art thou not pleased, Red Dog?"

"I myself will tear out thy stomach!" yelled the leader, scratching at
the foot of the tree.

"Nay, but consider, wise rat of the Dekkan. There will now be many
litters of little tailless red dogs, yea, with raw red stumps that sting
when the sand is hot. Go home, Red Dog, and cry that an ape