It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills of the jungle when Martha Mother-Wolf realized that all four of her cubs had finally fallen asleep. Sliding herself away from their small warm bodies, she scratched herself, yawned, and spread out her paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. "Augrh!" she said. "It is time to hunt again." She crept to the front of the cave, where the evening light fell golden and spackled, to await the arrival of Akela Wolf. After Father Wolf fell in the hunt, just before the last full moon, Martha Mother-Wolf had gone back to hunting, heavy as she was with young. Now she could not leave the young cubs alone, but help was coming, as it came every night. She lay down at the mouth of the cave with her chin on her paws and waited.
Soon she saw two familiar figures coming over the brow of the hill. The sun was now low enough that she could not watch their approach, but a minute later a familiar voice growled low: "Good hunting to you, Mother Wolf. Is there room in your cave for two more of the Free People?"
It was Akela, who led the Pack. He was wily and cunning, and for this he was called the Lone Wolf, though in fact he was rarely alone. Everywhere Akela went, there traveled with him a young female wolf who carried, in her jaws, a large palm-leaf to shield him from the sun and rain. Akela Wolf was a fierce fighter and a keen strategist, but he preferred to be clean and saw no value in discomfort.
"Enter, and welcome," said Martha Mother-Wolf, rising to her feet. "It is thanks to you that there will be hunting."
Akela's attendant-wolf said nothing, but upon crossing the threshold lay down and began to nose at her own paws, seemingly unconcerned with the others. Akela for his part paced to the back of the cave, where he looked appraisingly at the four sleeping cubs.
"They grow well," he remarked.
"They are healthy and strong," she answered, from over his shoulder as she gazed at them also.
"And so may they remain," Akela said. He kept his eyes on the cubs, but did not lie down.
Martha Mother-Wolf made to go, to begin the night's hunting, but Akela turned to her, putting the sleeping cubs to his back, and said:
"Shere Khan, the Sly 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 further down the Waingunga River, by Nagpore Gramin. Khan is a word that means "ruler," for so he fancied himself: and with his sharp claws and honeyed tongue, it was largely true. Ever since the white man had begun his forays into the region of the Waingunga, the Tiger had taken to calling himself Shere Augustus, and this was what his sycophants, the jackals and the dhole and the other scavengers, now called him.
"He has no right!" Mother 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 many mouths, these days."
"His mother did not call him Dhurta [the Sly One] for nothing," said Akela quietly. "He speaks soft words about the Law, but gorges himself without check. Now the denizens of the Nagpore begin to unite against him, and so he has come here to cause trouble with his smooth tongue and sharp claws. He will eat all of the game out from under us, and set us at one another's throats. Indeed, we are very grateful to Shere Khan!"
"I will be careful," answered Martha Mother-Wolf. "But soft! Is that him that I hear now, below in the thickets?"
The wolves listened, and from below in the valley that ran down to a little river there came a sort of humming purr that seemed to come from every quarter of the compass.
"Is it he?" Martha Mother-Wolf asked. "That is not a sound I have ever heard from any jungle creature."
"It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night," said the female wolf, from her corner of the cave. "It is Man."
Martha Mother-Wolf pricked her ears to listen and learn the sound. It was the noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.
"Man!" said she at last. "Faugh! Are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat Man, and on our ground too!"
The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe. The real reason for this is that man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of white men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. They say too – and it is true – that man-eaters become mangy, and lose their teeth.
The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated "Aaarh!" of the tiger's charge.
Then there was a howl – an untigerish howl – from Shere Khan. "He has missed," said Mother Wolf. "What is it?"
Akela ran past her, to the mouth of the cave. "Stay back," he said, twitching one ear. "Something is coming uphill." Martha Mother-Wolf backed further into the cave and crouched down beside her cubs, still piled up asleep.
The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, and Akela dropped with his haunches under him, ready for his leap. Then, if you had been watching, you would have seen the most wonderful thing in the world – the wolf checked in mid-spring. He made his bound before he saw what it was he was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself. The result was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five feet, landing almost where he left ground.
"Man!" he snapped. "A man's cub. Look!"
Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked baby with light brown skin, no more than three winters old – as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf's cave at night. He looked up into Akela Wolf's face, and laughed.
"Is that a man's cub?" said Martha Mother Wolf. "I have never seen one. Bring it here."
A Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary, mouth an egg without breaking it, and though Akela's jaws closed right on the child's back not a tooth even scratched the skin as he laid it down among the cubs. The baby pushed his way among the cubs to get close to Martha's warm hide.
"How little! How naked, and – how bold!" she said softly. "Ahai! So this is a man's cub. Now, was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man's cub among her children?"
"I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our Pack or in my time," said Akela. "He is altogether without hair, and I could kill him with a touch of my foot. But see, he looks up and is not afraid."
Martha Mother-Wolf nuzzled at the man-cub, who laughed. "Ulf," he said.
"Ulf!" said Martha. "This must be man's talk." She pushed the baby gently with her nose. "Ulf," she said, struggling to shape her tongue to the word.
The baby patted her face and repeated solemnly: "you ulf."
Martha gently licked the tiny hand, and then the smooth round face, and answered back: "eyooo."
The baby put a finger to its own chest. "John," it declared.
There came a scratching at the cave mouth. It was the jackal – Tabaqui the dish-licker – whom the wolves of India despise, because he runs around making mischief and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from village rubbish-heaps, as well as the cast-offs of any hunter. Martha Mother-Wolf jumped to her feet.
Tabaqui leaned into the cave, sniffing, and squeaked: "My lord, my lord Augustus, it went in here!"
Akela caught Martha's eye and withdrew into the back reaches of the cave. The next moment, the moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave, for Shere Khan's great square head and shoulders were thrust into the entrance.
"All good greetings to you, fierce hunter," said the Tiger cordially. "I see that your young are thriving, though they are without a father." His words were somber, but his face was merry. Behind him, Tabaqui cackled, rejoicing in the mischief the Tiger had made.
"Shere Khan does us great honor," said Martha Mother-Wolf, but her eyes were very angry. "What does Shere Khan need?"
"I am here for my quarry. A man's cub went this way," Shere Khan replied. "Its parents have run off, and I have marked it for my own. Give it to me."
Martha Mother-Wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was too narrow for a tiger to come in by. Even where he was, Shere Khan's shoulders and forepaws were cramped for want of room, as a man's would be if he tried to fight in a barrel. But the Tiger had Tabaqui, and also many others, who would fetch and carry for him, if he called.
"The Wolves are a free people," said Martha. "They take orders from the Head of the Pack, and not from any striped cattle-killer. The man's cub is ours – to kill if we choose."
"Ye choose and ye do not choose," answered Shere Khan serenely. "For everything in this Jungle is mine. You will learn this in due time."
Shere Khan fell silent, and Martha Mother-Wolf heard a thin, trickling sound, accompanied by a harsh smell. A minute later, a small stream of urine came sliding down the slight incline at the cave mouth and flowed across the threshold.
Martha Mother-Wolf pulled back from the foul stream as it slid past her fore-paws, curling her lip in disgust, and the Tiger said:
"This cave is mine, though my body is too broad for me to enter it. And the man-cub is mine, as well. You will give him to me, even if you do not do it to-day."
Mother Wolf shook herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes, like two green moons in the darkness.
"The man's cub is mine, Dhurta – mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs – frog-eater – fish-killer – he shall hunt thee! Now get hence, or by the many deer that I have killed (I do not eat what sycophants have scavenged), back thou goest to thine own hunting grounds, most slippery beast of the jungle, lamer than ever thou camest into the world! Go!"
From the back of the cave, Akela looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten the days when six wolves had fought one another for Martha's sake, when she ran in the Pack and was not called The Demon for compliment's sake.
It was to his credit that Shere Khan did not turn tail and run, then and there, though he blinked and backed away. "A very fine speech, Mother," he said at last. "Though you will be very sorry for it some-day. This is my Jungle, and the man-cub will be mine to eat, and when I am done I will give his bones to the dish-licker to gnaw." With this, he backed out of the cave and moved silently out into the night, Tabaqui at his heels.
Martha threw herself down panting among the cubs, and Akela said to her gravely:
"Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the Pack. Wilt thou still keep him, Martha?"
"Keep him!" she gasped. "He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry; yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed one of my babes to one side already. And that sly butcher would have killed him and would have run off to the Waingunga while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! Keep him? Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still, little honey badger. John, you call yourself: so shall we call you also, though you will be a Wolf as well as a man. The time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted thee."
Akela drew forward again to look at the man-cub, now fast asleep among his new brothers. "You will bring him before the Pack, when the time comes," he said.
"Aye," answered Martha Mother-Wolf. "When the time comes, I will."
Akela flicked his tail. "Tonight, I will bring you meat."
The attendant-wolf sprang up, and together the two wolves walked out of the cave and into the moonlight.
The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf may, when he marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to. But as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand on their feet he must bring them to the Pack Council, which is generally held once a month at full moon, in order that the other wolves may identify them. After that inspection the cubs are free to run where they please, and until they have killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if a grown wolf of the Pack kills one of them. The punishment is death where the murderer can be found; and if you think for a minute you will see that this must be so.
Martha Mother-Wolf waited till her cubs could run a little, and then on the night of the Pack Meeting took them and John to the Council Rock – a hilltop covered with stones and boulders where a hundred wolves could hide. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a buck alone to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The Lone Wolf had led them for two years now. He had fallen twice into a wolf trap in his youth, and once he had been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and customs of men.
There was very little talking at the Rock. The cubs tumbled over each other in the center of the circle where their mothers and fathers sat, and now and again a senior wolf would go quietly up to a cub, look at him carefully, and return to his place on noiseless feet. Sometimes a mother would push her cub far out into the moonlight to be sure that he had not been overlooked. Akela from his rock would cry: "Ye know the Law – ye know the Law. Look well, O Wolves!" And the anxious mothers would take up the call:
"Look – look well, O Wolves!"
At last the time came, and Martha Mother-Wolf's neck bristles lifted as she pushed "John the man-cub," as they called him, into the center, where he sat laughing and playing with some pebbles that glistened in the moonlight.
A few Wolves came forward to sniff at John, but from the fringes of the group there came dark mutterings: "What has a man-cub to do with us? Shere Khan has spoken of a man-cub that is his rightful prey that was stolen. Who are we, that another hunter's prey should join our Pack?"
Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with the monotonous cry: "Look well, O Wolves! What have the Free People to do with the orders of any save the Free People? Look well!"
There came more growls from among the Pack, and then a young wolf in his fourth year walked forward and flung a question to Akela: "What have the Free People to do with a man's cub?" Now, the Law of the Jungle lays down that if there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must be spoken for by at least two members of the Pack who are not his father and mother.
"Who speaks for this cub?" said Akela. "Among the Free People who speaks?" There was no answer and Martha Mother-Wolf got ready for what she knew would be her last fight, if things came to fighting.
Then spoke the only other creature who is allowed a voice at the Pack Council – the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey. This had not been the name his mother gave him, but it was his name among the Wolves, for this reason: the Waingunga River begins in the hills of the Satpura range, and on its way to the jungle it flows through hard rock, and down into a great dry ravine. Here is where the Bear would take the wolf-cubs for their earliest lessons. He would lay himself down along the edge of the steep path down to the water, so that the young cubs might run without fear of falling. Hathi the Wild Elephant, whose father had been among white men and seen their dwelling-places, had laughed at the Bear when he saw this, and called him Balustrade. This became his name among the Free People, and their cubs called him Baloo.
Baloo now rose upon his hind quarters and grunted.
"The man's cub – the man's cub?" he said. "I speak for the man's cub. There is no harm in a man's cub. I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be entered with the others. I myself will teach him."
"We need yet another," said Akela. "Balustrade has spoken, and he is our teacher for the young cubs. Who speaks besides Baloo?"
A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. The Panther's name was Bagheera in his own tongue. His fur was short and sleek and fit him closely, so the Free People called him Sherlock, which means short-hair. Everybody knew Sherlock, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as rich as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.
"O Akela, and ye the Free People," he purred, "I have no right in your assembly, but the Law of the Jungle says that if there is a doubt which is not a killing matter in regard to a new cub, the life of that cub may be bought at a price. And the Law does not say who may or may not pay that price. Am I right?"
"Good! Good!" said the young wolves, who are always hungry. "Listen to Sherlock. The cub can be bought for a price. It is the Law."
"Knowing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your leave."
"Speak then," cried twenty voices.
"To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better sport for you when he is grown. The Bear has spoken in his behalf. Now to Baloo's word I will add my price, if ye will accept the man's cub according to the Law: the answer to a mystery that has long plagued you. Is it difficult?"
Several wolves, who had believed that Sherlock meant to bring them a fresh kill as the price for the man-cub, growled in discontent. But Akela said only: "Speak, Sherlock, and tell us of this mystery."
The Panther flicked his tail. "You all recall, many months ago, when Fao's red-furred cub vanished, and no-one knew whether he was killed, or hunted by some other creature, or simply lost his way in the Jungle."
The wolves fell silent. Baloo bowed his head in grief, for he remembered Little Redfur.
Fao now leapt onto to a hump of rock, from which he might be heard, and said:
"This is no mystery. It was the vultures who took him. I know this because I followed his trail to the stony hollow by the dead trees where they gather."
"It was the vultures in the end, yes," said the Panther softly. "But first, it was murder."
Many voices cried out at this. "Murder? It is not possible. He is lying!" But Sherlock pressed on: "One of your wolves killed him, and carried him to the hollow that she might not be discovered."
"This is heavy news you bring us, Sherlock," said Akela.
"Yet it is the truth," answered the Panther. "It is the price we agreed upon." He turned to gaze out over the crowd of Wolves. "Will you accept this price for the man-cub?" he cried.
There was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: "What matter? He will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the sun. What harm can a naked man-cub do us? Let him run with the Pack. Let him be accepted. We must know who the murderer is."
Akela rose to his feet. "Tell us what you know, Sherlock. We will accept the man-cub into the Pack and punish the murderer."
The Panther flicked his tail. "You may wish otherwise, once you have heard the full tale, for the killer has had no joy from her deed."
"But who is it?" cried Fao. "I will tear out her throat myself."
Sherlock stared at the angry wolf. "It was your mate," he said softly. "Your cubs were playing together, and the play became very rough. She cuffed Redfur to the ground to spare his brother a beating, and his head struck a rock. She feared for the welfare of her other cubs if the truth were known and she were killed."
The wolves all looked from Akela to Fao. None were looking at Baloo the Bear when he spoke again, saying:
"It is not mine to decide, O Wolves. But the Law does not require you to kill, and the grief of the mother is surely great."
"The grief of all is great," answered Akela, "but none more than the mother. She will live." He turned now to Sherlock and said: "you have paid the price." Akela gave a deep bay, crying: "Look well – look well, O Wolves!"
John was still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he did not notice when the wolves came and looked at him one by one. At last they all went down the hill, and only Akela, Sherlock, Baloo, and John's own wolves were left.
"It was well done," said Akela. "Men and their cubs are very wise. He may be a help in time."
"Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the Pack forever," said Sherlock.
Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to every leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a new leader comes up – to be killed in his turn.
"Take him away," he said to Martha Mother-Wolf, "and train him as befits one of the Free People."
And that is how John was entered into the Seeonee Wolf Pack for the price of a mystery solved and on Baloo's good word.