Now we must go back to the first tale. When Mowgli left the wolf"s cave after the fight with the Pack at the Council Rock, he went down to the plowed lands where the villagers lived, but he would not stop there because it was too near to the jungle,and he knew that he had made at least one bad enemy at the Council. So he hurried on,keeping to the roughroad that ran down the valley, and followed it at a steady jog-trot for nearly twenty miles, till he came to a country that he did not know.The valley opened out into a great plain dotted over with rocks and cut up by ravines. At one end stood a little village, and at the other the thick jungle came down in a sweep to the grazing-grounds, and stopped there as though it had been cut off with a hoe. All over the plain, cattle and buffaloes were grazing, and when the little boys in charge of the herds saw Mowgli they shouted and ran away, and the yellow pariah dogs that hang about every Indian village barked. Mowgli walked on, for he was feeling hungry, and when he came to the village gate he saw the big thorn-bush that was drawn up before the gate at twilight, pushed to one side.
“Umph！” he said, for he had come across more than one such barricade in his night rambles after things to eat. “So men are afraid of the People of the Jungle here also.” He sat down by the gate, and when a man came out he stood up, opened his mouth, and pointed down it to show that he wanted food. The man stared, and ran back up the one street of the village shouting for the priest, who was a big, fat man dressed in white, with a red and yellow mark on his forehead. The priest came to the gate, and with him at least a hundred people, who stared and talked and shouted and pointed at Mowgli.
“They have no manners, these Men Folk,” said Mowgli to himself.“Only the gray ape would behave as they do.”So he threw back his long hair and frowned at the crowd.
“What is there to be afraid of？”said the priest. “Look at the marks on his arms and legs. They are the bites of wolves. He is but a wolf-child run away from the jungle.”
Of course, in playing together, the cubs had often nipped Mowgli harder than they intended, and there were white scars all over his arms and legs. But he would have been the last person in the world to call these bites, for he knew what real biting meant.
“Arre！ Arre！” said two or three women together. “To bebitten by wolves, poor child！ He is a handsome boy. He has eyes like red fire. By my honor, Messua, he is not unlike your boy that was taken by the tiger.”
“Let me look,” said a woman with heavy copper rings on her wrists and ankles, and she peered at Mowgli under the palm of her hand. “Indeed he is not. He is thinner, but he has the very look of my boy.”
It was not for fun that he had learned while he was with the wolves to imitate the challenge of bucks in the jungle and the grunt of the little wild pig. So, as soon as Messua pronounced a word Mowgli would imitate it almost perfectly, and before dark he had learned the names of many things in the hut.
There was a difficulty at bedtime, because Mowgli would not sleep under anything that looked so like a panther trap as that hut, and when they shut the door he went through the window. “Give him his will,” said Messua"s husband. “Remember he can never till now have slept on a bed.If he is indeed sent in the place of our son he will not run away.
”
So Mowgli stretched himself in some long, clean grass at the edge of the field, but before he had closed his eyes a soft gray nose poked him under the chin.
“Phew！” said Gray Brother (he was the eldest of Mother Wolf"s cubs).
“This is a poor reward for following you twenty miles. You smellest of wood smoke and cattle--altogether like a man already. Wake, Little Brother; I bring news.”
“Are all well in the jungle？” said Mowgli, hugging him.
“All except the wolves that were burned with the Red Flower. Now,listen. Shere Khan has gone away to hunt far off till his coat grows again,for he is badly singed. When he returns he swears that he will lay your bones in the Waingunga.”
“There are two words to that. I also have made a little promise. But news is always good. I am tired to-night,--very tired with new things, Gray Brother,--but bring me the news always.”
“You will not forget that you are a wolf？ Men will not makeyou forget？”said Gray Brother anxiously.
“Never. I will always remember that I love you and all in our cave.But also I will always remember that I have been cast out of the Pack.”
“And that you mayest be cast out of another pack. Men are only men,Little Brother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond. When I come down here again, I will wait for you in the bamboos at the edge of the grazing-ground.”
For three months after that night Mowgli hardly ever left the village gate, he was so busy learning the ways and customs of men. First he had to wear a cloth round him, which annoyed him horribly; and then he had to learn about money, which he did not in the least understand, and about plowing, of which he did not see the use. Then the little children in the village made him very angry. Luckily, the Law of the Jungle had taught him to keep his temper, for in the jungle life and food depend on keeping your temper; but when they made fun of him because he would not play games or fly kites, or because he mispronounced some word, only the knowledge that it was unsportsmanlike to kill little naked cubs kept him from picking them up and breaking them in two.
He did not know his own strength in the least. In the jungle he knew he was weak compared with the beasts, but in the village people said that he was as strong as a bull.
