But India is too thickly populated by human beings for a wild elephant to escape observation entirely.  Many natives had caught sight of him, and at last the tales reached a little circle of trackers and hunters in camp on a distant range of hills.  They did not work for Dugan Sahib, for Dugan Sahib was dead long since.  They were a determined little group, and one night they sat and talked softly over their fire.  If Muztagh’s ears had been sharp enough to hear their words across the space of hills, he wouldn’t have gone to his mud-baths with such complacency the next day.  But the space between them was fifty miles of sweating jungle, and of course he did not hear.

“You will go, Khusru,” said the leader, “for there are none here half so skilful with horsehair rope as you.  If you do not come back within twelve months we shall know you have failed.”

Of course all of them knew what he meant.  If a man failed in the effort to capture a wild elephant by the hair-rope method, he very rarely lived to tell of it.

“In that case,” Ahmad Din went on, “there will be a great drive after the monsoon of next year.  Picked men will be chosen.  No detail will be overlooked.  It will cost more, but it will be sure.  And our purses will be fat from the selling-price of this king of elephants with a white coat!”

IV

There is no need to follow Khusru on his long pursuit through the elephant trails.  He was an able hunter and, after the manner of the elephant-trackers, the scared little man followed Muztagh through jungle and river, over hill and into dale, for countless days, and at last, as Muztagh slept, he crept up within a half-dozen feet of him.  He intended to loop a horsehair rope about his great feet—­one of the oldest and most hazardous methods of elephant-catching.  But Muztagh wakened just in time.

And then a curious thing happened.  The native could never entirely believe it, and it was one of his best stories to the day he died.  Any other wild tusker would have charged in furious wrath, and there would have been a quick and certain death beneath his great knees.  Muztagh started out as if he had intended to charge.  He lifted his trunk out of the way—­the elephant trunk is for a thousand uses, but fighting is not one of them—­and sprang forward.  He went just two paces.  Then his little eyes caught sight of the brown figure fleeing through the bamboos.  And at once the elephant set his great feet to brake himself, and drew to a sliding halt six feet beyond.

He did not know why.  He was perfectly aware that this man was an enemy, jealous of his most-loved liberty.  He knew perfectly it was the man’s intention to put him back into his bonds.  He did not feel fear, either—­because an elephant’s anger is too tremendous an emotion to leave room for any other impulse such as fear.  It seemed to him that memories came thronging from long ago, so real and insistent that he could not think of charging.