a mud castle with mud figures of men and horses and buffaloes, and put reeds into the men’s hands, and pretend that they are kings and the figures are their armies, or that they are gods to be worshipped.  Then evening comes and the children call, and the buffaloes lumber up out of the sticky mud with noises like gunshots going off one after the other, and they all string across the gray plain back to the twinkling village lights.

Day after day Mowgli would lead the buffaloes out to their wallows, and day after day he would see Gray Brother’s back a mile and a half away across the plain (so he knew that Shere Khan had not come back), and day after day he would lie on the grass listening to the noises round him, and dreaming of old days in the jungle.  If Shere Khan had made a false step with his lame paw up in the jungles by the Waingunga, Mowgli would have heard him in those long still mornings.

At last a day came when he did not see Gray Brother at the signal place, and he laughed and headed the buffaloes for the ravine by the dhak-tree, which was all covered with golden-red flowers.  There sat Gray Brother, every bristle on his back lifted.

’He has hidden for a month to throw thee off thy guard.  He crossed the ranges last night with Tabaqui, hot-foot on thy trail,’ said the Wolf, panting.

Mowgli frowned.  ’I am not afraid of Shere Khan, but Tabaqui is very cunning.’

‘Have no fear,’ said Gray Brother, licking his lips a little.  ’I met Tabaqui in the dawn.  Now he is telling all his wisdom to the kites, but he told me everything before I broke his back.  Shere Khan’s plan is to wait for thee at the village gate this evening—­for thee and for no one else.  He is lying up now, in the big dry ravine of the Waingunga.’

‘Has he eaten to-day, or does he hunt empty?’ said Mowgli, for the answer meant life and death to him.

’He killed at dawn—­a pig—­and he has drunk too.  Remember, Shere Khan could never fast, even for the sake of revenge.’

’Oh! fool, fool!  What a cub’s cub it is!  Eaten and drunk too, and he thinks that I shall wait till he has slept!  Now, where does he lie up?  If there were but ten of us we might pull him down as he lies.  These buffaloes will not charge unless they wind him, and I cannot speak their language.  Can we get behind his track so that they may smell it?’

‘He swam far down the Waingunga to cut that off,’ said Gray Brother.

’Tabaqui told him that, I know.  He would never have thought of it alone.’  Mowgli stood with his finger in his mouth, thinking.  ’The big ravine of the Waingunga.  That opens out on the plain not half a mile from here.  I can take the herd round through the jungle to the head of the ravine and then sweep down—­but he would slink out at the foot.  We must block that end.  Gray Brother, canst thou cut the herd in two for me?’

‘Not I, perhaps—­but I have brought a wise helper.’  Gray Brother trotted off and dropped into a hole.  Then there lifted up a huge gray head that Mowgli knew well, and the hot air was filled with the most desolate cry of all the jungle—­the hunting-howl of a wolf at mid-day.