“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 today, 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 midday.

“Akela!  Akela!” said Mowgli, clapping his hands.  “I might have known that thou wouldst not forget me.  We have a big work in hand.  Cut the herd in two, Akela.  Keep the cows and calves together, and the bulls and the plow buffaloes by themselves.”

The two wolves ran, ladies’-chain fashion, in and out of the herd, which snorted and threw up its head, and separated into two clumps.  In one, the cow-buffaloes stood with their calves in the center, and glared and pawed, ready, if a wolf would only stay still, to charge down and trample the life out of him.  In the other, the bulls and the young bulls snorted and stamped, but though they looked more imposing they were much less dangerous, for they had no calves to protect.  No six men could have divided the herd so neatly.

“What orders!” panted Akela.  “They are trying to join again.”

Mowgli slipped on to Rama’s back.  “Drive the bulls away to the left, Akela.  Gray Brother, when we are gone, hold the cows together, and drive them into the foot of the ravine.”