“Peace, peace, Raksha!” said Father Wolf, lazily. “Our Frog has come back again--so wise that his own father must lick his feet; and what is a cut, more or less, on the head? Leave Men alone.” Baloo and Bagheera both echoed: “Leave Men alone.” Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf’s side, smiled contentedly, and said that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or smell Man again. “But what,” said Akela, cocking one ear--“but what if men do not leave thee alone, Little Brother?” “We be FIVE,” said Gray Brother, looking round at the company, and snapping his jaws on the last word. “We also might attend to that hunting,” said Bagheera, with a little switch-switch of his tail, looking at Baloo. “But why think of men now, Akela?” “For this reason,” the Lone Wolf answered: “when that yellow chief’s hide was hung up on the rock, I went back along our trail to the village, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and lying down, to make a mixed trail in case one should follow us. But when I had fouled the trail so that I myself hardly knew it again, Mang, the Bat, came hawking between the trees, and hung up above me.” Said Mang, “The village of the Man-Pack, where they cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet’s nest.” “It was a big stone that I threw,” chuckled Mowgli, who had often amused himself by throwing ripe paw-paws into a hornet’s nest, and racing off to the nearest pool before the hornets caught him. “I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said that the Red Flower blossomed at the gate of the village, and men sat about it carrying guns. Now _I_ know, for I have good cause,”--Akela looked down at the old dry scars on his flank and side,--“that men do not carry guns for pleasure. Presently, Little Brother, a man with a gun follows our trail--if, indeed, he be not already on it.” “But why should he? Men have cast me out. What more do they need?” said Mowgli angrily. “Thou art a man, Little Brother,” Akela returned. “It is not for US, the Free Hunters, to tell thee what thy brethren do, or why.” He had just time to snatch up his paw as the skinning-knife cut deep into the ground below. Mowgli struck quicker than an average human eye could follow but Akela was a wolf; and even a dog, who is very far removed from the wild wolf, his ancestor, can be waked out of deep sleep by a cart-wheel touching his flank, and can spring away unharmed before that wheel comes on. “Another time,” Mowgli said quietly, returning the knife to its sheath, “speak of the Man-Pack and of Mowgli in TWO breaths--not one.” “Phff! That is a sharp tooth,” said Akela, snuffing at the blade’s cut in the earth, “but living with the Man-Pack has spoiled thine eye, Little Brother. I could have killed a buck while thou wast striking.”