“One, two, three, four tracks,” said Mowgli, stooping over the ashes. “Four tracks of men with shod feet. They do not go so quickly as Gonds. Now, what evil had the little woodman done to them? See, they talked together, all five, standing up, before they killed him. Bagheera, let us go back. My stomach is heavy in me, and yet it heaves up and down like an oriole’s nest at the end of a branch.” “It is not good hunting to leave game afoot. Follow!” said the panther. “Those eight shod feet have not gone far.” No more was said for fully an hour, as they worked up the broad trail of the four men with shod feet. It was clear, hot daylight now, and Bagheera said, “I smell smoke.” Men are always more ready to eat than to run, Mowgli answered, trotting in and out between the low scrub bushes of the new Jungle they were exploring. Bagheera, a little to his left, made an indescribable noise in his throat. “Here is one that has done with feeding,” said he. A tumbled bundle of gay-coloured clothes lay under a bush, and round it was some spilt flour. “That was done by the bamboo again,” said Mowgli. “See! that white dust is what men eat. They have taken the kill from this one,--he carried their food,--and given him for a kill to Chil, the Kite.” “It is the third,” said Bagheera. “I will go with new, big frogs to the Father of Cobras, and feed him fat,” said Mowgli to himself. “The drinker of elephant’s blood is Death himself--but still I do not understand!” “Follow!” said Bagheera. They had not gone half a mile farther when they heard Ko, the Crow, singing the death-song in the top of a tamarisk under whose shade three men were lying. A half-dead fire smoked in the centre of the circle, under an iron plate which held a blackened and burned cake of unleavened bread. Close to the fire, and blazing in the sunshine, lay the ruby-and-turquoise ankus. “The thing works quickly; all ends here,” said Bagheera. “How did THESE die, Mowgli? There is no mark on any.” A Jungle-dweller gets to learn by experience as much as many doctors know of poisonous plants and berries. Mowgli sniffed the smoke that came up from the fire, broke off a morsel of the blackened bread, tasted it, and spat it out again. “Apple of Death,” he coughed. “The first must have made it ready in the food for THESE, who killed him, having first killed the Gond.” “Good hunting, indeed! The kills follow close,” said Bagheera. “Apple of Death” is what the Jungle call thorn-apple or dhatura, the readiest poison in all India. “What now?” said the panther. “Must thou and I kill each other for yonder red-eyed slayer?” “Can it speak?” said Mowgli in a whisper. “Did I do it a wrong when I threw it away? Between us two it can do no wrong, for we do not desire what men desire. If it be left here, it will assuredly continue to kill men one after another as fast as nuts fall in a high wind. I have no love to men, but even I would not have them die six in a night.”