雙語·叢林故事 在保護(hù)林里

In the Rukh

Of the wheels of public service that turn under the Indian Government, there is none more important than the Department of Woods and Forests. The reboisement of all India is in its hands; or will be when Government has the money to spend. Its servants wrestle with wandering sand-torrents and shifting dunes: wattling them at the sides, damming them in front, and pegging them down atop with coarse grass and spindling pine after the rules of Nancy. They are responsible for all the timber in the State forests of the Himalayas, as well as for the denuded hillsides that the monsoons wash into dry gullies and aching ravines; each cut a mouth crying aloud what carelessness can do. They experiment with battalions of foreign trees, and coax the blue gum to take root and, perhaps, dry up the Canal fever. In the plains the chief part of their duty is to see that the belt fire-lines in the forest reserves are kept clean,so that when drought comes and the cattle starve, they may throw the reserve open to the villager's herds and allow the man himself to gather sticks. They poll and lop for the stacked railway-fuel along the lines that burn no coal; they calculate the profit of their plantations to five points of decimals; they are the doctors and midwives of the huge teak forests of Upper Burma, the rubber of the Eastern Jungles, and the gall-nuts of the South; and they are always hampered by lack of funds. But since a Forest Officer's business takes him far from the beaten roads and the regular stations, he learns to grow wise in more than wood-lore alone; to know the people and the polity of the jungle; meeting tiger, bear, leopard, wild-dog, and all the deer, not once or twice after days of beating, but again and again in the execution of his duty. He spends much time in saddle or under canvas—the friend of newly-planted trees, the associate of uncouth rangers and hairy trackers—till the woods, that show his care, in turn set their mark upon him, and he ceases to sing the naughty French songs he learned at Nancy, and grows silent with the silent things of the underbrush.

Gisborne of the Woods and Forests had spent four years in the service. At first he loved it without comprehension, because it led him into the open on horseback and gave him authority. Then he hated it furiously, and would have given a year's pay for one month of such society as India affords. That crisis over, the forests took him back again, and he was content to serve them, to deepen and widen his fire-lines, to watch the green mist of his new plantation against the older foliage, to dredge out the choked stream, and to follow and strengthen the last struggle of the forest where it broke down and died among the long pig-grass. On some still day that grass would be burned off, and a hundred beasts that had their homes there would rush out before the pale flames at high noon. Later, the forest would creep forward over the blackened ground in orderly lines of saplings, and Gisborne, watching, would be well pleased. His bungalow, a thatched white-walled cottage of two rooms, was set at one end of the great rukh and overlooking it. He made no pretence at keeping a garden, for the rukh swept up to his door, curled over in a thicket of bamboo, and he rode from his verandah into its heart without the need of any carriage-drive.

Abdul Gafur, his fat Mohammedan butler, fed him when he was at home, and spent the rest of the time gossiping with the little band of native servants whose huts lay behind the bungalow. There were two grooms, a cook, a water-carrier, and a sweeper, and that was all. Gisborne cleaned his own guns and kept no dog. Dogs scared the game, and it pleased the man to be able to say where the subjects of his kingdom would drink at moonrise, eat before dawn, and lie up in the day's heat. The rangers and forest-guards lived in little huts far away in the rukh, only appearing when one of them had been injured by a falling tree or a wild beast, There Gisborne was alone.

In spring the rukh put out few new leaves, but lay dry and still untouched by the finger of the year, waiting for rain. Only there was then more calling and roaring in the dark on a quiet night; the tumult of a battle-royal among the tigers, the bellowing of arrogant buck, or the steady wood-chopping of an old boar sharpening his tushes against a bole. Then Gisborne laid aside his little-used gun altogether, for it was to him a sin to kill. In summer, through the furious May heats, the rukh reeled in the haze, and Gisborne watched for the first sign of curling smoke that should betray a forest fire. Then came the Rains with a roar, and the rukh was blotted out in fetch after fetch of warm mist, and the broad leaves drummed the night through under the big drops; and there was a noise of running water, and of juicy green stuff crackling where the wind struck it, and the lightning wove patterns behind the dense matting of the foliage, till the sun broke loose again and the rukh stood with hot flanks smoking to the newly-washed sky. Then the heat and the dry cold subdued everything to tiger-colour again. So Gisbornle learned to know his rukh and was very happy. His pay came month by month, but he had very little need for money. The currency notes accumulated in the drawer where he kept his home-letters and the recapping-machine. If he drew anything, it was to make a purchase from the Calcutta Botanical Gardens, or to pay a ranger's widow a sum that the Government of India would never have sanctioned for her man's death.

Payment was good, but vengeance was also necessary, and he took that when he could. One night of many nights a runner, breathless and gasping, came to him with the news that a forest-guard lay dead by the Kanye stream, the side of his head smashed in as though it had been an egg-shell. Gisborne went out at dawn to look for the murderer. It is only travellers and now and then young soldiers who are known to the world as great hunters. The Forest Officers take their shikar as part of the day's work, and no one hears of it. Gisborne went on foot to the place of the kill: the widow was wailing over the corpse as it lay on a bedstead, while two or three men were looking at footprints on the moist ground. “That is the Red One,” said a man. “I knew he would turn to man in time, but surely there is game enough even for him. This must have been done for devilry.”

“The Red One lies up in the rocks at the back of the sal trees,” said Gisborne. He knew the tiger under suspicion.

“Not now, Sahib, not now. He will be raging and ranging to and fro. Remember that the first kill is a triple kill always. Our blood makes them mad. He may be behind us even as we speak.”

“He may have gone to the next hut” said another. “It is only four koss. Wallah, who is this?”

Gisborne turned with the others. A man was walking down the dried bed of the stream, naked except for the loin-cloth, but crowned with a wreath of the tasselled blossoms of the white convolvulus creeper. So noiselessly did he move over the little pebbles, that even Gisborne, used to the soft-footedness of trackers, started.

“The tiger that killed,” he began, without any salute, “has gone to drink, and now he is asleep under a rock beyond that hill.” His voice was clear and bell-like, utterly different from the usual whine of the native, and his face as he lifted it in the sunshine might have been that of an angel strayed among the woods. The widow ceased wailing above the corpse and looked round-eyed at the stranger, returning to her duty with double strength.

“Shall I show the Sahib?” he said simply.

“If thou art sure—” Gisborne began.

“Sure indeed. I saw him only an hour ago—the dog. It is before his time to eat man's flesh. He has yet a dozen sound teeth in his evil head.”

The men kneeling above the footprints slunk off quietly, for fear that Gisborne should ask them to go with him, and the young man laughed a little to himself.

“Come, Sahib,” he cried, and turned on his heel, walking before his companion.

“Not so fast. I cannot keep that pace,” said the white man. “Halt there. Thy face is new to me.”

“That may be. I am but newly come into this forest.”

“From what village?”

“I am without a village. I came from over there.” He flung out his arm towards the north.

“A gipsy then?”

“No, Sahib. I am a man without caste, and for matter of that without a father.”

“What do men call thee?”

“Mowgli, Sahib. And what is the Sahib's name?”

“I am the warden of this rukh—Gisborne is my name.”

“How? Do they number the trees and the blades of grass here?”

“Even so; lest such gipsy fellows as thou set them afire.”

“I! I would not hurt the jungle for any gift, That is my home.”

He turned to Gisborne with a smile that was irresistible, and held up a warning hand.

“Now, Sahib, we must go a little quietly. There is no need to wake the dog, though he sleeps heavily enough. Perhaps it were better if I went forward alone and drove him down wind to the Sahib!”

“Allah! Since when have tigers been driven to and fro like cattle by naked men?” said Gisborne, aghast at the man's audacity.

He laughed again softly. “Nay, then, come along with me and shoot him in thy own way with the big English rifle.”

Gisborne stepped in his guide's track, twisted, crawled, and clomb and stooped and suffered through all the many agonies of a jungle-stalk. He was purple and dripping with sweat when Mowgli at the last bade him raise his head and peer over a blue baked rock near a tiny hill pool. By the waterside lay the tiger extended and at ease, lazily licking clean again an enormous elbow and forepaw. He was old, yellow-toothed, and not a little mangy, but in that setting and sunshine, imposing enough.

Gisborne had no false ideas of sport where the man-eater was concerned. This thing was vermin, to be killed as speedily as possible. He waited to recover his breath, rested the rifle on the rock and whistled. The brute's head turned slowly not twenty feet from the rifle-mouth, and Gisborne planted his shots, business-like, one behind the shoulder and the other a little below the eye. At that range the heavy bones were no guard against the rending bullets.

“Well, the skin was not worth keeping at any rate,” said he, as the smoke cleared away and the beast lay kicking and gasping in the last agony.

“A dog's death for a dog,” said Mowgli quietly. “Indeed there is nothing in that carrion worth taking away.”

“The whiskers. Dost thou not take the whiskers?” said Gisborne, who knew how the rangers valued such things.

“I? Am I a lousy shikarri of the jungle to paddle with a tiger's muzzle? Let him lie. Here come his friends already.”

A dropping kite whistled shrilly overhead, as Gisborne snapped out the empty shells, and wiped his face.

“And if thou art not a shikarri, where didst thou learn thy knowledge of the tiger-folk?” said he. “No tracker could have done better.”

“I hate all tigers,” said Mowgli curtly. “Let the Sahib give me his gun to carry. Arré, it is a very fine one. And where does the Sahib go now?”

“To my house.”

“May I come? I have never yet looked within a white man's house.”

Gisborne returned to his bungalow, Mowgli striding noiselessly before him, his brown skin glistening in the sunlight.

He stared curiously at the verandah and the two chairs there, fingered the split bamboo shade curtains with suspicion, and entered, looking always behind him. Gisborne loosed a curtain to keep out the sun. It dropped with a clatter, but almost before it touched the flagging of the verandah Mowgli had leaped clear, and was standing with heaving chest in the open.

“It is a trap,” he said quickly.

Gisborne laughed. “White men do not trap men. Indeed thou art altogether of the jungle.”

“I see,” said Mowgli, “it has neither catch nor fall. I—I never beheld these things till today.”

He came in on tiptoe and stared with large eyes at the furniture of the two rooms. Abdul Gafur, who was laying lunch, looked at him with deep disgust.

“So much trouble to eat, and so much trouble to lie down after you have eaten!” said Mowgli with a grin. “We do better in the jungle. It is very wonderful. There are very many rich things here. Is the Sahib not afraid that he may be robbed? I have never seen such wonderful things.” He was staring at a dusty Benares brass plate on a rickety bracket.

“Only a thief from the jungle would rob here,” said Abdul Gafur, setting down a plate with a clatter. Mowgli opened his eyes wide and stared at the white-bearded Mohammedan.

“In my country when goats bleat very loud we cut their throats,” he returned cheerfully. “But have no fear, thou. I am going.”

He turned and disappeared into the rukh. Gisborne looked after him with a laugh that ended in a little sigh. There was not much outside his regular work to interest the Forest Officer, and this son of the forest, who seemed to know tigers as other people know dogs, would have been a diversion.

“He's a most wonderful chap,” thought Gisborne; “he's like the illustrations in the Classical Dictionary. I wish I could have made him a gun-boy. There's no fun in shikarring alone, and this fellow would have been a perfect shikarri. I wonder what in the world he is.”

That evening he sat on the verandah under the stars smoking as he wondered. A puff of smoke curled from the pipe-bowl. As it cleared he was aware of Mowgli sitting with arms crossed on the verandah edge. A ghost could not have drifted up more noiselessly. Gisborne started and let the pipe drop.

“There is no man to talk to out there in the rukh,” said Mowgli; “I came here, therefore.” He picked up the pipe and returned it to Gisborne.

“Oh,” said Gisborne, and after a long pause,“what news is there in the rukh? Hast thou found another tiger?”

“The nilghai are changing their feeding-ground against the new moon, as is their custom. The pig are feeding near the Kanye river now, because they will not feed with the nilghai, and one of their sows has been killed by a leopard in the long grass at the water-head. I do not know any more.”

“And how didst thou know all these things?” said Gisborne, leaning forward and looking at the eyes that glittered in the starlight.

“How should I not know? The nilghai has his custom and his use, and a child knows that pig will not feed with him.”

“I do not know this,” said Gisborne.

“Tck! Tck! And thou art in charge—so the men of the huts tell me—in charge of all this rukh?” He laughed to himself.

“It is well enough to talk and to tell child's tales,” Gisborne retorted, nettled at the chuckle. “To say that this and that goes on in the rukh. No man can deny thee.”

“As for the sow's carcase, I will show thee her bones tomorrow,” Mowgli returned, absolutely unmoved. “Touching the matter of the nilghai, if the Sahib will sit here very still I will drive one nilghai up to this place, and by listening to the sounds carefully, the Sahib can tell whence that nilghai has been driven.”

“Mowgli, the jungle has made thee mad,” said Gisborne. “Who can drive nilghai?”

“Still—sit still, then. I go.”

“Gad, the man's a ghost!” said Gisborne; for Mowgli had faded out into the darkness and there was no sound of feet. The rukh lay out in great velvety folds in the uncertain shimmer of the star-dust—so still that the least little wandering wind among the tree-tops came up as the sigh of a child sleeping equably. Abdul Gafur in the cook-house was clicking plates together.

“Be still there!” shouted Gisborne and composed himself to listen as a man can who is used to the stillness of the rukh. It had been his custom, to preserve his self-respect in his isolation, to dress for dinner each night, and the stiff white shirtfront creaked with his regular breathing till he shifted a little sideways. Then the tobacco of a somewhat foul pipe began to purr, and he threw the pipe from him. Now, except for the night-breath in the rukh, everything was dumb.

From an inconceivable distance, and drawled through immeasurable darkness, came the faint, faint echo of a wolf's howl. Then silence again for, it seemed, long hours. At last, when his 1egs below the knees had lost all feeling, Gisborne heard something that might have been a crash far off through the undergrowth. He doubted till it was repeated again and yet again.

“That's from the west,” he muttered; “there's something on foot there.” The noise increased—crash on crash, plunge on plunge—with the thick grunting of a hotly pressed nilghai, flying in panic terror and taking no heed to his course.

A shadow blundered out from between the tree-trunks, wheeled back, turned again grunting, and with a clatter on the bare ground dashed up almost within reach of his hand. It was a bull nilghai, dripping with dew—his withers hung with a torn trail of creeper, his eyes shining in the light from the house. The creature checked at sight of the man, and fled along the edge of the rukh till he melted in the darkness. The first idea in Gisborne's bewildered mind was the indecency of thus dragging out for inspection the big blue bull of the rukh—the putting him through his paces in the night which should have been his own.

Then said a smooth voice at his ear as he stood staring:

“He came from the water-head where he was leading the herd. From the west he came. Does the Sahib believe now, or shall I bring up the herd to be counted? The Sahib is in charge of this rukh.”

Mowgli had reseated himself on the verandah, breathing a little quickly. Gisborne looked at him with open mouth. “How was that accomplished?” he said.

“The Sahib saw. The bull was driven—driven as a buffalo is. Ho! ho! He will have a fine tale to tell when he returns to the herd.

“That is a new trick to me. Canst thou run as swiftly as the nilghai, then?”

“The Sahib has seen. If the Sahib needs more knowledge at any time of the movings of the game, I, Mowgli, am here. This is a good rukh, and I shall stay.”

“Stay, then, and if thou hast need of a meal at any time my servants shall give thee one.”

“Yes, indeed, I am fond of cooked food,” Mowgli answered quickly. “No man may say that I do not eat boiled and roast as much as any other man. I will come for that meal. Now, on my part, I promise that the Sahib shall sleep safely in his house by night, and no thief shall break in to carry away his so rich treasures.”

The conversation ended itself on Mowgli's abrupt departure. Gisborne sat long smoking, and the upshot of his thoughts was that in Mowgli he had found at last that ideal ranger and forest-guard for whom he and the Department were always looking.

“I must get him into the Government service somehow. A man who can drive nilghai would know more about the rukh than fifty men. He's a miracle—a lusus natur?—but a forest-guard he must be if he'll only settle down in one place,” said Gisborne.

Abdul Gafur's opinion was less favourable. He confided to Gisborne at bedtime that strangers from God-knew-where were more than likely to be professional thieves, and that he personally did not approve of naked outcastes who had not the proper manner of addressing white people. Gisborne laughed and bade him go to his quarters, and Abdul Gafur retreated growling. Later in the night he found occasion to rise up and beat his thirteen-year-old daughter. Nobody knew the cause of dispute, but Gisborne heard the cry.

Through the days that followed Mowgli came and went like a shadow. He had established himself and his wild house-keeping close to the bungalow, but on the edge of the rukh, where Gisborne, going out on to the verandah for a breath of cool air, would see him sometimes sitting in the moonlight, his forehead on his knees, or lying out along the fling of a branch, closely pressed to it as some beast of the night. Thence Mowgli would throw him a salutation and bid him sleep at ease, or descending would weave prodigious stories of the manners of the beasts in the rukh. Once he wandered into the stables and was found looking at the horses with deep interest.

“That,” said Abdul Gafur pointedly, “is sure sign that some day he will steal one. Why, if he lives about this house, does he not take an honest employment? But no, he must wander up and down like a loose camel, turning the heads of fools and opening the jaws of the unwise to folly.” So Abdul Gafur would give harsh orders to Mowgli when they met, would bid him fetch water and pluck fowls, and Mowgli, laughing unconcernedly, would obey.

“He has no caste,” said Abdul Gafur. “He will do anything. Look to it, Sahib, that he does not do too much. A snake is a snake, and a jungle-gipsy is a thief till the death.”

“Be silent, then,” said Gisborne. “I allow thee to correct thy own household if there is not too much noise, because I know thy customs and use. My custom thou dost not know. The man is without doubt a little mad.”

“Very little mad indeed,” said Abdul Gafur. “But we shall see what comes thereof.”

A few days later on his business took Gisborne into the rukh for three days. Abdul Gafur being old and fat was left at home. He did not approve of lying up in rangers’ huts, and was inclined to levy contributions in his master's name of grain and oil and milk from those who could ill afford such benevolences. Gisborne rode off early one dawn a little vexed that his man of the woods was not at the verandah to accompany him. He liked him—liked his strength, fleetness, and silence of foot, and his ever-ready open smile; his ignorance of all forms of ceremony and salutations, and the child-like tales that he would tell (and Gisborne would credit now) of what the game was doing in the rukh. After an hour's riding through the greenery, he heard a rustle behind him, and Mowgli trotted at his stirrup.

“We have a three days’ work toward,” said Gisborne, “among the new trees.”

“Good,” said Mowgli. “It is always good to cherish young trees. They make cover if the beasts leave them alone. We must shift the pig again.”

“Again? How?” Gisborne smiled.

“Oh, they were rooting and tusking among the young sal last night, and I drove them off. Therefore I did not come to the verandah this morning. The pig should not be on this side of the rukh at all. We must keep them below the head of the Kanye river.”

“If a man could herd clouds he might do that thing; but, Mowgli, if, as thou sayest, thou art herder in the rukh for no gain and for no pay—”

“It is the Sahib's rukh,” said Mowgli, quickly looking up. Gisborne nodded thanks and went on: “Would it not be better to work for pay from the Government? There is a pension at the end of long service.”

“Of that I have thought,” said Mowgli, “but the rangers live in huts with shut doors, and all that is all too much a trap to me. Yet I think——”

“Think well then and tell me later. Here we will stay for breakfast.”

Gisborne dismounted, took his morning meal from his homemade saddle-bags, and saw the day open hot above the rukh. Mowgli lay in the grass at his side staring up to the sky.

Presently he said in a lazy whisper: “Sahib, is there any order at the bungalow to take out the white mare today?”

“No, she is fat and old and a little lame beside. Why?”

“She is being ridden now and not slowly on the road that runs to the railway line.”

“Bah, that is two koss away. It is a woodpecker.”

Mowgli put up his forearm to keep the sun out of his eyes.

“The road curves in with a big curve from the bungalow. It is not more than a koss, at the farthest, as the kite goes; and sound flies with the birds.Shall we see?”

“What folly! To run a koss in this sun to see a noise in the forest.”

“Nay, the pony is the Sahib's pony. I meant only to bring her here. If she is not the Sahib's pony, no matter. If she is, the Sahib can do what he wills. She is certainly being ridden hard.”

“And how wilt thou bring her here, madman?”

“Has the Sahib forgotten? By the road of the nilghai and no other.”

“Up then and run if thou art so full of zeal.”

“Oh, I do not run!” He put out his hand to sign for silence, and still lying on his back called aloud thrice—with a deep gurgling cry that was new to Gisborne.

“She will come,” he said at the end. “Let us wait in the shade.” The long eyelashes drooped over the wild eyes as Mowgli began to doze in the morning hush. Gisborne waited patiently: Mowgli was surely mad, but as entertaining a companion as a lonely Forest Officer could desire.

“Ho! ho!” said Mowgli lazily, with shut eyes. “He has dropped off. Well, first the mare will come and then the man.” Then he yawned as Gisborne's pony stallion neighed. Three minutes later Gisborne's white mare, saddled, bridled, but riderless, tore into the glade where they were sittings, and hurried to her companion.

“She is not very warm,” said Mowgli, “but in this heat the sweat comes easily. Presently we shall see her rider, for a man goes more slowly than a horse—especially if he chance to be a fat man and old.”

“Allah! This is the devil's work,” cried Gisborne, leaping to his feet, for he heard a yell in the jungle.

“Have no care, Sahib. He will not be hurt, He also will say that it is devil's work. Ah! Listen! Who is that?”

It was the voice of Abdul Gafur in an agony of terror, crying out upon unknown things to spare him and his gray hairs.

“Nay, I cannot move another step,” he howled. “I am old and my turban is lost. Arré! Arré! But I will move. Indeed I will hasten. I will run! Oh, Devils of the Pit, I am a Mussulman!”

The undergrowth parted and gave up Abdul Gafur, turbanless, shoeless, with his waist-cloth unbound, mud and grass in his clutched hands, and his face purple. He saw Gisborne, yelled anew, and pitched forward, exhausted and quivering, at his feet. Mowgli watched him with a sweet smile.

“This is no joke,” said Gisborne sternly. “The man is like to die, Mowgli.”

“He will not die. He is only afraid. There was no need that he should have come out of a walk.”

Abdul Gafur groaned and rose up, shaking in every limb.

“It was witchcraft—witchcraft and devildom!” he sobbed, fumbling with his hand in his breast. “Because of my sin I have been whipped through the woods by devils. It is all finished. I repent. Take them, Sahib!” He held out a roll of dirty paper.

“What is the meaning of this, Abdul Gafur?” said Gisborne, already knowing what would come.

“Put me in the jail-khana—the notes are all here—but lock me up safely that no devils may follow. I have sinned against the Sahib and his salt which I have eaten; and but for those accursed wood-demons, I might have bought land afar off and lived in peace all my days.” He beat his head upon the ground in an agony of despair and mortification. Gisborne turned the roll of notes over and over. It was his accumulated back-pay for the last nine months—the roll that lay in the drawer with the home-letters and the recapping-machine. Mowgli watched Abdul Gafur, laughing noiselessly to himself. “There is no need to put me on the horse again. I will walk home slowly with the Sahib, and then he can send me under guard to the jail-khana. The Government gives many years for this offence,” said the butler sullenly.

Loneliness in the rukh affects veiy many ideas about very many things. Gisborne stared at Abdul Gafur, remembering that he was a very good servant, and that a new butler must be broken into the ways of the house from the beginning, and at the best would be a new face and a new tongue.

“Listen, Abdul Gafur,” he said. “Thou hast done great wrong, and altogether lost thy izzat and thy reputation. But I think that this came upon thee suddenly.”

“Allah! I had never desired the notes before. The Evil took me by the throat while I looked.”

“That also I can believe. Go then back to my house, and when I return I will send the notes by a runner to the Bank, and there shall be no more said. Thou art too old for the jail-khana. Also thy household is guiltless.”

For answer Abdul Gafur sobbed between Gisborne's cow-hide riding-boots.

“Is there no dismissal then?” he gulped.

“That we shall see. It hangs upon thy conduct when we return. Get upon the mare and ride slowly back.”

“But the devils! The rukh is full of devils.”

“No matter, my father. They will do thee no more harm unless, indeed, the Sahib's orders be not obeyed,” said Mowgli. “Then, perchance, they may drive thee home—by the road of the nilghai.”

Abdul Gafur's lower jaw dropped as he twisted up his waist-cloth, staring at Mowgli.

“Are they his devils? His devils! And I had thought to return and lay the blame upon this warlock!”

“That was well thought of, Huzrut; but before we make a trap we see first how big the game is that may fall into it. Now I thought no more than that a man had taken one of the Sahib's horses. I did not know that the design was to make me a thief before the Sahib, or my devils had haled thee here by the leg. It is not too late now.”

Mowgli looked inquiringly at Gisborne; but Abdul Gafur waddled hastily to the white mare, scrambled on her back and fled, the woodways crashing and echoing behind him.

“That was well done,” said Mowgli. “But he will fall again unless he holds by the mane.”

“Now it is time to tell me what these things mean,” said Gisborne a little sternly. “What is this talk of thy devils? How can men be driven up and down the rukh like cattle? Give answer.”

“Is the Sahib angry because I have saved him his money?”

“No, but there is trick-work in this that does not please me.”

“Very good. Now if I rose and stepped three paces into the rukh there is no one, not even the Sahib, could find me till I choose. As I would not willingly do this, so I would not willingly tell. Have patience a little, Sahib, and some day I will show thee everything, for, if thou wilt, some day we will drive the buck together. There is no devil-work in the matter at all. Only... I know the rukh as a man knows the cooking-place in his house.”

Mowgli was speaking as he would speak to an impatient child. Gisborne, puzzled, baffled, and a great deal annoyed, said nothing, but stared on the ground and thought. When he looked up the man of the woods had gone.

“It is not good,” said a level voice from the thicket, “for friends to be angry. Wait till the evening, Sahib, when the air cools.”

Left to himself thus, dropped as it were in the heart of the rukh, Gisborne swore, then laughed, remounted his pony, and rode on. He visited a ranger's hut, overlooked a couple of new plantations, left some orders as to the burning of a patch of dry grass, and set out for a camping-ground of his own choice, a pile of splintered rocks roughly roofed over with branches and leaves, not far from the banks of the Kanye stream. It was twilight when he came in sight of his resting-place, and the rukh was waking to the hushed ravenous life of the night.

A campfire flickered on the knoll, and there was the smell of a very goo dinner in the wind.

“Um,” said Gisborne, “that's better than cold meat at any rate. Now the only man who'd be likely to be here'd be Muller, and, officially, he ought to be looking over the Changamanga rukh. I suppose that's why he's on my ground.”

The gigantic German who was the head of the Woods and Forests of all India, Head Ranger from Burma to Bombay, had a habit of flitting bat-like without warning from one place to another, and turning up exactly where he was least looked for. His theory was that sudden visitations, the discovery of shortcomings and a word-of-mouth upbraiding of a subordinate were infinitely better than the slow processes of correspondence, which might end in a written and official reprimand—a thing in after years to be counted against a Forest Officer's record. As he explained it: “If I only talk to my boys like a Dutch uncle, dey say, ‘It was only dot damned old Muller,’ and dey do better next dime. But if my fat-head clerk he write and say dot Muller der Inspecdor-General fail to onderstand and is much annoyed, first dot does no goot because I am not dere, and, second, der fool dot comes aft