Red dog

themselves at the shore, threshing and squattering through the shoal water, till the face of the Waingunga was all white and torn, and the great ripples went from side to side, like bow-waves from a boat. Mowgli followed the rush, stabbing and slicing as the dholes, huddled together, rushed up the river-beach in one wave.
Then the long fight began, heaving and straining and splitting and scattering and narrowing and broadening along the red, wet sands, and over and between the tangled tree-roots, and through and among the brushes, and in and out of the grass clumps; for even now the dholes were two to one. But they met wolves fighting for all that made the Pack, and not only the short, high, deep-chested, white-tusked hunters of the Pack, but the anxious-eyed lahinis-the she-wolves of the lair, as the saying is-fighting for their litters, with here and there a yearling wolf, his first coat still half woolly, tugging and grappling by their sides. A wolf, you must know, flies at the throat or snaps at the flank, while a dhole, by preference, bites at the belly; so when the dholes were struggling out of the water and had to raise their heads, the odds were with the wolves. On dry land the wolves suffered; but in the water or ashore, Mowgli`s knife came and went without ceasing. The Four had worried their way to his side. Gray Brother, crouched between the boy`s knees, was protecting his stomach, while the others guarded his back and either side, or stood over him when the shock of a leaping, yelling dhole who had thrown himself full on the steady blade, bore him down. For the rest, it was one tangled confusion-a locked and swaying mob that moved from right to left and from left to right along the bank; and also ground round and round slowly on its own center. Here would be a heaving mound, like a water-blister in a whirlpool, which would break like a water-blister, and throw up four or five mangled dogs, each striving to get back to the center; here would be a single wolf borne down by two or three dholes, laboriously dragging them forward, and sinking the while; here a yearling cub would be held up by the pressure round him, though he had been killed early, while his mother, crazed with dumb rage, rolled over and over, snapping, and passing on; and in the middle of the thickest press, perhaps, one wolf and one dhole, forgetting everything else, would be manœuvering for first hold till they were whirled away by a rush of furious fighters. Once Mowgli passed Akela, a dhole on either flank, and his all but toothless jaws closed over the loins of a third; and once he saw Phao, his teeth set in the throat of a dhole, tugging the unwilling beast forward till the yearlings could finish him. But the bulk of the fight was blind flurry and smother in the dark; hit, trip, and tumble, yelp, groan, and worry-worry-worry, round him and behind him and above him. As the night wore on, the quick, giddy-go-round motion increased. The dholes were cowed and afraid to attack the stronger wolves, but did not yet dare to run away. Mowgli felt that the end was coming soon, and contented himself with striking merely to cripple. The yearlings were growing bolder; there was time now and again to breathe, and pass a word to a friend, and the mere flicker of the knife would sometimes turn a dog aside.
“The meat is very near the bone,” Gray Brother yelled. He was bleeding from a score of flesh-wounds.
“But the bone is yet to be cracked,” said Mowgli. “Eowawa! Thus do we do in the Jungle!” The red blade ran like a flame along the side of a dhole whose hind-quarters were hidden by the weight of a clinging wolf.
“My kill!” snorted the wolf through his wrinkled nostrils. “Leave him to me.”
“Is thy stomach still empty, Outlier?” said Mowgli. Won-tolla was fearfully punished, but his grip had paralyzed the dhole, who could not turn round and reach him.
“By the Bull that bought me,” said Mowgli, with a bitter laugh, “it is the tailless one!” And indeed it was the big bay-colored leader.
“It is not wise to kill cubs and lahinis,” Mowgli went on, philosophically, wiping the blood out of his eyes, “unless one has also killed the Outlier; and it is in my stomach that this Won-tolla kills thee.”
A dhole leaped to his leader`s aid; but before his teeth had found Won-tolla`s flank, Mowgli`s knife was in his throat, and Gray Brother took what was left.
“And thus do we do in the Jungle,” said Mowgli.
Won-tolla said not a word, only his jaws were closing and closing on the backbone as his life ebbed. The dhole shuddered, his head dropped, and he lay still, and Won-tolla dropped above him.
“Huh! The Blood Debt is paid,” said Mowgli. “Sing the song, Won-tolla.”
“He hunts no more,” said Gray Brother; “and Akela, too, is silent this long time.”
“The bone is cracked!” thundered Phao, son of Phaona. “They go! Kill, kill out, O hunters of the Free People!”
Dhole after dhole was slinking away from those dark and bloody sands to the river, to the thick Jungle, up-stream or down-stream as he saw the road clear.
“The debt! The debt!” shouted Mowgli. “Pay the debt! They have slain the Lone Wolf! Let not a dog go!”
He was flying to the river, knife in hand, to check any dhole who dared to take water, when, from under a mound of nine dead, rose Akela`s red head and fore-quarters, and Mowgli dropped on his knees beside the Lone Wolf.
“Said I not it would be my last fight?” Akela panted. “It is good hunting. And thou, Little Brother?”
“I live, having killed many.”
“Even so. I die, and I would-I would die by thee, Little Brother.”
Mowgli took the terrible scarred head on his knees, and put his arms round the torn neck.
“It is long since the old days of Shere Khan, and a Man-cub that rolled naked in the dust.”
“Nay, nay, I am a wolf. I am of one skin with the Free People,” Mowgli cried. “It is no will of mine that I am a man.”
“Thou art a man, Little Brother, wolfling of my watching. Thou art a man, or else the Pack had fled before the dhole. My life I owe to thee, and to-day thou hast saved the Pack even as once I saved thee. Hast thou forgotten? All debts are paid now. Go to thine own people. I tell thee again, eye of my eye, this hunting is ended. Go to thine own people.”
“I will never go. I will hunt alone in the Jungle. I have said it.”
“After the summer come the Rains, and after the Rains comes the spring. Go back before thou art driven.”
“Who will drive me?”
“Mowgli will drive Mowgli. Go back to thy people. Go to Man.”
“When Mowgli drives Mowgli I will go,” Mowgli answered.
“There is no more to say,” said Akela. “Little Brother, canst thou raise me to my feet? I also was a leader of the Free People.”
Very carefully and gently Mowgli lifted the bodies aside, and raised Akela to his feet, both arms round him, and the Lone Wolf drew a long breath, and began the Death Song that a leader of the Pack should sing when he dies. It gathered strength as he went on, lifting and lifting, and ringing far across the river, till it came to the last “Good hunting!” and Akela shook himself clear of Mowgli for an instant, and, leaping into the air, fell backward dead upon his last and most terrible kill.
Mowgli sat with the head on his knees, careless of anything else, while the remnant of the flying dholes were being overtaken and run down by the merciless lahinis. Little by little the cries died away, and the wolves returned limping, as their wounds stiffened, to take stock of the losses. Fifteen of the Pack, as well as half a dozen lahinis, lay dead by the river, and of the others not one was unmarked. And Mowgli sat through it all till the cold daybreak, when Phao`s wet, red muzzle was dropped in his hand, and Mowgli drew back to show the gaunt body of Akela.
“Good hunting!” said Phao, as though Akela were still alive, and then over his bitten shoulder to the others: “Howl, dogs! A Wolf has died to-night!”
But of all the Pack of two hundred fighting dholes, whose boast was that all Jungles were their Jungle, and that no living thing could stand before them, not one returned to the Dekkan to carry that word.