"After a little I heard more shouting; then there was a rustling noise which I knew was the gallop of Yellow Leopard. He was calling as he ran, 'Ehow-Ehow-Hough, Bagheela!' just as we call to our Mates in the jungle.
"'A-Houk! here am I,' I cried, rushing out, thinking that we would soon be safe in the cool jungle again. And away we dashed. By the loss of a Kill! we had not gone far till almost in front of us we saw the fat Sahib and three others on their Horses full in our path.
"'Oh-ho, my Black Beauty!' he cried, when he saw me; 'now we'll wipe out the score.'"
"That's like the Men-kind," growled Raj Bagh, the Tiger; "they cage us and kill us, and if we so much as raise a claw in defence of our lives we are reviled, and they have a score against us to wipe out."
"AND AWAY WE DASHED."
"Yes," asserted Pardus, "and long holding in their hate, too. If we fail in a kill, do we go long hungered, turning from everything else until we have slain the one that has escaped us? But there was the fat Sahib, who had not gone back with the others, but was still searching to kill me, Black Panther. Surely that was not what they call shikar (sport), but a matter of hate he had laid up against me."
"You should have taken his beatings," declared Hathi, "even as I have, more times than there are tusks to your paws; phrut, phrut! it has always been that way with us Jungle Dwellers. When the Sahib beat us it is evil fortune if we do not let it rest at that. True, there was a Mahout once that went too far—but what am I saying? surely I am half asleep. It is your story, Bagheela—you were saying that the fat Sahib had killed you—I mean——"