"Not there," corrected Gidar; "that was another place. A Sahib who had come to the jungle seeking dwellers for such places as this, made the taking; but with him one might as well be caught first as last, for he knew more of our ways than we knew of his. Now let Coyote speak; I am tired."
"Does Coyote come from Burma, too, O Sa'-zada?" queried Magh.
"No, he's from Mooswa's country; from the great plains away in the far West. There is not much in The Book about Coyote; that is, not much that's good."
"I knew it," laughed Magh; "I've watched him there in his cage which is opposite mine, day after day, and I never saw a smile on his face."
"You should be put in the cage with Hyena," declared Coyote, "if you think an animal has got to grin all the time to be of fair nature. Or of what use are you, little pot-belly, or the whole of your tribe—Hanuman, Hooluk, or Chimpanzee—none of you worth the nuts you eat; and yet you're always grinning and chattering, and playing fool tricks about the cage. You're a fine one to judge your fellow creatures."
"Coyote just sits there and scratches Fleas, and growls, and snaps at his mate—he's a low-born sort of Wolf," continued Magh.
"He's not of our kind," declared Wolf; "it's all a lie."
"Never mind, never mind," cried Sa'-zada, "no doubt like all the rest of us he has his good and bad qualities."
"I was once starving," resumed Coyote. "You who have lived in a warm land where something is growing all the year round, know nothing of the hunger that comes when the fierce blizzard blots out everything, and there is only snow, snow, everywhere. Can one eat snow? It's all very fine for you with a paunch full of candy to sit there and prate about stealing, but if Wie-sak-ke-chack puts the hunger pains in one's stomach and the fat bacon—Ghurr-h-h! but the juice of it is sweet when one is near dead—puts the fat bacon behind log walls, what is one to do, eh? Does a fellow dig, dig, dig through earth so hard that he must bite it out with his teeth, dig deep under the log walls for sport as the Cubs play in the sunshine, or just to steal? Bah, you who have never known hunger know not of this thing. Why, once when the ground was frozen hard, and I was dying inch by inch, some fierce-toothed Animal inside me biting, biting—only of course it was the hunger chewing at my stomach—I dove fair through the window of a log shack to get at the meat inside. The glass cut me, to be sure, but that was nothing to the hunger pain that goes on, on, never ceasing until there is food, or one is dead.