"I know," answered Sa'-zada, "you are neither Bagh the Tiger, nor Chita the Leopard."
"I should say not," answered Pardus. "Chita is long of leg and slim of gut—a chaser of Rabbits, and of the build of an Afghan Hound. With one crunch of my jaws—Waugh! Why, I could break his neck."
"What's the difference, anyway," objected Magh, "whether you are a Leopard or Panther—you all belong to the family of Throat Cutters? But what bothers me is that one is black, one is yellow, and one is white; now, in my family, we are all of one shade."
"A very dirty color, too," sneered Pardus. "Waugh-hough! no color at all—just dirt!"
"That is so that murderers like you cannot see me to eat me," answered Magh. "If I am on the ground, am I not the color of the ground? And when I am curled up on the limb of a tree am I not like a knot on the tree trunk? That is to keep me safe from you and Python."
"That may be so," answered Pardus, "but I, who hunt in the early night, find this black coat the very thing. Soft Paws! I have come so close to a Bullock, working up wind, of course, that one spring completed the Kill."
"Umph, umph!" grunted Hathi, with eager interest. "All that appears reasonable; but, tell me, Brothers, why is Yellow Leopard so bright in his spots? And if your black coat serves you so well, how does the other, who is white, manage?"
"I speak only of myself," joined in Rufous, the Yellow Leopard. "True, I also hunt at night at times, but it's slow work; perhaps a long night watch by a water pool, and then only the kill of a Chinkara—a mouthful, and in the time of scarce food, why, one must stalk when the Grass-feeders are within range of one's eye. Who is there amongst you all, even Soor (Wild Boar), with his sharp Pig eyes, that can say, when I am crouched amongst the bushes with the sun making bright spots all over the jungle, 'There is Yellow Leopard, who is a slayer.' Not only is it good for the Kill, this coat of mine, but when the hunt is on from the other side, when I seek to keep clear of the Men-kind—by my caution! more than once, when it has been that way, have I slipped quietly through the young jungle, and left the Beaters running up against each other, asking which way went Bagh. I am no night prowler like Pardus, for often have I killed in the open."
"I know nothing of all this matter," declared White Leopard; "but had I been black like Pardus, or black-spotted like Rufous, I had died of a lean stomach in the white mountains from which I come. Why, there, on the hillside, every rock gleams white in the sunlight—not spotted, mind you, for there is no jungle such as Rufous speaks of; even the sand-hills are so white with the hot light that a mate of mine has been almost at my side before I knew it."
"White Leopard is from the Safed Kho Mountains, the White Range, in Afghanistan," said Sa'-zada for the information of the others.