Book Excerpt:
"Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the Pack.
Wilt thou still keep him, Mother?"
"Keep him!" she gasped. "He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry;
yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed one of my babes to one side already.
And that lame butcher would have killed him, and would have run off to the
Waingunga while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! Keep
him? Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still, little frog. O thou Mowgli,—for
Mowgli, the Frog, I will call thee,—the time will come when thou wilt hunt
Shere Khan as he has hunted thee!"
"But what will our Pack say?" said Father Wolf.
The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf may, when he
marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to; but as soon as his cubs are old
enough to stand on their feet he must bring them to the Pack Council, which is
generally held once a month at full moon, in order that the other wolves may
identify them. After that inspection the cubs are free to run where they please,
and until they have killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if a grown wolf
of the Pack kills one of them. The punishment is death where the murderer can
be found; and if you think for a minute you will see that this must be so.
Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and then on the night of the
Pack Meeting took them and Mowgli and Mother Wolf to the Council Rock—a
hilltop covered with stones and boulders where a hundred wolves could hide.
Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength and cunning,
lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of
every size and color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a buck
alone, to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The Lone Wolf
had led them for a year now. He had fallen twice into a wolf-trap in his youth,
and once he had been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and
customs of men.