Page 109 - Viva Real English 4 : Ebook

rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui often goes mad,

and then he forgets fear and runs through the forest biting everything in his way.
Even the tiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad.

‘Enter, then, and look,’ said Father Wolf stiffly, ‘but there is no food here.’

‘For a wolf, no,’ said Tabaqui, ‘but for me a dry bone is a good feast. Who am I, just
a jackal?’ He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck

with some meat on it, and started munching on it merrily.

Tabaqui sat still, relaxed after a good meal, and then he said spitefully: ‘Shere
Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt among these hills
for the next month, so he has told me.’

Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Wainganga River, twenty miles away.

‘He has no right!’ Father Wolf began angrily. ‘By the Law of the Jungle he has no
right to change his quarters without due warning. He will scare off every small
animal within ten miles, and I – I have to kill for my whole family.’

Mother Wolf said quietly, ‘He has been lame in one foot from his birth. That is why
he has only killed cattle. Now the villagers of the Wainganga are angry with him,
and he has come here to make our villagers angry. They will search the jungle for
him when he is far away, and we and our children must run when the grass is set
on fire.’

‘Shall I tell him,’ said Tabaqui, ‘he is welcome to hunt here?’

‘Out!’ snapped Father Wolf. ‘Out and hunt with your master. You have spoken
enough.’

‘I go,’ said Tabaqui quietly. ‘You can hear Shere Khan below in the thickets. I don’t

need to speak anything more.’

Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran down to a little river he
heard the dry, angry, singsong whine of a hungry tiger.

scuttled : ran with quick short steps lame : unable to walk well because of

spitefully : in a deliberately unkind an injury to the leg or foot
way snapped : spoke impatiently and
quarters : area angrily

due : proper thickets : bushes
singsong : rising and falling
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