"Baloo and Bagheera both echoed: "Leave Men alone."

Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf's side, smiled contentedly, and
said that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or
smell Man again.

"But what," said Akela, cocking one ear--"but what if men do not
leave thee alone, Little Brother?"

"We be FIVE," said Gray Brother, looking round at the company,
and snapping his jaws on the last word.

"We also might attend to that hunting," said Bagheera, with a
little switch-switch of his tail, looking at Baloo. "But why
think of men now, Akela?"

"For this reason," the Lone Wolf answered: "when that yellow
chief's hide was hung up on the rock, I went back along our
trail to the village, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and
lying down, to make a mixed trail in case one should follow us.
But when I had fouled the trail so that I myself hardly knew it
again, Mang, the Bat, came hawking between the trees, and hung
up above me. Said Mang, "The village of the Man-Pack, where they
cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet's nest."

"It was a big stone that I threw," chuckled Mowgli, who had often
amused himself by throwing ripe paw-paws into a hornet's
nest, and racing off to the nearest pool before the hornets
caught him.