If they did any
thinking about him at all, it was just to wonder why a calf with all the
evident marks of a nine-year-old should be so tall and weigh so much.
One can fancy that the great old wrinkled tusker that led the herd
peered at him now and then out of his little red eyes and wondered. A
herd-leader begins to think about future contestants for his place as
soon as he acquires the leadership. But _Hai!_ This little one would not
have his greatest strength for fifteen years.
It was a compact, medium-sized herd--vast males, mothers, old-maid
elephants, long-legged and ungainly, young males just learning their
strength and proud of it beyond words, and many calves. They ranged all
the way in size from the great leader, who stood ten feet and weighed
nearly nine thousand pounds, to little two-hundred-and-fifty-pound
babies that had been born that season. And before long the entire herd
began its cautious advance into the deeper hills.
The first night in the jungle--and Muztagh found it wonderful past all
dreams. The mist on his skin was the same cool joy he had expected.
There were sounds, too, that set his great muscles aquiver. He heard the
sound that the bamboos make--the little click-click of the stems in the
wind--the soft rustle and stir of many leafy tendrils entwining and
touching together, and the whisper of the wind over the jungle grass.
And he knew because it was his heritage, what every single one of these
sounds meant.
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