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These were the babies of the herd who were too small to ride safely on the backs of the big creatures. "Pooh! I'm bigger than you! I can swim like the other elephants!" said Keedah; a large elephant boy, as he looked up and saw Umboo on his mother's back. "I don't have to be carried across a river! I can swim by myself." "And so will my little boy, soon," said Mrs. Stumptail.
"Oh, no, not so very much," was the answer. "I am getting to be a big elephant now, and I do not mind a little hurt." "Ha! Then maybe you won't mind this!" suddenly cried Umboo with a laugh, as he quietly went up close to Keedah, and, butting him with his head, as a goat butts, knocked him down the bank into the river. "Oh! Ugh! Blurg! Splub!" cried Keedah, as he splattered about in the water.
"And, when I get a little bigger my mother is going to show me how to pull over, or knock down, a whole tree. But now I am hungry for roots." So Umboo kept on sniffing at the ground with his trunk. He was feeling quite hungry. Suddenly Keedah cried: "Ha! I have found some sweet roots! I am going to dig them up!"
The crashing noises sounded more plainly now, and the elephant smell became stronger. Then, as he burst his way through the bushes, Umboo saw the other elephants standing together in a little clearing in the jungle, and Umboo's mother seemed to be talking to them. "Ha!" suddenly cried Keedah, the larger elephant boy, as he saw the lost one. "Here he comes now! Here is Umboo!" Mrs.
"Now come with me, Umboo," said the man, and he led him away, out of the lumber yard. "Where are you going?" called Keedah, and some of the other boys. "I don't know," answered Umboo, in elephant talk, of course. "But I heard the man say something about making me do tricks in a circus."
Umboo was standing on the bank of the river, having just been in for a swim, when Batu, another elephant boy, came up to him. "Do you want to have some fun?" asked Batu. "Yes," answered Umboo. "What doing?" "Do you see Keedah over there, scraping his toe nails on a big stone?" asked Batu, for sometimes the toe nails of elephants grow too long and too rough, and have to be worn down.
"Our chance for what?" asked Umboo, speaking in elephant talk, of course, and which the Indian keepers did not always understand. "This is our chance to run away and go back to the jungle," went on Keedah. "When the men are not looking, after we have hauled out a few big logs, we will go away and hide. At night we can run off to the jungle."
"I am sorry to say that I can not," answered the rhinoceros, scratching his leg with his horn. "But why did you go away from the herd?" "I wanted to go out in the jungle and knock over a big tree," said Umboo. "Keedah, one of the boys in the herd, said it was easy to do when the ground was soft from the rain." "And did you do it?" asked the rhinoceros. "Yes," answered Umboo, "I did.
Keedah was doing this to his. "Yes, I see him," answered Umboo. "What about him?" "This," answered Batu, with a chuckling laugh that made him shake all over, for he was quite fat. "We will go up to him, as he stands with his back to the water, and while I am talking to him, and asking if his toe nails hurt, you can give him a push and knock him into the river." "Oh, yes, we'll do that.
There was water to drink and bathe in, and shade to rest in when the sun beat down too hot on the jungle. So the elephants liked it there. But one day when Umboo and Batu were thinking up another fun-trick to play on Keedah, suddenly the trumpet call of Tusker was heard again. "More danger!" exclaimed Umboo. "I wonder what it is this time?" "Let us go ask," suggested Batu.
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