The Plague Dogs (21 page)

—a ready-made two-piece suit, with a free fitting thrown in. You do the photographs—the lucky fanner shaking hands with me over the body and all that, eh? What you're thinking, eh?"

"Well, I should think it's worth it from your point of view, Mr. Ephraim. From ours, it's a whale of an idea. There's one or two details we'd have to work out, of course—"

"Of course, of course. But we're wanting to move fast, eh? The dog might stop raiding or maybe someone else shoots it before we do—you know?" (Mr. Ephraim waved his hands expressively.) "You get something in the paper Wednesday, our Mr. Emmer goes round the farms Thursday, gets it all set up for Saturday—I'll be out there myself, of course—"

"Fine, Mr. Ephraim, fine. Now look, can you just come back for a minute to the office? Then we can get the thing roughed out, and young Bob Castlerigg can get to work on a piece—you'll see it before publication, of course—"

Friday the 5th November

"Where did you say we were going, tod?" Snitter shivered in the chilly evening rain and sniffed at the sheep-rank turf, where even now a few late tormentils and louseworts were in bloom. They were crossing Dunnerdale.

"Ower to Eshd'l. Bootterilket groond—ay. Noo whisht a bit! Haald on!" The tod looked one way and the other, north to the Leeds mountain hut at Dale Head and south to Hinnin House and the dark, coniferous plantation rising up the fell behind it. Other than cows, no living creature was in sight.

The tod slipped across the road in front of the gate and cattle-grid and Rowf and Snitter followed him along the line of a dry stone wall which led them across the pasture and down to Duddon tumbling noisily over its stones among the ash trees. On the bank, Rowf checked.

"Water? Look, I told you—"

"Haddaway! There's mair stones than watter. In w' goin' fer a duck!"

The tod slid almost daintily into the edge of the mam channel, swam the few yards across and ran over white stones to the peaty bank on the farther side.

"Oh, look!" said Snitter suddenly, "a fish—a big one!

"Ay, sea troot. It's upstream they go about noo."

Snitter, fascinated, watched the iridescent trout as it almost broke surface in a shallow place before vanishing into deeper water.

"D'you ever eat fish, tod?"

"Ay, Ah've had a few deed 'uns as th' folks has thrown oot."

"Dead? Where d'you find them?"

"Middens—dustbins. Are ye comin'?"

Rowf set his teeth, hit the water with a splash and was out on the further bank. Snitter followed.

"My head's an umbrella, you know," said Snitter. It opens and shuts all right— it's open now, actually—-er—forbye there's a rib broken. The water runs from front to back and trickles down inside the crack."

"Mind yer a fond boogger, ye, an' not ower strang neether, but yer ne fyeul."

. "Thanks, tod," said Snitter. "I really appreciate that.”

They skirted the edge of the plantation along the foot of Castle How and turned westward again, leaving Black Hall to the north.

"I'm sorry," said Snitter three quarters of a mile later, as they reached the crest of the steep slope. "I'm not built for this, you know. The dilapidation—no, the degradation—I mean the destination

—oh, dear." He sat down and looked about him in the failing light. "Wherever have we got to?"

"Hard Knott. Bootterilket's doon bye. Yon's Eshd'I, ye knaw."

"What happens now?" asked Rowf.

"Hang on a bit till neet-time, then we can run doon th fell an' take th' forst yow ye fancies. By, yer a grrand provider." The tod looked at Rowf admiringly. "Ah've getten a full belly runnin' wi' thoo."

"Going to make us wait, are you?" said Snitter, sitting back on his haunches in a wet brush of ling. "You'd better sing us a song, tod, to pass the time. Do tods have songs?"

"Ay, we do, noo an' agen. Ay, Ah mind our aald wife made up a bonny 'un, lang time back."

"Your dam? Did she? What's it called?"

The tod made no reply. Snitter recalled its confusion when he had asked its name and hastily went on, "A bonny 'un?"

"Ay, it wez a canny bit song. She wad sing it on shiny neets."

"Well, never mind shiny neet," said Snitter. "Can ye not remember noo? Come on. Rowf, you ask him."

"Oh, may as well," said Rowf. "Can you smell that yow down there? I'll tear it, you see if I don't."

"Ay, it'll be varry soon felled an' fettled when us gets at it. Just tappy lappy doon th' bankside an'

grab it b' th' slack o' th' neck."

"Well, sing up, then, tod," said Rowf. "If it's going to be that easy, you've got something to sing about."

The tod paused a while, rolling on its back and scratching on a patch of stones. Snitter waited patiently, the rain running down his nose from the trenched gash in his head. He could be no wetter. A car churned slowly up the pass and as its sidelights topped Fat Betty Stone and it started to creep away downhill in low gear, the tod began. "A hill tod it wor layin' Atop a roondy crag. An' niff o' powltry doon belaa Fair made its whiskers wag. Th' farmer's canny lad, ye ken; Geese fast i' th' hemmel, ducks i' th' pen. Then fyeul shuts henhoose less one hen! Begox, yon tod wez jumpin'!"

"Terrific!" said Rowf.

"Go on!" The tod obliged.

"Next neet th' farmer's woman, By, ye shud hear hor bubble! 'A h'll skite th' lugs off yonder tod Thai's puttin' us te trouble!' She's roond th' stackyard i' th' rain, She looks i' th' barn an' looks again. She nivver stopped th' back-end drain! Hey-up, yon tod wez jumpin'!"

Snitter yapped happily and after a few moments the tod launched into the final spasm.

"Th' light's gan oot i' th' farmhoose. It's gey an' quiet it seems. The aald chep's ftat-oot snotterin'

An' dreamin' bonny dreams. An' when yon sun comes up agin, There's hank o' feathers clogged to th'

whin, But nowt to show where tod got in! By, mind, th' gaffer's jumpin'.'

"There's mist o' th' tops te hide ye. There's bracken thick o' th' fell. Streams where th' hoonds won't track ye. Ye've lugs, me tod, an' smell. There's shiny neets ye'll lowp and lark And randy run te th'

vixen's bark. Ca' canny, else yer fer th' Dark—Yon fettles aall yer jumpin'!"

"What became of your mother, tod?" asked Snitter. "Hoonds," replied the tod indifferently, and began licking one paw.

As night shut down the rain slackened, though the salty wind persisted, carrying their scent away eastward. From far out at sea, beyond Eskdale, the west yet glimmered with some streaks of day.

Nothing could now be seen in the deep cleft below, but from the sharp-eared and keen—scented three the blackness concealed no movement of the Bootterilket Herdwicks among the rustling bracken below.

Two yows together were moving slowly down into the bottom, while a third lagged further and further behind. At a final glance from the tod the hunting pack spread out and, with practised smoothness, began their encircling descent.

"—playin' bluidy 'ell," said Robert Lindsay firmly, while carefully keeping his voice below the level of the conversation in the bar. "They are that—and theer's not a doubt they're dogs, 'Arry—cann't be nowt else. Livin' systematically off o' sheep."

"Oh, ay?" Old Tyson drew on his pipe and looked down, swilling the remaining third of his pint round and round the pot.

In response to all hints and leads he had so far remained uncommunicative.

Robert, with reluctance, decided that, much as he disliked asking direct questions, there was evidently going to be no alternative to taking the bull by the horns.

"Weel, 'Arry, it were joost as bank chap i' Broughton were sayin' as tha'd told Gerald Gray at Manor soomthing about dogs gettin' out o' research place, like."

"Oh, ay?"

"Well, it's serious matter, 'Arry, tha knaws, is sheep-killing, an' a bluidy lot o' woorry for thim as has sheep ont' fell. It is that. Happen Gerald were wrong—"

Tyson re-lit his pipe, took a pull at his pint and again gazed reflectively into the almost empty pot. Robert, whose sympathetic imagination knew intuitively just how far to push his man, waited in silence, eyes fixed on the tiled floor. Among his many gifts was that of sitting still and saying nothing without seeming in the least put out or causing any embarrassment.

"Theer's plenty Ah could saay gin Ah were stoock int' box," said Tyson at last. "Ah'm noan dodgin' owt, Bob, tha knaws. But Director oop at Lawson says to saay nowt, an' Ah divven't want to lose job, tha knaws. It's reet enoof job, is that, an' suits me joost now."

"Ay, it's reet good job, 'Arry; it is that. Ye'd not be wanting any trooble."

There was another pause.

"Theer's organised hunt tomorrow, tha knaws," said Robert. "Got oop by tailor chap in Kendal, for advertisement like. Ah'll be gooin' along, joost for a bit o' sport."

"Oh, ay?" said Tyson.

Silence returned. Robert finished his light ale.

"Well, this wayn't do, bidin' sooppin1 ale, Ah'll joost have to be gettin' along now," he said, rising briskly to his feet with a clatter of nailed boots on the tiles. "Ah've still a bit to do milkin' cows, owd lad. 'Appen if tha had lost dog out o' yon plaace, tha'd knaw it'd not be woon to be chasin' sheep; so no bother, like."

He nodded and made to move towards the door, from beyond which sounded an intermittent popping and banging as the young of Coniston celebrated the debacle of Guy Fawkes. At the last moment Tyson touched his sleeve.

"Woon on 'em were fair devil of a beea'st," he murmured into his beer, and immediately, without putting on his glasses, began studying the evening paper upside down.

Saturday the 6th November

"It's too much for me," said Snitter. "Haddaway hyem, tod. And you, Rowf. I'll have to follow you back later."

It was perhaps an hour before first light. The night's hunt along the steep, western slopes of Hard Knott had proved the longest and most exhausting they had yet undertaken. Without the tod's uncanny ability to tell which way the quarry was likely to have fled, they would certainly have lost it in the dark and been obliged to begin the whole hard task once more. Rowf, kicked and battered yet again before the death, had broken up the kill ferociously, his own blood mingling with the sheep's as he gnawed hoof, gristle, bone and sinew in his ravenous hunger. The splinters of broken bone, pricking Snitter's belly as he lay down to sleep, recalled to him the guinea-pigs' tiny remains in the ashes of the furnace-chamber.

Waking in the night with a vague sense of menace and danger, he had found himself so chilled, stiff and lame that he began to doubt whether he would be able to manage the return to Brown Haw with the others. He felt strange.

His head was full of a far-off ringing sound that seemed to come between his hearing and the wind and he had, looking about him, a renewed sense of detachment and unreality—symptoms which he had come to know all too well. For a time he limped up and down while the others slept on, then lay down again and dreamed of an enormous, explosive crash, of disintegration and terror and of falling endlessly between the sheer walls of a putrescent cleft smelling of disinfectant and tobacco. Starting up, he felt his ear nipped between pointed teeth and found the tod beside him, "Yer weel woke up oot of that, kidder."

"Oh—a dream! You didn't hear—no, of course not." Snitter struggled up. "Was I making a noise?"

"Ne kiddin'. Ye wor rollin' about an' shootin' yer heed off. Fit te be heard a mile, hinny."

"I'm sorry. I'll have to get some feathers for my head, won't I? It's ringing like a white bell-car; no wonder it feels noisy." Confused, he hopped a few yards on three legs, peed against a stunted Rowan and came back. The tod lay watching him with an air of detached appraisal.

"Hoo ye goin' on? Ye heven't tuk bad?" Before Snitter could reply it added, "Ah'll caall up th'

big feller noo. We'll hev te be goin'."

"Already?"

"Ay, time w' wor away hyem."

"Which way?"

"Up ower th' top of th' clough there."

"I hope I can do it."

"Ye'll hev te tek it canny, lad. Yer far ower tired fer runnin' aboot, so th' sharper we're off, th'

forther we can get afore th' leet comes."

The rain had ceased. Rowf, still half-asleep, dragged the sheep's fore-leg out of the sticky welter and carried it as they set off, climbing steeply up the bed of the gill and so out on to Harter Fell's north shoulder. It was here that Snitter began to fall behind and finally lay down. The others came back to him.

"It's too much for me," gasped Snitter. "I'll have to follow you home later. I feel so strange, Rowf. My feet are cold."

Rowf put down the fore-leg and sniffed him over. "You're all right—it's only in your head, you know."

"I know that—it's looking out of it that's so difficult. I'm not at all sure it's me inside, either."

Snitter kicked gingerly, testing one back leg. "Is it—is it—glass or what?" He stood up and immediately fell down again. "My leg's over on the other side of—of the—"

Rowf sniffed again. "Your leg's all right—"

"I know it is, but it's over there."

"That's the sheep's leg, you fool."

"That's not what I mean," said Snitter miserably. "I can't—what is it? Talk—to my leg."

"Let's away, an' give ower yammerin'! If wor still on th' fell when th' sun's up, wor knacked.

Them farmers—-if they clap their eyes on us—"

"Oh, do leave me and get on!" cried Snitter desperately. "Let me alone! I'll be back before mid-day. No one's going to see me—"

"See ye a naff-mile off in a mist, hinny—ye an' yer magpie's jacket—" Enveloped in the mist pouring from his own head, clung to by impalpable flies, enclosed within a jolting, invisible helmet of chicken wire, Snitter floated away, watching the tod's mask recede and fade upstream through brown peat-water flowing insensibly, yet plain to be seen, across his flank. When he awoke, the sun, from a clear sky, was shining warm into his head. A ladybird was clambering laboriously among the bents close against his muzzle, and he watched it without moving. Suddenly, beyond and between the grass stalks, a buzzard sailed into sight, low against the blue, and hung, wings fluttering. Snitter leapt up and the buzzard slid away.