The Plague Dogs (46 page)

"Oh, thank goodness! A dream! I'm sorry, Rowf—I suppose it's the hunger. It's more than three days now since we've eaten anything—not a beetle, not a caterpillar—"

"I know that as well as you do. Well, then. Three days, four days. Go to sleep. I deserve it even if you don't."

"I'd eat anything—anything, Rowf; if only there was—"

The lethargy of starvation, returning, flowed over Snitter, pressing him down like a soft, heavy paw. He slept, dreamed of the dog shed and the tobacco man, and woke to find himself half under Rowf's shaggy flank.

"Lodo," murmured Snitter. "I thought—yes, it was Lodo—"

"The bitch, you mean—that spaniel-eared one? Always smelt of burning?"

"Yes, she—was telling me—"

"What?"

"She told us—d'you remember?—the whitecoats made her breathe some kind of smoke, same as the tobacco man does. They put a thing over her face so that she had to breathe this smoke."

"Well?"

"Well, she said she hated it to begin with, but then later on, when they didn't give her the smoke, she wanted it."

Rowf turned his head, biting at a flea in his rump.

"We'll be like that, won't we?" said Snitter. "When we aren't here any longer, when we're not hungry or cold, we'll miss it. We'll wish we were."

"When d'you mean?"

"When we're dead."

"When you're dead you're dead. Ask the tod."

From the misty gully above came a faint rattling of stones and the scramble of a sheep's hooves.

Two or three pebbles, pattering down the precipice, came to rest not far away.

"Flies on the window-pane," murmured Snitter drowsily. "There's nothing to be seen, but they can't get through it. Nothing's very strong, of course—much too strong for us. Like black milk."

"Black milk? Where?"

"It was in a lighted bowl, kept upside down on the ceiling. Very strong stuff. You couldn't look at it for long or it boiled. Well, after all, rain, you know—that just stays up there in the sky, I suppose until the men want it to come down. If rain can stay up there, why not milk? Or Kiff. I mean, Kiff's not dead, is he? There's nothing at all strange, really, about black milk."

"I never thought of it like that." For many hours past they had been dozing and waking, sheltered from the wind at the foot of the Dow Crag. Below them, beyond the tumbled screes, lay the narrow expanse of Goat's Water, treeless, grassless, weedless—cold water and stones.

After the dog Wag had left them, two days before, they had wandered aimlessly southward, up over Grey Crag, down into Boulder Valley and so round, below the eastern precipices of the Old Man, into this dreary vale, remote and sequestered, an open mouthful of tooth-stumps, a stone-grey muzzle asleep by a dead fire on a winter's night: a place where appetite and energy—almost life itself—seemed futile, as though among the craters of the moon. Only the clouds and gulls, far overhead, maintained their effortless sailing; a moving sky above a still land.

"The tobacco man will be round," said Snitter, looking about him in the gathering dusk.

"Not here."

"No, but it's like that here, too, isn't it? Whatever we were there for—you know, in the tobacco man's shed—it was nothing to do with us—with dogs—no good to dogs. And this—whatever it's for—

this is nothing to do with us, either."

"We've been here before, Snitter, do you know that? With the tod. I chased the yow until it fell over and then we came down here and ate it—remember?"

"It seems a long time ago. The tod won't come back now."

"Snitter, there's a cave up there, among those boulders. I remember seeing it that night. We'll lie up there for now and find a sheep tomorrow. I'll kill it somehow."

During the night it thawed, as the sheep-dog had said it would, and by first light almost all the snow had gone. Rowf, however, woke surly and listless, biting at his staring ribs and falling asleep again, head on paws. There was not a sheep to be seen and he could not be persuaded to hunt for one.

During the afternoon Snitter limped down to the water,:' drank and returned.

He woke Rowf and together they went to look for the remains of the sheep which they had driven over the precipice, but found only wool and bones f at the foot of a sheer gully. They returned to the cave? and passed a third night without food. r It was on the following afternoon that Snitter suffered I the dream of the girl in the car.

"Nothing strange about it really," repeated Snitter in the solitude. "Nothing strange about black milk. Dare I say men might make black bread, or even black sheep if they wanted, come to that. They sometimes make black clouds when they want it to rain—I've seen them." Then, with sudden determination, "Rowf, I'm going to look for the tod, and if I can't find him, I'm going down to some farm or other and give myself up to the men. Anything's better than starving to death—"

Rowf battered and hollow as an old kettle discarded among the stones, grinned up at him from his refuge of despair.

"Your dignity! 'I hope we die alone!' "

"Oh, Rowf—"

"Go on, then, off you go! I'm damned if I'm going to be taken back to the whitecoats' tank. I'd rather starve—it'll be less trouble. And as for finding the tod, I tell you, Snitter, if you can do that, I'll make some food; drop down to us off the tops. There you are, that's a bargain. One's as likely as the other."

'Now the snow's gone the men may have brought some sheep back up here. Couldn't we try to find one?"

Without replying, Rowf put his head back on his paws and shut his eyes.

Snitter, wandering away through the stones and loose shale, came down to the northern end of Goat's Water splashed through the infall turbid with melted snow. little tarn lay still, unruffled by any wind, grey water effecting clouds and grey gulls sailing.

I suppose there are fish in there, thought Snitter, like the ones in the river where my master used to take me for if walks: and I suppose they think they can swim anywhere they like. The gulls, too—

those gulls up there must think they've decided to glide round and round. I wonder whether I've really decided of my own accord to go this way? K I have, I'm sure I don't know why. I remember hearing that dogs often go away by themselves to die. Jimjam said he wanted to go away but of course he couldn't get out of the pen, poor chap.

He was climbing the south-west slope of Brim Fell and, as he came to the lower level of the mist, paused a moment before heading on into the thick mirk above. The sighing, moving air, the gloom and solitude about him appeared more sinister and hostile than ever before. Both the sky above and the tarn below were hidden and now—or so it seemed—even his ears had begun to deceive him, for from somewhere below and beyond—somewhere distant—he thought he could hear the barking of dogs. Urgent and excited they sounded, as though the tobacco man had come among them with his pails.

That must be it, thought Snitter. I keep on remembering feeding-time—not surprising—and now it even sounds real. Of course it isn't really, any more than my poor master when I see him. I wonder where I'm going? And—and who— what sort of man is this coming? I don't like the smell of him, somehow.

He was thick in the mist now, high up on the starved, sheep-cropped turf of Brim Fell. He could hear a soft, rhythmic thud-thud-thud of approaching boots, sounds of creaking leather and steady breathing. Quickly he hid himself, crouching flat in a peat-rift as a dark, burly young man came looming through the mist, striding purposefully towards him—a young man all hung about with jolting tubes on straps and discs of glass and leather; with a long, narrow bag on his back, a scarf round his neck and a coloured paper clutched in the fingers of one hand. For one fleeting moment he turned his head in Snitter's direction and Snitter, though he could not tell why, cowered close and let him go past.

As he remained lying still, with closed eyes, the distant dog-sounds from below seemed muted, in his ears, to a kind of lullaby.

"You were disturbed inside your head,

And thought to clean the cobwebs out.

There will be none when you are dead—

The skull untroubled, have no doubt.

And you will learn to do without

This flesh and blood quotidian:

Refined to nothing, bleached to nowt,

Need seek no more your vanished man."

"I suppose not," said Snitter, torpid with starvation and half-asleep on the spongey peat. "One ought to try not to mind too much, I suppose. We're only dogs, and it's a bad world for animals, as Rowf's always saying. After all—why, it's getting positively crowded up here! Who's this coming now?

Oh, no—it can't—it can't be—"

The mist swirled, the wet grass tugged in the wind, and; now Snitter felt sure that he must indeed be mad and, as so often in the past, the victim of delusion, for up through the mist and wind came the tod. Limping it was, its breath coming in great, steaming gasps, brush trailing, eyes staring, belly caked with mud. Its teeth were bared above and below its lolling tongue and it turned its head this way and that, continually listening and sniffing the air.

As Snitter jumped up, it snapped at him and made as if to run away, but he had no difficulty in overtaking.

"Tod! Tod! It's me, it's Snitter! Tod, don't you know trae?" The tod halted, staring round at him with a kind of w Slow, glazed recognition. It reeked of a deadly fear. j "Oh, ay, it's th' wee fella. Ye'd best boogger off sharp, l'hinny, unless ye fancy th' Dark wi' me." As he made no answer it added more urgently, "Go on, kidder, haclda-'y!"

It sank down on the turf, panting convulsively, rubbing 'its spattered mask on the grass.

"Tod, what—oh, what is it? What's happened?"

"Can ye not hear them bastards ahint? A puff o' wind fmto yon mist an' ye'll sharp see them forbye; ay, an' they'll; e ye. Shift yersel', marrer, haddaway hyem!"

"Tod, come back with me! Come on, run! Rowf's lown there—whatever it is, we'll save you!

Quickly, tod!" The many-mouthed barking and yelping broke out again, louder and nearer, and now could be heard also a man's voice hollering and other, more distant human voices answering from further off. The tod grinned mirthlessly.

"Can ye not hear what the bastards is yammerin' on aboot, one to t'other—'Ah'll have first bite at his belly'? Ah've browt them siven mile, but Ah'll niwer lose them noo. Ah thowt last neet th' frost wad cum doon an' they'd not be oot th' morn. Ah wez wrong. A tod only hez to be wrong once, ye knaw."

"Oh, tod, tod! There must be something we can do—"

"Divven't fash yersel', hinny! Ah ken weel where Ah'm goin'. It's akward eneuf noo, but there'll be n« akward-ness i' th' Dark. It's not th' Dark that frightens me, it's their rivin', bloody teeth. Have ye niwer hord say, 'Ne deeth over bad fer a tod'? Mebbies it'll soon be done. Ah'm not whinjin'—Ah'd rather go te th' Dark like a tod than in yon whitecoat dump o' yours. Tell th' big fella taa-taa from me.

He wez a grand lad—reel mazer wi' yows, tell him."

It was gone like smoke into the mist, down over the edge, down the northwestern slope of Brim Fell, making for Tarn Head Moss and Blake Rigg Crag beyond. Snitter ran after it a few yards, then pulled up and lay shivering in the gloom. Some overwhelming thing was taking place—something old and dreadful, something which he remembered to have happened before in this very spot. About him was flowing a rank, feral scent, savage, and blood-seeking. Big, shadowy creatures were approaching, voracious and intent, running swiftly up out of the mist, lemon and white, black and tawny, noses to ground, sterns feathering, long ears swinging as they came loping over the top; some running mute, others giving tongue in fierce excitement.

Hounds they were, great hounds shouldering past him where he crouched on the verge of the steep, heedless of him, paying him no attention in the heat and concentration of their pursuit. Behind them, on foot, ran the lean-faced huntsman, red-coated, horn clutched in one hand, almost spent with the long chase but still finding voice to urge them on. Over the edge they went, tumbling and jostling, each eager for his share, and were lost to view among the boulders. Yet still from a thousand feet."below rose up their excited notes, one under another like the sound of a river in flood upon the unseen valley floor. Snitter pattered in their wake. The wet turf and stones re their clean, sharp smell—

the smell of hunting, meat-gating animals in perfect health. It was as though a band of gods had swept past him in fulfilment of their appointed function of pursuit and death; a ghastly, apocalyptic duty forever carried out in some timeless region. Wsyond, now—on this occasion—superimposed and enacted upon the bare hillside where he found himself, as in a dream, running alone through the clouds of swirling vapour.

Suddenly the wind freshened, carrying a far-off smell of seaweed, the heavy-sweet odour of cows in a shed and, lid atop of these, an instant's scent of the tod. The curtain mist broke up into streamers eddying away across the l, and now he could see clearly enough all that lay Blow him—

could see the peat-hags and moss above sathwaite Tarn, the sullen, black stream winding through aem, the mouth of the cavern beyond; and the tod ranging, running, staggering over the moss, its brush a pping weight dragged behind it. After it came the Minds, spread out, clamouring in frenzy to crush, con-ide and quell, to dust the varmint and be done. Even he watched, the foremost hound, on the very verge the beck, reached the tod's shoulder and, turning quickly inward, butted and rolled it over on the stones. He shut his eyes then, and scrabbled head-downward the turf, for he did not want to see the pack close in, did not want to see the tod leaping, snapping and biting, outnumbered thirty to one, the blood spurting, the tearing, rashing and worrying, the huntsman whipping his way into the turmoil and the tod's body snatched, lifted high id knife-hacked for brush and mask before being tossed back—oh, so merrily—among the baying, tussling foxhounds.

Westcott pressed on up the northern ridge of Brim Fell. The mist was moderately thick, but he had known it rse and furthermore he had an intuitive feeling, born of wide experience of Lakeland weather, that it was likely to lift, possibly very soon and certainly before sunset. He came to the cairn on the summit, sat down on it and, having examined his map, took a compass bearing into the mist of 225