The Plague Dogs Read online

"What end can there be to this?" said Rowf to Snitter. "To run about loose until they find us--how long?"

  "You said we'd become wild animals. That's what they do--live till they die."

  "Why ay. Run on till th' Dark comes doon. Are we goin' noo or div Ah go mesel'? Ah warr'nd ye'd best be sharp."

  Suddenly Rowf, with a heavy, plunging rush, blundered past the tod and out through the cave-mouth. They could hear him howling as he leapt over the further edge of the grassy platform outside and down to the marsh. Snitter turned quickly to the tod.

  "I'm going after him. Are you coming?" In the faint glimmer of light down the shaft he caught the tod's eye, wary and inscrutable, but it made no move. Snitter ran out alone.

  Tarn Head beck is wide in places and Rowf, in his unthinking flight, had reached the nearer bank by the edge of a pool in which the dark water, reflecting the moonlight, gave no sign of its depth. He checked and turned downstream. Snitter caught up with him in the act of springing down to a bed of stones on the further side.

  "Rowf--"

  Rowf jumped across and at once struck out southwards. Snitter, following, set off once more in pursuit, from time to time drawing breath to yelp. Rowf took no notice but held on his way, up and across the western slope of Dow Crag fell. Snitter saw him halt and pause, looking about him as though intending to go down to the reservoir road, which showed clear and white in the moonlight nine hundred feet below. Making a great effort, he ran on as fast as he could and once more came up with Rowf before he realized that he was there.

  "Rowf, listen--"

  Rowf turned sharply away without answering. At that moment the fern parted and the tod put out its head and shoulders, breath steaming in the cold air, tongue thrusting between small, sharp teeth. Rowf started and pulled up.

  "How did you get here?"

  "Roondaboot."

  "I said I could kill you."

  "Killin'? Ye daft boogger, it's ye that varnigh got killed. There's none luckier than ye. Ye saved yersel' an' me an' yon bit fella an' aall."

  "What do you mean?" asked Snitter quickly.

  "Lukka doon there by yon gate," said the tod, itself neither moving nor turning its head.

  Snitter looked down towards the high gate in the dry stone wall through which the reservoir road passed in descending to the lower fields and Long House Farm.

  "Noo lukka bit back there."

  "What d'you mean? I don't--" All of a sudden Snitter caught his breath and jumped quickly into the bracken. About a quarter of a mile above the gate, where the trod leading up from Tongue 'Us joins the reservoir road, a man, carrying a gun, was making towards the tarn. At his heels followed two black-and-white dogs.

  "Yon's yer farmer, hinny," whispered the tod to Rowf. "What ye bidin' for, then? He'll shoot ye sharp eneuf if ye fancy it."

  Rowf, motionless and in full view on the open hillside, stood watching as the man and his dogs, half a mile away, tramped steadily up the road towards the dam.

  "There aren't any men you can go back to, Rowf," said Snitter at length. "The tod's right--they'd only kill us now. We're wild animals."

  "By, mind, lucky ye moved se sharp. Ye just got oot in time."

  "Do you think the man knows we were living in the cave?" asked Snitter.

  "Mebbies. Ne tellin' what th' booggers knaws--but Ah'm keepin' aheed o' them. Ah saw him lowpin' up from doon belaa, so Ah comes back to tell ye. Yon fyeul" (it looked quickly at Rowf) "wez yammerin' on a gey lot o' daft taalk afore ye come oot o' yer bit sleep. Mebbies noo he'll do it ne mair." It turned to Rowf. "Ye best stick te killin' yows wi' me, hinny. Thoo's a grand chep for yon, an' Ah'll bide wi' ye an' aall. But howway wivvus noo, an' us hangin' aboot here, plain as yon moon i' th' sky!"

  Rowf followed the tod in a mazed silence, like a creature barely recovered from a trance. Snitter, for his part, was plunged in that strange state of mind which from time to time visits all creatures (but perhaps more frequently in childhood or puppyhood) when our immediate suroundings take on the aspect of a distant fantasy, we wonder who we are, the very sounds about us seem unreal and for a time, until the fit passes, it appears strange and arbitrary to find ourselves in this physical body, in this particular place, under this singular sky. The black peat, the heather, the crags, the glittering droplets, each a minute moon, bending the grasses through which Rowf was shouldering his way--these seemed, as he followed the tod, to be unfamiliar things he had never hitherto smelt--things which might even, perhaps, dissolve and vanish in an instant. Mournful they seemed, scentless; and the white moonlight, draining from them the colours of the day, made of them a residue, an empty world, where nothing could be certain and upon whose smells and other properties no more reliance could be placed than upon the figments of his own castaway, wounded brain.

  Dow Crag

  It was during this night that Snitter came to be possessed even more deeply by the delusion that the world where they now wandered--or at least the light in which it appeared to him--was both a product and the equivalent of his own mutilated mind.

  He was recalled to some sort of reality by stumbling over a piece of sharp-edged slate. Piles of dark slate were lying all about them and beneath his pads he could feel the tilting, sliding and pricking of the flat splinters.

  "Where are we?"

  "Walna Scar," replied the tod briefly.

  "Is this the Scar?" asked Snitter, thinking how odd it would be to find himself walking across his own head.

  "Why nair--th' Scar's up ahight, on th' top there. These ower here's slate quarries--but they've been idle mony a year noo. Ne men come nigh, 'cept only th' time o' th' shepherds' meet."

  "Where are we going?" asked Rowf, looking up, as they left the slate quarries and came out once more upon the open hillside, at the steep bluff of Torver High Common above them.

  The tod dropped its head quickly, snapped up a great stag-beetle under a clump of heather, and padded on, spitting out the fragments of the carapace.

  "There's mair than one place, ye knaw."

  "Well?"

  "Nearby an' a canny bit scramble."

  "Oh, he knows where he's going all right," said Snitter, anxious as always for the precarious relationship between Rowf and the tod. "He won't tell you where--he's too sharp for that--but if you go on asking he'll only think you don't trust him."

  "I trust him just as long as he goes on feeling I can fill his belly," said Rowf. "But if I broke my leg in a chicken-run--"

  "We're wild animals," answered Snitter. "What could he do for you then--die with you? You tell him what sense there'd be in that."

  For some time they had been trotting up a long, gradual slope, crossing one narrow rill after another and here and there startling a sheep under a crag. Suddenly, without another word, the tod lay down on a patch of smooth grass so unobtrusively that the two dogs had already gone a dozen yards before becoming aware that it was no longer with them. When they turned back it was watching Rowf expressionlessly, head on front paws and eyes unblinking.

  "Yer doin' canny, hinny." There was a hint of derision, barely masked. "Ah warr'nd ye'll be hunger'd b' now?"

  Snitter realized that the tod was covertly manipulating Rowf. If Rowf admitted that he was hungry, as he must be, the tod would then be able to seem to accede to a wish expressed by Rowf that they should stop, hunt and kill. Rowf would apparently have initiated the idea, and if anything went wrong with it the blame would lie with him and not with the tod. He forestalled Rowf's reply.

  "We're not particularly hungry," he answered. "If you are, why don't you say so?"

  "Mind, yon's bonny yows. D'ye see th' mark o' them?"

  You can't win, thought Snitter wearily. Anyway, why bother? Let's get on with it.

  "What mark?"

  "Sheep mark--shepherd's mark, hinny. Yon's hoo they tell th' yin from t'other. Did ye not knaw? Yon mark's nowt like t'other shepherd's yonder doon be Blake Rigg. D'ye twig on?"

  "He means we can kill more safely here because we haven't k
illed here before," said Snitter. "I don't know why he can't say so and be done with it."

  "By, yer a grrand bit feller," said the tod. "So Ah'll tell ye what Ah'll do. Ah'll just go halfers wi' ye ower th' fellin' of yonder yow."

  The kill took them over half an hour, the chosen Herdwick proving strong, cunning and finally courageous. When they had run it to a standstill it turned at bay under a crag, and the end proved a bitter business of flying hooves and snapping teeth. Snitter, first kicked in the shoulder and then painfully crushed when the sheep rolled on him, was glad enough to lie panting in the shallow bed of a nearby beck, lapping copiously and ripping at the woolly haunch which Rowf severed and brought to him. It was excellent meat, the best they had yet killed, tender, bloody and well flavoured. It restored his spirits and confidence. Later he slept; and woke to see a red, windy dawn in the sky, the tod beside him and Rowf drinking downstream.

  "Where are we?" he asked, shivering and looking up at the black top outlined against the flying, eastern clouds.

  "Under Caw. Yer not feelin' femmer? Think nowt on't. There's not se far to go noo."

  "I'm not femmer," answered Snitter, "unless it means mad."

  In the next mile they climbed and crossed a broad ridge, but had hardly begun to descend the other side when the tod stopped, casting one way and another over the short turf. Finally it turned to Snitter.

  "This is Broon Haw. Yon's Lickledale, doon yonder. There's th' shaft straight afore ye. Mind, it's gey deep. We can bide safe there, se lang as th' big feller doesn't gi' us away wi' mair o' his fond tricks."

  Snitter, more than ever puzzled at the vast extent of the land which the men, for some inscrutable reason, had desolated and refashioned with rocks, ling and thorn, felt no surprise to find himself once more at the mouth of a deep cavern. It was similar to that which they had left, but less imposing and lofty. Tired now, despite his chilly sleep on the fell, he followed his companions into the dry, windless depths, found a comfortable spot and soon slept again.

  Friday the 29th October

  "Th' very saame," said Robert Lindsay. "Th' very saame way as thine, Dennis, and joost way you told it me an' all. Joost."

  "It moost be dog," said Dennis. "Cann't be nowt else."

  "Oh, ay. Bound to be. Bound to be, Dennis. Noo doubt about it whatever. An' Ah'll tell thee, Ah'm not so sure as there weren't two o' th' booggers. That were yoong sheep, real strong--a good 'un, ay--an' it had put oop real bluidy fight, like--theer were blood all ower, an' boanes dragged down int' beck, strewed all about, joost like yours. Ah doan't believe woon dog could a' doon it."

  "Basstard things," said Dennis. "Ah were oop Tarn neet before lasst, int' moonlight, tha knaws, Bob, took dogs an' gun an' hoonted all about t' plaace, like, an' on to Blaake Rigg, but Ah nivver saw noothing--not a bluidy thing." He trod out his cigarette and lit another.

  "Ay, weel, they'll have shifted, joost, Dennis. That'll be it. They've coom down valley. They have that."

  "But wheer d' y' reckon they started out from?" persisted Dennis. "Pratt, Routledge, Boow--an' Birkett over to Torver, Ah roong him oop--no woon's lost dog."

  "Ay, weel, Ah joost had ideea, Dennis. An' it is only ideea, but Ah were thinkin'. Doost tha mind old 'Arry Tyson--him as used to do rooads for Council a year or two back?"

  "He's over't Coniston, isn't he? With Research Station at Lawson Park?"

  "Ay, that's right, he is. Well, he were down int' bar at Manor Hotel i' Broughton a few days back, and seems he were sayin' as they'd lost two dogs out of Research Station. Cut an' run, ay. Gerald Gray--him as keeps Manor, tha knaws--told chap int' bank, an' this chap were sayin' soomthing about it this morning when Ah were in theer."

  "Did ye' assk him about it?"

  "Noo, Ah nivver did, Dennis. Ah were in reet hoorry, that's why, an' Ah nivver thowt about it at all until Ah were outside. But then it joost stroock me--"

  "It's not like finding th' boogger, though, an' killing it, is it?" said Dennis. "Ah mean, even if we assked Research Station an' they said they'd lost dog, likely they'd not do owt to get bluidy thing off fell. They'd say it couldn't be saame dog--all that caper--"

  "Well, happen they'd have to take notice, tha knaws," returned Robert, his blue eyes regarding Dennis intently over the knob of his stick. "Ay, they might that. That's Goov'ment Department-controlled, old booy, oop at Lawson Park, an' if they had t' admit they'd let dogs goo, like, an' couldn't tell wheer they're at, we could put Member o' Parliament on to them--"

  "An' have doozen an' hafe more bluidy sheep go while they're arguing!" Dennis detested Government Departments in general and the Ministry of Agriculture in particular, and the very thought of them provided a vicarious object for his anger over the slaughtered sheep.

  "It's serious matter, though, to be in possession of dog that kills sheep, Dennis. Legal offence. And if that were Goov'ment Department as doon it, that'd be real embarrassing. They'd not like it at all. Even the possibility--"

  Robert, who read the papers attentively and had both an extremely wide outlook and also a natural gift for seeing things as they were likely to appear to other people, was already letting his mind run on the potential for embarrassment that the sheep-killings represented--always provided that what he had overheard in the bank proved to be true. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that they might very well have in their hands a really stout stick for beating people who, collectively, usually did the beating themselves as far as hill-farmers were concerned--that was to say, Government chaps and officialdom in general. Harry Tyson, whom he had known off and on for years, was neither unreliable nor foolish. It would certainly be worth finding out from him what, if anything, had really happened at the Research Station. Robert was of a circumspect and deliberate nature, and not given to seeking straight rows unless heavily provoked. It had not occurred to him that he might actually telephone the Research Station and ask them point-blank about the dogs.

  Dennis, on the other hand, was a great man for direct rows, especially where his own financial interests were concerned. He was, in fact, fearless, with a long string of victories to his credit. The idea of telephoning the Research Station had already occurred to him.

  Mr. Powell, having seen to the monkey isolated in the cylinder and, as instructed, chalked up on the slate its current score--thirteen days plus--was looking over the interim reports on the smoking beagles and considering the terms of a draft letter to I.C.I. The search for a safe cigarette, an enterprise of great scientific interest and potential benefit to the human race, was, he felt, entirely worthy of British scientific endeavour, and possibly also of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. (For example, the Emperor Nero had, for his own purposes, after compelling slaves to eat large quantities of food and then to act in various ways, e.g., lie down, walk gently about, run fast and so on, cut them open to examine the effects on their digestive organs; but the results, unfortunately, had not survived in any detail.) Of course, it was open to people to give up smoking, but this would plainly be an intolerable demand to make, as long as experiments on living and sentient animals held out a chance of something better. The experiments had, in fact, been described by I.C.I. themselves as "the ultimate safeguard" for humans--which proved that they were a much better safeguard than not smoking.

  The dogs, trussed and masked, were ingeniously compelled to inhale the smoke from up to thirty cigarettes a day. (Mr. Powell had once shown his wit at a conference by remarking, "They're lucky-more than I can afford.") The plan was that after about three years they were to be killed for dissection and examination. At the moment, fortunately, I.C.I. were holding a firm line against the sentimental nonsense put about by Miss Brigid Brophy and the Anti-Vivisection Society. Only the other day I.C.I, had been reported as saying, "Smoking is a fact of life in present-day society. It is also acknowledged by the Government to be damaging to health. In recognition of this fact research is endeavouring to produce smoking materials that will demonstrably red
uce the risk to health. The use of animals for experiments is always going to be a moral problem, but within the realms of our present knowledge it is impossible to ensure that chemicals and drugs are safe unless they are tested on animals." This was so well expressed that it had escaped Mr. Powell (until the maddening Miss Brophy had fastened on it) that tobacco smoke could scarcely be held to lie within the definition of "chemicals and drugs." Every care was taken, went on I.C.I., to ensure that the animals did not suffer unnecessarily and lower species, such as rats, were used whenever possible.

  "That's clever," murmured Mr. Powell to himself, as he glanced through the papers on the file. " 'Course, rats are actually very intelligent and sensitive, only nobody likes rats. Pity we can't import some smoking jackals or hyenas or something; we'd be all right then--no one'd mind."

  The trouble was, everything you said in this field was explosive. You could never feel sure that a letter might not, somehow or other, leak into quarters where parts of it were likely to be twisted against you. On full consideration, it might be more prudent to suggest to Dr. Boycott that they should arrange a meeting with I.C.I. to talk over results--especially as the last batch of dogs dissected had--

  At this moment the telephone rang. Mr. Powell had never been able to overcome his dislike of the telephone. If there was one thing, as he put it, that really bugged him about the job at Animal Research, it was being on the end of somebody else's line and liable to be summoned to go and see one or another of his superiors at a moment's notice. The present probability was that Dr. Boycott wanted to talk to him about the smoking beagles before he himself was ready to do so. Trying to console himself, as was his wont, with the thought that after a lot more experiments he would be a Boycott himself, he picked up the receiver.

  "Powell here."

  "Mr. Powell?" said the voice of the switchboard girl.

  "Yes, Dolly. Is it an incoming call?"

  "Yes, it is, Mr. Powell. I have th' gentleman on the line." (This was, as Mr. Powell at once understood, a covert warning to watch what he said. Everyone at Animal Research watched what he said, and never more closely than on outside lines.) "He's assking for the Information Officer, but I have no one listed under such an appointment." (Too right you haven't, thought Mr. Powell.) "I didn't know whether you'd wish to take th' call. Th' gentleman says he wants to talk to soomone about dogs."