The Plague Dogs

In a confused fantasy of mist and hunger, Snitter was hunting for the tod across the hills and rocks of dream. A bitter rain was falling and twice, as he topped a slope, he glimpsed momentarily but never winded, disappearing over the next, the familiar, grey-haired figure with yellow scarf and walking-stick.

"Ah ha!" said Snitter to the vanishing figure, "I know better than to run after you! You look real, but you're not real. I've got to find the tod, or else we're going to die in this horrible place."

He knew now where he was; on the long, heathery slope that led down to the road winding up out of the green dale--the empty road that crossed the pass by the square stone post set upright in the turf. He remembered the post: he had lifted his leg against it for luck when the tod had led them across the pass on their way to Helvellyn. The wind was tugging in uneven gusts over the ling and up from below wavered the falling of the becks. A curlew cried, "Whaup, whaup," in the hills and as he came down to the road a blackcock went rocketing away from almost under his paws. It was all just as he remembered. He paused, looking about him and sniffing the wet ground for some trace of the tod. Suddenly he saw, below him, a blue car ascending the pass, threading in and out of sight, steadily climbing the steep edge of the hillside, crossing the bridge and coming on towards the stone where he stood watching. As it reached level ground and drew to a halt on the short grass of the verge, he saw that the driver was a merry-looking, pretty girl, who smiled at him, calling and beckoning. Snitter ran up eagerly and jumped into the car by the near-side door which she leant across to hold open. She smelt deliciously of soap, scent, leather and femininity. He put his muddy paws in her lap and licked her face and she laughed, scratching his ears.

"You're a friendly chap, aren't you?" she said. "Poor doggie, you've hurt your head, haven't you? And where have you sprung from, mmh? I bet your master's worried to death about you." His old, original collar had apparently come back and she read it, twisting round the little brass plaque with two slim, cool fingers pressed against his neck. "Would you like me to take you home? D'you suppose there's a reward, mmh?"

Head close to hers, Snitter wagged his tail, smelling her hairspray and the trace of wax in one small, dainty ear. 'Til give you a reward," she said, and popped a toffee into his mouth. He bit it. It had no taste at all and he shook his head, teeth squelching in the sticky gluten.

"It's dream toffee," she said, laughing and kissing him. "This is all just a dream, you know. Are you hungry? Poor old chap, then--it's no good looking in the back of this car. There's nothing there--only my bag."

She started the engine and backed to the road, leaving the still-unclosed passenger door to swing back and forth as she did so. "You can help me if you like," she said. "D'you know what I'm looking for? I need a mouse--a live one."

Snitter found speech. "I've got a mouse; he's in my head."

"Could he be injected? Only, you see, I'm overdue and of course my boy-friend and I want to kncrtv as quick as we can." She looked at her watch. "Oo, gosh, I'd better be getting on. He'll be home soon. We're living together, you know." She laughed. "Living in sin, as they used to say."

"Sin?" said Snitter. "I don't understand, but then I'm only a dog, of course.

A kind of house you live in, is it? The men have taken all the houses away, you know. I don't believe there's a house for miles."

She patted him, leaning across, about to close the door.

"Why," she said, "we both believe the very same. There's no such thing as sin, is there? No such thing any more."

Suddenly Snitter realised that they were not alone in the car. The shining fur coat pressed against them began to writhe and hunch into folds, which resolved themselves into odorous, furry, fox-like creatures leaping past him into the back seat. On the instant there started up among them a great, brown lizard, with burnished neck of verdant gold, smooth, supple scales and forked tongue flickering in and out between its eyes. From the girl's feet, pressed to the controls, two tawny snakes came writhing.

The girl drew a knife from the top of her skirt.

"You don't mind blood, do you?" she said. "I was explaining, wasn't I, it's what I hope I'm going to see quite soon."

Snitter flung up his head, howling in terror.

"What's the matter now?" growled Rowf, startled out of sleep beside him. "Why on earth can't you keep quiet?"

"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 Rowfs 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?"

"Well?"

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 1 the solitude. "Nothing strange about black milk. I dare |: say men might make black bread, or even black sheep if they wanted, come to that. They sometimes make black f 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--" w Rowf* battered and hollow as an old kettle discarded among the stones, grinned up at him from his refuge of C despair.

If; "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 Jell you, Snitter, if you can do that, /'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 Isheep back up here.

Couldn't we try to find one?" j; 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. ". L "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, jjt as so often in the past, the victim of delusion, for up Jf 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 f' above and below its lolling tongue and it turned its head |i this way and that, continually listening and sniffing the! air. As Snitter jumped up, it snapped at him and made f as if to run away, but he had no difficulty in overtaking U'

Jr "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 §%nswer 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! Rowfs 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 fc6re their clean, sharp smell--the smell of hunting, meat-gating animals in perfect health. It was as though a band itf demUgods had swept past him in fulfilment of their Cappointed function of pursuit and death; a ghastly, apoca-Ifyptic duty for ever carried out in some timeless region.;Wsyond, now--on this occasion--superimposed and en-^|cted upon the bare hillside where he found himself, as in ijl dream, running alone through the clouds of swirling ivapour.

I Suddenly the wind freshened, carrying a far-off smell fbf 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 {uickly 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, id not want to see the tod leaping, snapping and biting, itnumbered thirty to one, the blood spurting, the tearing, rashing and worrying, the huntsman whipping his way Ito the turmoil and the tod's body snatched, lifted high id knife-hacked for brush and mask before being tossed ick--oh, so merrily--among the baying, tussling fox-nmds.

IT. 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 degrees. Then he made allowance for the magnetic variation, selected a rock on the bearing as far ahead as he could see and set off downhill to cover the six or seven hundred yards to Goat's Hause.

It was silent in the mist, and his solitude gave him a satisfying sense of power, integrity and self-sufficiency. Alone with his instruments, his fell experience and his health and stamina he, like a well-found ship in the Atlantic, was a match for his surroundings jn all their wildness and adversity. In his mind's eye he saw himself, purposeful, grim, intent, well-equipped and organised, moving through the fog like avenging Nemesis, deliberate and irresistible. The dogs, wherever they were, might as well give up now, for he, equal to all contingencies and possessed of the will and endurance of Spencer-Chapman himself, would get them in the end, if not today then later. He was retribution, timer mortis and the two-handed engine at the door.

Once he thought he noticed some kind of furtive movement a short distance off in the grass, and turned his head to look. He caught a glimpse of something off-white apparently skulking in a peat-rift, but then concluded that it was nothing but a sodden paper bag blown there by the wind. As he strode on he could hear behind him, coming up from somewhere below Levers Hause, the cry of hounds and the hollering of the huntsman. It sounded as though they were approaching, and in full cry. However, that was nothing to do with him and his mission. Indeed it was, if anything, a nuisance, for, if the Plague Dogs were anywhere close by, it might alarm them and cause them to be off. By all that he had heard, they were as cunning as foxes and more like wild animals than dogs.

Five minutes later his boots squelched across the muddy, snow-patched wet of the saddle and began to climb the slope of Dow Crag. It was at this moment that the mist began to lift. He could hear hounds pouring down into the valley above Seathwaite Tarn, and went so as to stop, focus his binoculars and look down at the tyss before calling himself sharply to order. There were ly about two hours of daylight left and tomorrow he %nust be back at work. Since Seathwaite Tarn valley would tw be an unlikely place in which to find the dogs, he mid make the most of the remaining light by going >lilong the tops as far as Walna Scar, descending into J|3oat's Water valley (a remote place and as likely a J|tude-out as anywhere), up to the Hause again and so back fro Wreynus by the way he had come. There was time iiinough for that, and he could safely come down Wetside /Edge in the late twilight.

\, He was well up on Dow Crag now and approaching the ibead of North Gully.

Except for a patch on the summit mist had cleared and it would, he reflected, be possible see down to the valley floor on his left. With this irpose he left the path and struck off over the rocks, standing to find a place near the top of Easter Gully from Fhich he could command a view of Goat's Water and screes at the foot of the Dow precipices. Suddenly he stopped dead, with a heave in his belly Ce that felt by an angler when a big trout rises to the t.

For an instant, through a cleft between two projecting: ks about thirty feet down in the gully, he had caught tight of a dog--a large, black, rough-haired dog--lying, >parently asleep, beside a heap of stones at the foot of ie pitch.

The field of view between the two rocks was narrow that by the time he had taken it in he had |walked past the line of vision which had shown him the >g.

He hastened back, dodging about with his head like 1man spying, from the street, through a chink in some-ly else's curtains.

The dog came into view again and he got the binoculars it. Yes: it was, unmistakably, one of the two dogs irhich had set upon his car near Thirlmere.

The collar? as half-buried in the rough, staring coat at the nape of its ck, but the dog was emaciated and beneath the chin, lere it hung loose, the green plastic showed up as plainly a necklace.

"Steady, now, steady," muttered Mr. Westcott. Clasp-his hands to stop their trembling, he drew a deep breath and considered. The quicker he shot the better. To go down below would take the best part of an hour and the dog might well be gone. His very approach, which he could not conceal, would be enough to alarm it. The trouble was that his view down the precipitous gully was so awkward and so much restricted that probably he could get only a standing shot. He checked this.

He was right. Lying down or on one knee, he could not see the dog. And he would have only one chance--that was virtually certain. If his first shot missed, the dog would be off into dead ground under the Crag. Considering that what he had was a rifle, not a shot-gun, and that he could not get a lying shot, he ought to try to find some soij of steady rest.