The Incredible Journey

by Sheila Burnford

  THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY

  “Captivating! A tale of charm, high drama and some revelations of the love existing between man and beast.”

  The New York Times

  “An incredible book! A beautiful story so moving that it stays in the mind constantly. It is a gem to be treasured!”

  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “I have read THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY with much enjoyment. Obviously the author has a great knowledge of animals and a great love for them.”

  Joy Adamson,

  author of BORN FREE

  ALSO AVAILABLE IN LAUREL-LEAF BOOKS:

  SNOW BOUND, Harry Mazer

  DEATHWATCH, Robb White

  DOWNRIVER, Will Hobbs

  THE ISLAND, Gary Paulsen

  THE CROSSING, Gary Paulsen

  THE NIGHT THE WHITE DEER DIED, Gary Paulsen

  NIGHTJOHN, Gary Paulsen

  DEADLY DECEPTION, Betsy Haynes

  THE HOUSE ACROSS THE COVE, Barbara Hall

  AK, Peter Dickinson

  Published by

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Copyright © 1960, 1961 by Sheila Burnford

  Copyright renewed © 1988 by Jonquil Graves, Juliet Pin, and Peronelle Robbins

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  The trademark Laurel-Leaf Library® is registered in the U. S.

  Patent and Trademark Office.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-77834-5

  RL: 6.0

  Published by arrangement with the author’s estate

  v3.1

  TO MY PARENTS

  I. P. AND W. G. C. EVERY

  AND TO THEIR GRANDCHILDREN

  PERONELLE, JONQUIL AND JULIET

  WHO GREW UP UNDER THE DESPOTIC WHITE PAW OF DEAR BILL

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Beasts

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  THE BEASTS

  I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,

  I stand and look at them long and long.

  They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

  They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

  They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God

  Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

  Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

  Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

  —WALT WHITMAN, Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself,” 32.

  1

  THIS JOURNEY took place in a part of Canada which lies in the northwestern part of the great sprawling province of Ontario. It is a vast area of deeply wooded wilderness—of endless chains of lonely lakes and rushing rivers. Thousands of miles of country roads, rough timber lanes, overgrown tracks leading to abandoned mines, and unmapped trails snake across its length and breadth. It is a country of far-flung, lonely farms and a few widely scattered small towns and villages, of lonely trappers’ shacks and logging camps. Most of its industry comes from the great pulp and paper companies who work their timber concessions deep in the very heart of the forests; and from the mines, for it is rich in minerals. Prospectors work through it; there are trappers and Indians; and sometimes hunters who fly into the virgin lakes in small amphibious aircraft; there are pioneers with visions beyond their own life span; and there are those who have left the bustle of civilization forever, to sink their identity in an unquestioning acceptance of the wilderness. But all these human beings together are as a handful of sand upon the ocean shores, and for the most part there is silence and solitude and an uninterrupted way of life for the wild animals that abound there: moose and deer, brown and black bears; lynx and fox; beaver, muskrat and otter; fishers, mink and marten. The wild duck rests there and the Canada goose, for this is a fringe of the central migratory flyway. The clear tree-fringed lakes and rivers are filled with speckled trout and steelheads, pike and pickerel and whitefish.

  Almost half the year the country is blanketed with snow; and for weeks at a time the temperature may stay many degrees below zero; there is no slow growth of spring, but a sudden short burst of summer when everything grows with wild abandon; and as suddenly it is the fall again. To many who live there, fall is the burnished crown of the year, with the crisp sunny days and exhilarating air of the Northland; with clear blue skies, and drifting leaves, and, as far as the eye can see, the endless panorama of glorious rich flaming color in the turning trees.

  This is the country over which the three travelers passed, and it was in the fall that they traveled, in the days of Indian summer.

  John Longridge lived several miles from one of the small towns in an old stone house that had been in his family for several generations. He was a tall, austerely pleasant man of about forty, a bachelor, and a writer by profession, being the author of several historical biographies. He spent much of his time traveling and gathering material for his books, but always returned to the comfortable old stone house for the actual writing. He liked the house to himself during these creative periods, and for many years had enjoyed an ideal arrangement whereby his domestic wants were cared for by a middle-aged couple, Mrs. Oakes and her husband Bert, who lived in a small cottage about half a mile away. Mrs. Oakes came in every day to look after the house and cook the main meals. Bert was in charge of the furnace, the garden and all the odd jobs. They came and went about their business without disturbing Longridge, and there was complete accord among them all.

  On the eve of the incredible journey, towards the end of September, Longridge sat by a crackling log fire in his comfortable library. The curtains were drawn and the firelight flickered and played on the bookshelves and danced on the ceiling. The only other light in the room came from a small shaded lamp on a table by the deep armchair. It was a very peaceful room and the only sound was the occasional crackling from the logs or the rustling of a newspaper, the pages of which Longridge turned with some difficulty, for a slender wheat-colored Siamese cat was curled on his knee, chocolate-colored front paws curved in towards one another, sapphire eyes blinking occasionally as he stared into the fire.

  On the floor, his scarred, bony head resting on one of the man’s feet, lay an old white English bull terrier. His slanted almond-shaped eyes, sunk deep within their pinkish rims, were closed; one large triangular ear caught the firelight, flushing the inside a delicate pink, so that it appeared almost translucent. Anyone unaccustomed to the rather peculiar points of bull terrier beauty would have thought him a strange if not downright ugly dog, with the naked, down-faced arc of his profile, his deep-chested, stocky body and whip-tapered tail. But the true lover of an ancient and honorable breed would have recognized the blood and bone of this elderly and rather battered body; would have known that in his prime this had been a magnificent specimen of compact sinew an
d muscle, bred to fight and endure; and would have loved him for his curious mixture of wicked, unyielding fighter yet devoted and docile family pet, and above all for the irrepressible air of sly merriment which gleamed in his little slant eyes.

  He twitched and sighed often in his sleep, as old dogs will, and for once his shabby tail with the bare patch on the last joint was still.

  By the door lay another dog, nose on paws, brown eyes open and watchful in contrast to the peacefulness radiated by the other occupants of the room. This was a large red-gold Labrador retriever, a young dog with all the heritage of his sturdy working forebears in his powerful build, broad noble head and deep, blunt, gentle mouth. He lifted his head as Longridge rose from the chair, depositing the cat, with an apologetic pat, on the floor, and carefully moving his foot from under the old dog’s head before walking across the room to draw one of the heavy curtains and look out.

  A huge orange moon was rising just above the trees at the far end of the garden, and a branch of an old lilac tree tap-tapped in the light wind against the window pane. It was bright enough outside to see the garden in clear detail, and he noticed how the leaves had drifted again across the lawn even in the short time since it had been raked that afternoon, and that only a few brave asters remained to color the flower beds.

  He turned and crossed the room, flicking on another light, and opened a narrow cupboard halfway up the wall. Inside were several guns on racks and he looked at them thoughtfully, running his fingers lovingly down the smooth grain of the hand-rubbed stocks, and finally lifted down a beautifully chased and engraved double-barreled gun. He “broke” it and peered down the gleaming barrels; and as though at a signal the young dog sat up silently in the shadows, his ears pricked in interest. The gun fell back into place with a well-oiled click and the dog whined. The man replaced the gun in sudden contrition, and the dog lay down again, his head turned away, his eyes miserable.

  Longridge walked over to make amends for his thoughtlessness, but as he bent down to pat the dog the telephone rang so suddenly and shrilly in the quiet room that the cat jumped indignantly off the chair and the bull terrier started clumsily to his feet.

  Longridge picked up the receiver, and presently the breathless voice of Mrs. Oakes was heard, accompanied by a high-pitched, whining note in the distance.

  “Speak up, Mrs. Oakes—I can hardly hear you.”

  “I can hardly hear you either,” said the breathless voice distantly. “There, is that better? I’m shouting now! What time are you leaving in the morning, Mr. Longridge? What’s that? Could you talk louder?”

  “About seven o’clock. I want to get to Heron Lake before nightfall,” he shouted, noting with amusement the scandalized expression of the cat. “But there’s no need for you to be here at that time, Mrs. Oakes.”

  “What’s that you said? Seven? Will it be all right if I don’t come in until about nine? My niece is coming on the early bus and I’d like to meet her. But I don’t like to leave the dogs alone too long.…”

  “Of course you must meet her,” he answered, shouting really loudly now as the humming noise increased. “The dogs will be fine. I’ll take them out first thing in the morning, and—”

  “Oh, thanks, Mr. Longridge—I’ll be there around nine without fail What’s that you said about the animals? (Oh, you pernickety, dratted old line!) Don’t you worry about them; Bert and me, we’ll see.… tell old Bodger … bringing marrow bone. Oh, wait till I give that operator a piece of my mi …”

  But just as Longridge was gathering strength for a last bellow into the mouthpiece the line went dead. He put the receiver back with relief and looked across the room at the old dog who had climbed stealthily into the armchair and sat lolling back against the cushions, his eyes half closed, awaiting the expected reproof. He addressed him with the proper degree of ferocity, telling him that he was a scoundrelly opportunist, a sybaritic barbarian, a disgrace to his upbringing and his ancestors, “AND”—and he paused in weighty emphasis—“a very … bad … dog!”

  At these two dread words the terrier laid his ears flat against his skull, slanted his eyes back until they almost disappeared, then drew his lips back over his teeth in an apologetic grin, quivering the end of his disgraceful tail. His parody of sorrow brought its usual reprieve: the man laughed and patted the bony head, then enticed him down with the promise of a run.

  So the old dog, who was a natural clown, slithered half off the chair and stood, with his hindquarters resting on the cushions, waving his tail and nudging the cat, who sat like an Egyptian statue, eyes half closed, head erect, then gave a throaty growl and patted at the pink and black bull-terrier nose. Then together they followed the man to the door, where the young dog waited to fall in behind the little procession. Longridge opened the door leading on to the garden, and the two dogs and the cat squeezed past his legs and into the cool night air. He stood under the trellised porch, quietly smoking his pipe, and watched them for a while. Their nightly routine never varied—first the few minutes of separate local investigation, then the indefinable moment when all met again and paused before setting off together through the gap in the hedge at the bottom of the garden and into the fields and woods that lay beyond. He watched until they disappeared into the darkness (the white shape of the bull terrier showing up long after Longridge was unable to distinguish the other two), then knocked his pipe out against the stone step and re-entered the house. It would be half an hour or more before they returned.

  Longridge and his brother owned a small cabin by the shores of remote Heron Lake, about two hundred miles away; and twice a year they spent two or three weeks there together, leading the life they loved: spending many hours ill companionable silence in their canoe, fishing in spring and hunting in the autumn. Usually he had simply locked up and left, leaving the key with Mrs. Oakes so that she could come in once or twice a week and keep the house warm and aired. However, now he had the animals to consider. He had thought of taking them all to a boarding kennel in the town, but Mrs. Oakes, who loved the assorted trio, had protested vigorously and assented that she herself would look after them “rather than have those poor dumb animals fretting themselves into a state in some kennel, and probably half starved into the bargain.” So it had been arranged that she and Bert would look after the three animals. Bert would be working around the garden, anyway, so that they could be outside most of the time and Mrs. Oakes would feed them and keep her eye on them while she was working in the house.

  When he had finished packing, Longridge went into the library to draw the curtains, and seeing the telephone he was reminded of Mrs. Oakes. He had forgotten to tell her to order some coffee and other things that he had taken from the store cupboard. He sat down at the desk and drew out a small memo pad.

  Dear Mrs. Oakes, he wrote, Please order some more coffee and replace the canned food I’ve taken. I will be taking the dogs (and Tao too of course!) … Here he came to the end of the small square of paper, and taking another piece he continued: … out for a run before I leave, and will give them something to eat, so don’t let our greedy white friend tell you he is starving! Don’t worry yourselves too much over them—I know they will be fine.

  He wrote the last few words with a smile, for the bull terrier had Mrs. Oakes completely in thrall and worked his advantage to the full. He left the pages on the desk under a glass paperweight; then opened the door in answer to a faint scratch. The old dog and the cat bounded in to greet him with their usual affection, bringing the fresh smell of the outdoors with them. The young dog followed more sedately and stood by, watching aloofly, as the other whipped his tail like a lash against the man’s legs, while the cat pressed against him purring in a deep rumble; but he wagged his tail briefly and politely when the man patted him.

  The cat walked into the library to curl up on the warm hearth. Later when the ashes grew cold he would move to the top of the radiator, and then, sometime in the middle of the night, he would steal upstairs and curl up beside the old dog
. It was useless shutting the bedroom door, or any other door of the house for that matter, for the cat could open them all, latches or doorknobs. The only doors that defeated him were those with porcelain handles, for he found it impossible to get a purchase on the shiny surface with his long monkeylike paws.

  The young dog padded off to his rug on the floor of the little back kitchen, and the bull terrier started up the steep stairs, and was already curled in his basket in the bedroom when Longridge himself came to bed. He opened one bright, slanted eye when he felt the old blanket being dropped over him, then pushed his head under the cover, awaiting the opportunity he knew would come later.

  The man lay awake for a while, thinking about the days ahead and of the animals, for the sheer misery in the young dog’s eyes haunted him.

  They had come to him, this odd and lovable trio, over eight months ago, from the home of an old and dear college friend. This friend, Jim Hunter, was an English professor in a small university about two hundred and fifty miles away. As the university owned one of the finest reference libraries in the province, Longridge often stayed with him and was, in fact, godfather to the Hunters’ nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. He had been staying with them when the invitation came from an English university, asking the professor to deliver a series of lectures which would involve a stay in England of nearly nine months, and he had witnessed the tears of his goddaughter and the glum silence of her brother, Peter, when it was decided that their pets would have to be boarded out and the house rented to the reciprocal visiting professor.

  Longridge was extremely fond of Elizabeth and Peter, and he could understand their feelings, remembering how much the companionship of a cocker spaniel had meant when he himself was a rather lonely child, and how he had grieved when he was first separated from it. Elizabeth was the self-appointed owner of the cat. She fed and brushed him, took him for walks, and he slept at the foot of her bed. Eleven-year-old Peter had been inseparable from the bull terrier ever since the small white puppy had arrived on Peter’s first birthday. In fact, the boy could not remember a day of his life when Bodger had not been part of it. The young dog belonged, in every sense of the word, heart and soul to their father, who had trained him since puppy-hood for hunting.