The Plague Dogs

by Richard Adams

  "So it was the splinters," said Snitter, getting to his feet and sniffing them over. "Of course, it must have been some of those splinters that made the dark man's face bleed. But then what made the awful bang? Oh, well, if the lady lets me stay here long enough I suppose I shall come to understand that and a good deal more. My goodness, though, what a mess the place is in! I wish those flies hadn't got in. Maggots and flies--who wants a lot of flies buzzing round inside his head? Well, now I'm here I'd better make a start on my eyes. How funny it'll be to clean them from inside! I hope it doesn't hurt."

  He jumped up on a shelf running along the further wall, just below the level of his two cobwebbed eyes. There followed a twinge of pain in his head as some light, unseen object fell from beneath his paws and shattered on the ground below. He wondered what part of him it might have been. Still, he could feel nothing immediately wrong. He waited a few moments to recover himself, then put his fore-paws on the narrow, dirty sill and looked out through his right eye.

  It was just as he had expected. He was looking at the expanse of grass and heather outside the wall down which he and Rowf had sniffed their way before he had jumped over the gate. He could see Rowf's paw marks in a patch of mud immediately below. He raised one of his own paws and, a little surprised to find the inner surface of his eye so insensitive, pulled down a clot of sticky, dusty cobweb. The dust made him sneeze and he scuffled on the shelf, trying to get the mess off his paw and snapping at a fly that flew against the pane, recovered itself and buzzed away.

  "The trouble is, I don't think I can reach as far as the top part of this eye," said Snitter. "I wonder why not? I suppose the whitecoats must have taken some of the inside of my head out--it really does seem awfully empty--and that's why I can't climb all the way to the top. Of course when my master--when my master was al--"

  He broke off sharply, stared out and then edged along the shelf to get a clearer view. He had caught sight--he was almost sure he had caught sight--of Rowf and the tod creeping through the long grass a little way to his left. Yes, there they were, beyond all doubt, Rowf conspicuous enough, the tod all but invisible except in the moments when he inched forward.

  But why can't I hear them? thought Snitter. Goodness knows where my ears are--somewhere out to the sides, I suppose. What do they look like, anyway? Oh, well, never mind; I suppose I can smell the tod. You generally can.

  He jumped down and made his way across to his wiry, cold nose. Yes, sure enough, it was clear that not only Rowf but the unmistakable tod were close outside. A moment later Rowf's muzzle appeared, half-blocking the light.

  "Snitter! Are you sure you can't get out? Have you really tried?"

  The question caught Snitter unawares. Was he shut in? No--obviously you couldn't be shut into your own head against your will. But if he wasn't, why was it apparently impossible to use his eyes and muzzle at the same time?

  "Well, no--you see, Rowf--"

  "Come on, then! Quick, too--before the whitecoats come!"

  "No, I can't come out, Rowf. I mean, if I do I shall be mad again. I'll explain. You see--"

  "Snitter, listen, for goodness' sake! This is no time for one of your turns. I've brought the tod here to tell you how to get out. Whatever he tells you to do, do it. If he can't get you out, nobody can. But you've got to be quick."

  Rowf's muzzle disappeared and a moment later Snitter not only smelt but saw the tod, peering in at him through the chicken-wire.

  "Cum oot, ye greet fond article! Sharp wi' ye noo--afore wor aall knacked!"

  "Listen, I want to explain," said Snitter. "I can't possibly come out. You see--"

  "Reet afore ye there--yon back-end drain, straight afore ye! Yon's aye the way oot of a shed. Slip yersel' oot o' that sharp, ye greet nanny-hammer!"

  As Snitter was considering how best to explain the extraordinary situation in which he found himself, the tod gripped the wire ball in its teeth and tugged it out through the opening in the base of the wall. Snitter, with a yelp of pain and shock, thrust his head and shoulders into the widened opening and tried to snatch it back. As he did so, he became suddenly aware that an enormous door had opened in the back of his head, letting in a blaze of light and a rush of cold air. With these came a scraping of men's boots, the sound of human voices and a moment later, faint but dreadfully, unmistakably clear, the smell of the whitecoats--the smell of their hands and their horrible, clean clothes.

  Terrified, Snitter crushed and forced his body through the aperture. Behind him he heard a quick plunge of heavy feet and felt a human hand grabbing at his hind-quarters. He scrabbled in the hole, feeling pain along his left side as some pointed excrescence scratched him. Then he was out in the wet grass, bleeding down his flank, with Rowf dragging him forward, teeth in the scruff of his neck. He scrambled to his feet.

  "Now run, Snitter, run like a hare, or I'll bite your arse off!"

  Together they tore down the valley towards Ulpha. Half a mile away, as they lay panting in the shelter of a leafless hazel copse, the tod joined them without a word and at once made its way to a high, bracken-covered bank on the outskirts, whence it could look down on the road outside and the fields sloping to the Duddon beyond.

  As he drove down into Dunnerdale, it occurred to Digby Driver that he could do not only with some petrol but also with something to eat. He had arrived in Ambleside late the previous night and set out again--after a snatched breakfast which he was already beginning to forget--at half past seven that morning. His general plan was to run down the valley, stopping for a look at the scene of the fatal accident at Cockley Beck, and then, having got some idea of the kind of terrain in which the mysterious dog was operating (for he had never before been in the Lake District), to move across to Coniston in the early afternoon and see what chance there might be of talking to one or more people from Animal Research. A certain kind of reporter might have telephoned the Director and tried to make an appointment for an interview with a representative of the station, but Digby Driver was not that kind of reporter. The last thing he wanted to send back to the Orator was a piece based upon any kind of official release and the last thing he wanted to learn was whatever the Director of Animal Research might decide he wanted to tell him. He was after a sensational story and this, of course, could not be constructed out of mere truth; not out of officially released truth, anyway. It was essential that the news-reading public should feel, first, that the community was in danger and secondly that people--well-off people, "official" people--who ought to have known better, were to blame for it. As he got back into his car and drove down through the green fields south of Cockley Beck, Digby Driver reflected with satisfaction on some of his past triumphs. The to-do over clean air a few years ago--now that had been something like! The facts, as released by the Department of the Environment, had shown that by the early seventies the air over the country as a whole was cleaner than at any time during the previous hundred and twenty years at least; but by the time Digby Driver had finished with the matter, the advances in domestic smoke control appeared nugatory, while the Alkali Inspectorate had become irresponsible, incompetent sinecure-holders, fit only to be swept away as an obsolete liability. Of course, nothing in the way of statutory reform had followed from Digby Driver's articles. This was not surprising, since the British Clean Air Acts were already the most sensible and effective of their kind in the world and were not capable of being improved. But this was not the point. The point was that thousands of people had been scared, had bought the Orator like billy-o and been prevented from grasping that, in an adverse and difficult world, one blessing which they could count was the great improvement in clean air effected by local and central bureaucracy during the previous fifteen years.

  Then there had been the lead-poisoning scare--ah! happy days for environmental correspondents! "And it'll go bloody hard," said Digby Driver to himself, "if there isn't some angle to be found on a research station where as much goes on as it does at this A.R.S.E. place. But which would go best, I wonder
--darling doggies, or gross irresponsibility? Gross irry for choice. Who gives a damn about darling doggies these days, anyway? And where the hell am I going to find a petrol station in this blasted outback?"

  In this last matter, however, Digby Driver was more fortunate than he had expected. A mile down from the Newfield (where he had narrowly missed not only a ginger cat but also one of Harry Braithwaite's dogs), he came once more upon Duddon, pouring southward in gleaming planes of noisy, wall-slapping, pewter-coloured spate. Just the other side of the bridge and a few yards up the side-road stood not only some plain and palpable petrol-pumps but also, if he were not mistaken, a village shop, doubtless full of biscuits, chocolate and cigarettes. Digby Driver drew in to the pumps, got out of the car, strolled back and forth a few times beside the wall above the river, glanced at the petroglyph of the salmon on the coping, and then pooped his horn.

  Vera Dawson appeared with haste, smiles and apologies.

  "I'm so sorry to keep you waiting! I didn't see there was anyone here or I'd have been out directly."

  "That's all right," replied Digby Driver, pitching his cigarette over the wall into the Duddon. "Who'd want to be in a hurry in a lovely spot like this? Real old-world charm and peace, eh?"

  "Well, there's plenty see it that way," replied Vera pleasantly, as she screwed the cap off the petrol tank, "but as a matter of fact we've had a bit of a rumpus this morning--quite a to-do while it lasted."

  "Really--what sort of a to-do?" enquired Mr. Driver, his professional acumen instinctively aroused. "Fill her right up, please."

  "Well, early this morning some stray dogs broke in and upset our dustbins," said Vera, "and we felt fairly sure one of them must be the dog that's been causing all the trouble round here--"

  "Really? What made you think that?"

  "Well, both the dogs had green collars, and they say that shows they come from the Coniston research place. We had one of them shut up in the shed and there's a young gentleman come over from Coniston with a policeman. They're still out at the back now, but unfortunately the dog got away before they could get hold of it."

  Thank goodness for that, thought Digby Driver, and what a turnup for the book to walk right into the middle of something like this!

  "Oh, that was bad luck," he replied. "So the research chap had his trip from Coniston for nothing? No, I think she's O.K. for oil, thanks. Five forty-eight? There we are--five fifty; and a whole tuppence, all for me. Thanks."

  At this point Mr. Powell and the policeman appeared, in conversation with Phyllis, who was politely seeing them to their car.

  "--and if either of them should turn oop agaain, like," the policeman was saying. "If y' see them round plaace at all, doan't hesitate about telephoning us. It's better to telephone than not to, like. And if y' can keep them in sight--y' know, if it's practicable--that'd be best."

  "Yes, of course," replied Phyllis. "I must say I hope they don't come back, though."

  Digby Driver stepped forward, smiling politely.

  "I've just been hearing something about this bit of trouble of yours over the stray dogs," he said. "I hope they didn't do any damage?"

  "No, luckily not," answered Phyllis. "Of course, they've pulled the rubbish all over the yard and made a terrible mess, but nothing worse than that. And these two gentlemen have been very helpful in tidying it up for us."

  "I suppose you're anxious to get hold of the dogs, aren't you?" pursued Driver, turning to the policeman.

  "Ay, well, stray dogs killin' sheep's a serious matter oop 'ere, y' knaw," replied the policeman. "And then it's been aggravaated, like, by this 'ere tragic death, y'see--very naasty, that was."

  "Yes, indeed, I read about it in the paper," said Driver, offering his cigarettes round the company. Phyllis, Vera and the policeman declined, but Mr. Powell was more forthcoming.

  "And if I'm not mistaken, you must be the poor bloke from the research laboratory," went on Driver, flicking his cigarette lighter between Mr. Powell's cupped hands. "You carry the can, do you?"

  "Well, I don't know yet whether we do or not," answered Mr. Powell, recalling as he spoke the Director's policy of silence, as expounded by Dr. Boycott. "I still need to get a sight of the dogs, you see. They might be ours and then again they might not."

  "Did you not see that one as it was pushing itself through the drain-hole?" asked Vera. "Kind of a black-and-white terrier it was, and the most terrible gash--"

  "Yes, but of course it was just its head that I couldn't get to see," replied Mr. Powell. "It was outside already, you know, by the time we opened the door."

  "They both had green collars," said Phyllis, "and I don't know where a dog could come by such a cut across the head as that, except by--well, by vivisection, if that's the right word. It was a terrible sight--enough to make anyone feel really bad--"

  "Oh, I don't doubt for a moment that they had green collars," answered Mr. Powell rather hurriedly. "What we don't know, though, is whether these particular dogs are the ones that have been killing the sheep or whether either of them had anything to do with the fatal accident. Probably those are things we never shall know."

  There was a rather awkward pause. Everyone seemed to be expecting him to say something more. "We need to get hold of the dogs first, that's what I mean," he added. "Then we may learn whose they are, mayn't we, and where they come from?"

  "Oh--I thought perhaps the research station would know whether they had any dogs missing," said Vera, putting the obvious question in the politest possible way, "and what they looked like. The other dog now--the one you didn't see--that was altogether different to look at. It was a big, kind of a rough--"

  To the sharp eye and experienced journalistic sense of Digby Driver, it was plain that Mr. Powell, young, honest, ingenuous and a trifle callow, was about to find himself in deep water--if indeed he were not already there. Obviously, the thing to do was to come to his aid: there would be nothing like so much to be gained by pressing awkward questions on him or adding to his confusion.

  "Oh, that reminds me," he said, smiling at Vera. "Sorry--not changing the subject or anything, but it was what you were saying about the one we didn't see. There's been a most peculiar noise coming from the engine of my car, but I can't actually see anything at all. I'm usually rather good at seeing noises, too, and hearing smells and all that. I wonder--" he turned to Mr. Powell. "Would you be good enough, seeing you're here, to put an ear under the bonnet and tell me what you think? I'm sure you know a lot more about these things than I do."

  As he had expected, Mr. Powell was not backward in seizing the floating spar.

  "Yeah--well, sure, if I can," he said. "I can't claim to be an internal combustion expert, but--"

  "I bet you're more of an expert than I am," replied Mr. Driver cordially, as he led the way across to the Triumph Toledo standing by the pumps.

  He propped open the bonnet and started the engine. "Damn nuisance for you, all these people asking questions," he went on, revving the engine with one hand to make the interior a still more fine and private place. They both leaned inward, heads close together. "I suppose you want to say as little as you can, don't you; and hope the bloody dogs'll go up in smoke one dark night? That's what I'd want, I know that."

  "Well, you've about said it," answered Mr. Powell, his spirits already rising in response to the stranger's quick understanding and ready sympathy. "I mean, you know, if one's got to spend half a day going out in a police car about three times a week, every time someone gets a sight of a stray dog anywhere in the Lake District--"

  "These provincial police are so damned unimaginative," said Digby Driver. "Anyway, why should you have to stand in a white sheet even before anybody's proved that this dog--or these dogs, if there are two of the buggers--I didn't know there were--come from your place? I mean, it's like asking a bloke whether or not he's screwed Mary Brown because she's looking for someone to pin an affiliation order on to--why the hell should anyone expect him to answer up and put himself in the do
ck?"

  Mr. Powell laughed; and gave every evidence of appreciating this witty, young-man-of-the-world approach.

  "Well, whatever it may have been, the bloody thing seems to have stopped doing it now," said Mr. Driver, jerking his thumb at the engine. "It would, of course, when the expert comes along. Look, I say, are you going back to Coniston now? Only I'm going that way, and unless you particularly want to go back with your policeman chum, you'd be doing me a good turn if you'd let me give you a lift. Then you could hear the noise if it develops again."

  "But are you sure I'd not be taking you out of your way?" asked Mr. Powell.

  Ten minutes later, munching Phyllis's Kendal Mint Cake (as eaten by Hillary and Tensing on the summit of Everest), Mr. Driver and his passenger passed within a few yards of the vigilant tod crouched among the hazels and continued on their way towards Ulpha and Broughton.

  "I don't know why the hell they can't say straight out whether they've lost any dogs or not," said Gerald Gray, landlord of the Manor at Broughton-in-Furness, as he drew a pint for Mr. Hutchinson the butcher (known locally as Mistroochinson) and a half for himself. "What gets me down is all this damned ca' canny stuff. Everyone knows there's a dog up at Seathwaite killing sheep and everyone's virtually certain it's escaped from Lawson Park; but the station themselves won't even say yea or nay. Well, why the hell won't they?"

  "Ay, well, ye've about said it theer, Gerry," replied Mistroochinson.

  At this relatively early hour there was no one else in that finest of all pubs, the Manor Hotel at Broughton. The banded slate floor lay cool, dark and smooth as a woodland pool in autumn. The newly lit fire was burning up in the beautiful, eighteenth-century fireplace and Strafford, Gerald's black tom-cat, sat purring on the rag rug, as well he might.