The Plague Dogs

by Richard Adams

  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 far as to stop, focus his binoculars and look down at the Moss before calling himself sharply to order. There were only about two hours of daylight left and tomorrow he must be back at work. Since Seathwaite Tarn valley would now be an unlikely place in which to find the dogs, he would make the most of the remaining light by going along the tops as far as Walna Scar, descending into Goat's Water valley (a remote place and as likely a hide-out as anywhere), up to the Hause again and so back to Wreynus by the way he had come. There was time enough 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 head of North Gully. Except for a patch on the summit the mist had cleared and it would, he reflected, be possible to see down to the valley floor on his left. With this purpose he left the path and struck off over the rocks, intending to find a place near the top of Easter Gully from which he could command a view of Goat's Water and the screes at the foot of the Dow precipices.

  Suddenly he stopped dead, with a heave in his belly like that felt by an angler when a big trout rises to the fly. For an instant, through a cleft between two projecting rocks about thirty feet down in the gully, he had caught sight of a dog--a large, black, rough-haired dog--lying, apparently asleep, beside a heap of stones at the foot of the pitch. The field of view between the two rocks was so narrow that by the time he had taken it in he had walked past the line of vision which had shown him the dog. He hastened back, dodging about with his head like a man spying, from the street, through a chink in somebody else's curtains.

  The dog came into view again and he got the binoculars on it. Yes: it was, unmistakably, one of the two dogs which had set upon his car near Thirlmere. The collar was half-buried in the rough, staring coat at the nape of its neck, but the dog was emaciated and beneath the chin, where it hung loose, the green plastic showed up as plainly as a necklace.

  "Steady, now, steady," muttered Mr. Westcott. Clasping 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 sort of steady rest.

  He took the Winchester out of its bag and mounted the telescopic backsight. Then he removed the binoculars and compass from his neck and laid them on the ground. Scanning the top of the gully, he could see a way down to the cleft that was certainly feasible, if only he could get there without dislodging scree or pebbles and so alarming the dog.

  The Winchester had no sling and, gripping it in his left hand, he began the descent. It was a distinctly nerve-racking business and at each step he bit his lip, moving from one hand-hold to another and wondering how the hell he was going to get back. He would think about that later, when the dog was dead.

  Slowly, Snitter's head cleared and he recognized once more his bleak surroundings. The tod--the hounds--the dreadful squealing of the tod--the huntsman and his knife--he himself must not stay here. The mist was almost gone. He would be in view. He began running back along the edge of Brim Fell, in the opposite direction from the terrible thing he had tried not to see.

  Soon he came round as far as Goat's Hause. Here, on the track, he at once picked up the smell of a man, very fresh; a man who could, indeed, only just have gone by. A moment's nose-reflection told him that this must be none other than the dark, burly young man from whom he had hid before meeting the tod; the man of whom he had felt so distinct a distrust and fear.

  But the man was alone and a long way from the hunt. Perhaps he was carrying food. Indeed, it was extremely likely that he was and to approach him would not really be much to risk. A sensible dog could keep at a distance and give the man no chance to put him on a lead; and the man might very well throw him some food, even if it was only a mouthful. Looking up and ahead, he could now actually see the man striding away towards the summit, not very far off.

  Snitter set off in pursuit, watching closely in case the man should turn round. Then there came a sudden swirl of mist and when it had blown aside the man had vanished.

  Puzzled, Snitter ran cautiously on. Could the man have hidden and now be lying in wait for him? But there seemed to be nowhere for him to hide. Nearing the top he went still more slowly, following the man by scent. The scent left the path and led away across the rocks. It seemed to be leading towards a steep gully, very like the one into which he, Rowf and the tod had hunted the yow by night.

  He came hesitantly up to the mouth of the gully and looked in. Sure enough, there below him, quite close, stood the man, peering down through a cleft between two rocks. It would be safe enough to attract his attention--in a place like that no human could possibly grab a dog. Furthermore, he was carrying food. Snitter could smell it. Yapping eagerly, he made a quick leap down to a convenient ledge below.

  Mr. Westcott's bowels were loose and his breath was coming short with fear and excitement. The black dog had not moved and from moment to moment, as he clambered, he continued to catch glimpses of it. He estimated that it must be about three hundred feet below him---a sure shot if only he could find the right point of vantage.

  He reached the cleft between the two projecting rocks. It was a frightening place, much less secure than it had appeared from above, with an almost sheer drop below and the smooth surfaces glistening with icy moisture. He had planned to lean against the left-hand rock and rest the rifle on its outer edge, near the centre of the gully. But now, at close quarters, this idea proved impracticable, for the rock was too tall and in any case projected downward, at considerably more than a right angle to the side of the gully. The opposite rock was better, its height diminishing to about four feet at the outer edge, but to use this for a support would, of course, involve a left-handed, left-eyed shot.

  However, thought Mr. Westcott, with the telescopic sight and at such short range a left-handed shot offered a good chance of success. Anyway, it was the only chance that was being offered. In spite of his determination he was growing increasingly nervous. The drop below alarmed him and a glance over his shoulder confirmed that, unless he was prepared to jettison his rifle, the climb back was going to be horribly precarious.

  With a thrust against the rock wall, he pushed himself across the breadth of the gully to the opposite side, leant forward, resting his weight against the right-hand rock, laid the barrel of the Winchester over its upper edge and eased himself into position. He was able to lean out towards the centre just far enough for the shot and no more.

  There was his quarry and no mistake. The dog showed up in the backsight like a black haystack. He slipped the safety-catch, aligned the fore-sight on the dog's ear and--awkwardly, with his left index finger--took the first trigger-pressure.

  At this moment, not twenty feet above him in the gully, there broke out a sharp, excited yapping. Mr. Westcott started and simultaneously fired. The shot severed the dog's collar and as it leapt up he saw the blood spurt from its neck. In the same instant he lost his balance, clutching frantically at the icy top of the rock. The rifle slipped from his grasp, a stone turned under his foot, he grabbed at the rock again, found a slippery hold, retained it for one appalling, nightmare moment--time enough to recognize the dog looking down at him--and then pitched headlong.

  When Snitter had left
him, Rowf tried to return once more to his dreary sleep on the stones. Yet despite the feeling of exhaustion which seemed to permeate his whole body as the wind the hawthorn, he remained awake, gnawing on his misery like an old, meatless bone. Snitter had said that in the last resort he meant to go down into the valley and give himself up to the men. And it was this to which Rowf knew that he himself was not equal. This was the fear of which he was ashamed--the fear of which he had always been too much ashamed to tell even Snitter. In the instant after the electric light had filled the Glenridding farmyard, he had thought: What if they don't shoot? What if they send for the whitecoats and take me back to the drowning-tank? The drowning-tank, he knew, was his and his alone. No other dog in the shed had ever been put into the drowning-tank. So it was a fair assumption that the whitecoats wanted him back to go on putting him in the tank. His fear of the tank knew no bounds and of that fear he was ashamed. The whitecoats, whom he could not help but think of as his masters, wanted him to go on drowning in the tank, and he could not do it. Once, long ago, he reflected, the poor terrier bitch whom Snitter had seen--the bitch that was now a ghost--must, to remain by her master and guard him, have faced protracted death from hunger. Yet the drowning-tank was the true reason why, after the Glenridding escape, he, Rowf, had refused to attempt another farm raid; and the reason why, though he shared Snitter's despair, he had now let him set out alone.

  He remembered a dog called Licker, who had told him how the whitecoats sometimes killed animals instantaneously. "This other dog and I," Licker had said, "were being restrained in metal harnesses. It was horribly painful, and suddenly this other dog stopped yelping and went unconscious. The whitecoats took him out of the harness and looked at him, and then one of them nodded to the other and just struck him dead on the spot. I tell you, I envied him."

  And I envy him too, thought Rowf. Why couldn't there be just a quick shot, now, and that would be that? The tod was right; you'd wonder why we take so much trouble to stay alive. The reason is that no creature can endure being hungry--as the tod very well knew. The bitch--how did she do it?

  Indeed, his hunger had now become an unendurable torment. His instincts were cloudy with hunger; he smelt the scree and the tarn as though through a drifting smoke of hunger, saw them as though through a sheet of hunger-coloured glass. He took a paw between his teeth and for a moment seriously wondered whether he could eat it. The pain of biting answered him.

  He tried to gnaw a stone, then laid his head back on his paws and began to think of all the enemies he would have been ready to fight, if only fighting could have saved Snitter's life and his own. If nothing else, he had always been a fighter. Might it not be possible, in some way or other, to go down fighting? To bite, to bite, to sink the teeth in, aarrgh!--if only I hadn't driven the tod away, perhaps we might have learned at last how to be wild animals. Men--how I hate men! I wish I'd killed one, like Snitter. Oh, I'd rip his throat out, tear open his stomach and eat it, shloop, shloop!

  Suddenly he felt a stinging pain in his neck, like the bite of a horse-fly but sharper, fiercer. As he leapt up, the sound of the shot reached him, magnified in the gully walls. Tearing over the loose stones, he could hear Snitter yapping somewhere far above and then a shriek--a human shriek--of fear. He stopped, confused. Where was Snitter? Pebbles were falling, yes and something else, something much heavier than pebbles. He could hear it, whatever it was, slithering, bumping, thudding to rest behind him in the gully. Holding himself ready to run, he watched to see what would emerge, but now there was complete stillness. He waited some time. Nothing moved. Not a sound. He could hear his own blood dripping on the stones.

  He returned cautiously round the buttress to the foot of the gully. A little way off, sprawled on the scree, lay a man's body, the head bent grotesquely sideways, one outstretched arm ending in a gashed and bleeding hand. The smell of blood was warm and strong. Rowf began to salivate. Slowly he moved nearer, drooling, licking his chops, urinating over the stones. The body smelt of sweat and fresh, meaty flesh. The smell obliterated the sky, the tarn, the stones, the wind, Rowf's own fear. There was nothing else in the world--only toothy, doggy Rowf and the meaty smell of the body. He went nearer still.

  Snitter could not make out where the man had gone. Beyond doubt, however, he had disappeared, and further than round the rock too, for even the smell of his presence--his fear and his sweat and breath-had vanished. For a little while Snitter pattered ineffectively about in the top of the gully, but then gave up and climbed out. As he was doing so, he heard Rowf barking below him--an excited, exciting sound. Something must have happened; something had changed.

  Poor old Rowf! thought Snitter. I can't really leave him, just to go down to a farm and get myself killed. Killed! Oh, good heavens, oh, the tod! That settles it! I shall have to go back and tell Rowf about the poor tod. What was it he said I was to say? "Reet mazer wi' yows"--I can't just ignore the poor tod's last message to Rowf.

  Still bemused with shock and hunger, he made his way back to the Hause and so down to Goat's Water. Stopping to bark as he crossed the infall beck, he heard a curiously muffled reply from Rowf, coming, apparently, from deep in one of the gullies. It was not until he got nearer that he heard also the sounds of dragging and worrying, smelt blood and began to salivate in his turn. Yet upon entering the gully itself, he was altogether unprepared for what he saw.

  Wednesday the 24th November

  Punctually at five minutes to three on the afternoon of the following day, Digby Driver presented himself at the front door of Animal Research. It was warmer, pleasant weather, with a pale-blue, windy sky, the becks running brown and strong with the thaw and a smell of resinous larch trees in the air. Down on Coniston Water a flock of Canada geese had come in and the big, brown-breasted, black-necked birds could be seen and heard, trumpeting and honking as they hustled across the surface of the lake. They were, one would have thought, worth a glance; but if they had been anhingas and black-browed albatrosses, Digby Driver would not have taken a single step aside, since he would not have been aware of anything unusual. He stubbed out his cigarette on the porch wall, threw it down on the step, rang the bell and shortly found himself in a stuffy interview room, facing Dr. Boycott, Mr. Powell and a cup of thin tea.

  Digby Driver had, in a manner of speaking, his back to the wall, and was beginning to realize that the Research Station's policy of sitting tight and saying as little as possible was proving, from their point of view, more effective than he had originally supposed that it would. A press campaign, like a drama, has got to be dynamic. It has to be kept moving. It is vital that it should go on finding fresh grist to its mill. The wretch who on Monday was helping the police with their inquiries must be arrested on Tuesday, tried on Wednesday, sentenced on Thursday and finally kicked when he is down with a calumnious and slanted biography on Friday. Otherwise the newspaper is slipping as a democratic organ and readership is likely to fall off. Ever since the death of Mr. Ephraim, Digby Driver, in accordance with his masters' instructions, had trailed his coat in front of Animal Research as resourcefully as he knew how. Being a clever, energetic journalist, he had managed to keep the story of the dogs very much alive. Nevertheless, none of his ploys had succeeded in provoking the scientists. Those within the castle had declined to come out and fight, reckoning, accurately enough, that in time the public were likely to lose interest in a pair of stray dogs who did no more than raid farms and kill a few sheep and of whom--whatever might be bawled to the contrary--it would ultimately have to be admitted that they were not in fact carrying bubonic plague. Some other topic would eventuate elsewhere, as it always does, and the newspaper would detach itself from the dogs and cease from troubling. As a matter of fact Driver, from his telephone calls to the London office, had already begun to have an unpleasant inkling that the inception of the said detachment might, indeed, be only just around the corner. Yet he himself, from the point of view of his own profit and career, had a strong interest in keeping the dogs' story g
oing, if he could. Should he be recalled now and the story allowed to fizzle out, the whole thing would not have concluded with that feather in his cap which his employers, relying on his journalistic acumen to boost circulation and further their own political ends, had sent him up to the Lakes to acquire. The plain truth was that Digby Driver did not know what the hell to do next. By this time the dogs ought to have been dramatically shot, after a colourful and exciting hunt spontaneously organized by enraged farmers. Or better still, the countryside should have risen up in public protest and terror of the pestilence. These things had not happened. People had merely taken in their dustbins at night and hoped that the dogs would be found dead elsewhere. Unless Animal Research could be provoked into some kind of indiscretion on the eve of the forthcoming House of Commons' Supply Day debate on the cost of research establishments, the whole thing was likely to come to a lame conclusion for lack of a Pelion to pile on Ossa. Digby Driver, if not yet up a tree, was beyond argument gripping a lower branch with one hand.

  Dr. Boycott, who was perfectly well aware of all this, greeted him with appropriately courteous urbanity.

  "I'm very glad," said Dr. Boycott, offering Driver a cigarette, "that you've at last come along to see us this afternoon. Better late than never, you know. Now do tell us how you think we can help you. I'm sure well be delighted to do so if we can."