The Plague Dogs: A Novel

by Richard Adams

  “What do you mean? You mean you can—”

  “Call it? Yes, I call it the sea. The tod told me. A deep-blue sleep.”

  Rowf, a trifle light-headed in his emptiness, remembered the man whom Snitter had killed and the strange power which, according to his account, had seemed to come pouring from his head.

  “I say, Snitter?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you really make things happen—you said you could—you know, alter things and turn them all upside-down? You can’t really, can you? That man just died, didn’t he? It was only one of your queer turns that made you think you killed him?”

  “I don’t know, Rowf. Sometimes I feel sure that that’s really what I did without meaning to, and then the feeling disappears, so that I—well, I can’t even remember what it felt like to feel like that. It’s muddling.”

  The wretched dog seemed upset. Rowf gave him a playful nip.

  “Come on now, Snitter, I didn’t mean it seriously—it was only a joke. But if you really can do these things, why don’t you—well, why don’t you make all the men afraid of us, for instance? Ho, yes, that’s the idea!” Rowf paused to relish it, then began to elaborate. “Make them all run away—make them call their dogs off, open their gates and—and send us home carrying a nice, warm chicken? Now that really would be something! Couldn’t you do that for us, Snitter, hey?”

  Snitter raised his split head and licked his friend’s nose. “I‘ll try, Rowf; but I don’t really know whether I could manage all that.”

  “Neither do I, old chap. I only wish you could.”

  “You mustn’t think I—oh, Rowf, you were only making fun of me!”

  “No, no, of course I wasn’t! I know you could do all that quite easily if you wanted to—it’s just that tonight’s not convenient—that’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Bidin’ there yammerin’ aboot nowt—”

  “Oh, shut up, tod! Let us alone!”

  “Ay, Ah will thet. Ah’s off t’see if w’ can bash our way into th’ henhoose. Nay, marrer, let me do’t mesel’. Ye‘ll ownly clitter an’ clatter till th’ farmer comes, an’ that‘ll mean another neet wi’ ne meat, an’ mebbies worse.”

  Striding Edge, Helvellyn

  Before Rowf could reply the tod had melted away with its usual silence. A few moments later they caught sight for an instant of its slim, dark shape slinking across a patch of moonlight where the lonnin led into the farmyard.

  “Hush, Snitter,” said Rowf quickly, “lie down again!” For behind the thin shelter of the bracken patch Snitter had stood up and was capering slowly from paw to paw, giving low whines and wagging his stumpy tail.

  “Well, Rowf, I was only doing my best to—you know, you said to make the men give us—this is what they call a tincantation—but I don’t really know quite how to go about it—”

  “It was a joke, Snitter, for goodness’ sake! Now pull yourself together—we’re going to risk our lives in a minute, and that’s real—it’s not a game. Even you can tell the difference if you try. You’re hungry—that’s real. And in there are hens, and they’re real, and a man, possibly with a gun, and he’s real. Got it?”

  “Yes, Rowf.”

  “Well, don’t forget it.”

  There was a rustle in the fern and the tod reappeared. Its jaws were faintly glistening, yellow and viscous, and there was a smooth smell, at once creamy and lightly savoury, that made both ravenous dogs slobber. Rowf licked at its mask.

  “What’s that you smell of?”

  “Chucky-eggs, hinny. Th’ wez a layaway nest i’ th’ nettles roond th’ back. Th’ aald clucker wez away an’ aall. Aa’s taken th’ lot an’ nipped ootbye sharp as a flash. Ye canna gan in there t’neet—it’d be nowt but th’ Dark fer th’ bowth o’ yuz. There’s two chaps bletherin’ away i’ th’ hemmel an’ a woman forbye. If th’ hens or th’ dergs wez te kick up a row they’d be strite doon on ye, and if ye wor in th’ henhoose they’d hev ye afore ye could torn roond. Mebbies they’d have a gun an’ that’d be yer lot. Howway on oot of it noo! We’ll try elsewhere.”

  The tod’s air of artful self-possession, its smell, the smell of the eggs, his own fume of hunger—Rowf felt his teeth on edge to burst his dripping mouth.

  “You crawling, sneaking little rat! You go in there and eat your head off and then you come back and tell us we’re not to! You stinking, underground—”

  He leapt for the sharp-nosed, grinning mask, but in the instant that his weight fell on the patch of long grass from which it had been protruding, it was no longer there. Heedless now of how much noise he made, he thrust here and there through the undergrowth, drew blank and came pushing his way back to Snitter, who had not moved.

  “Goes in there, stuffs itself full of eggs and then, oh yes! it’s ready to go home, the dirty little—”

  “He didn’t say that, Rowf. You’re even more light-headed than I am. All he said—”

  “I tell you, I’m finished with it—and for good this time. It’s just a filthy scrounger. We don’t need it to help us to stay alive—we never did. It just hangs about and eats what we kill—”

  “That’s not true, Rowf. He’s done as much for himself as us all along—both with sheep and hen-roosts. He can’t help what he is. It’s not his fault that only one of the three of us has the weight to pull down a yow. I admire him—I like him—”

  “And I don’t! The mere smell of it drives me as mad as you! If ever it shows up again I’ll chew it to bits—”

  “It’s only your hunger—”

  “Yes, and now I’m going to do something about that, too. Come on!”

  “But Rowf, the tod warned us—”

  “I don’t care what the damned tod said. We’re going to eat.”

  Rowf led the way down the bank into the lonnin and squeezed under the farmyard gate. Snitter followed. The cowshed, at right angles to the farmhouse, flanked one side of the yard, and through its open door came electric light and the sounds of human voices, clinking cans and the soft thudding and stamping of cattle in their stalls. Evidently milking was getting finished late.

  “They’re terribly near, Rowf—”

  “They’re busy—they won’t hear us—”

  “There’s sure to be a dog—”

  “And I’m a dog, too—”

  From the further end of the farmyard they could hear a faint pecking and rustling, followed by the quiet, slow clucking (“rer-er’ck, t’ck t’ck”) of a drowsy hen awake among her roosting sisters. The sound drew Rowf entranced. With claws clicking on the tarred surface, he trotted briskly through the cowpats, down the length of the yard and so up to the hens’ wire enclosure. Here he stopped, sniffing the dark air and listening to the noises from inside the henhouse, which rode, laden, above his rapacity like Noah’s ark above the gulping flood.

  Snitter ran up behind him, whispering urgently.

  “We can’t do it, Rowf! You can’t smash your way into that! The tod might have crept in through a crack, thrown a couple of hens down and we could have grabbed them and run; but that’s all finished now. This farmyard’s a fearful dead-end, too; an absolute trap. For goodness’ sake let’s get out quick and try somewhere else!”

  “No fear! There’s a started board there—see it? I’ll shove it inwards and you can squeeze through and do the job better than ever that damned tod could. Only be quick! Ready? Right!”

  Rowf plunged up the wooden steps and hurled his weight against the sprung board beside the trap-door. It levered stiffly inwards and at once Snitter, as he had been told, pushed his way inside. Instantly a fearful racket broke out around him—clucking, squawking, clattering, flapping here and there and the resonant clanging of wiry perches in close, odorous darkness. He plunged forward at random, came upon a hen and bit it through the neck, pushed it out of the gap and heard it thump, jerking and twitching, on the ground.

  “I can’t—can’t hold the board open any longer,” gasped Rowf in the dark. “Come on out quick or you’ll be stuck
inside.”

  Snitter pushed his head and shoulders under the splintered end of the board. It dug into his back, knifing downwards painfully. He pushed harder. The board gave and he stumbled forward between Rowf’s front paws, knocked him off balance and fell with him to the ground beside the hot, pulsating body of the hen. Picking himself up, he grabbed the body by the neck as the tod had taught him and began to run with it. At that moment the farmyard was suddenly flooded with light. He dropped the hen and pulled up, terrified and confused.

  He looked about him. Along the side of the farmyard opposite to the cowshed, a high stone wall extended down to the gate, without even a tree-trunk to break its line and never so much as a rubbish-bin or old crate left against it. The farmhouse windows were shut; so was the door. They were in an enclosed, walled space, lit by electric bulbs, from which the only ways out were through the farmhouse, the cowshed and the gate leading into the lonnin. As he realized this, two men, followed by a dog, came striding into the light from the shadow outside the cowshed door. One was carrying a heavy stick and the other a shot-gun.

  A cat went racing across the yard and was gone like a flash under the gate into the dark. Then Rowf was beside him, gripping a bone in his teeth—presumably one left lying about by the very dog which was now glaring at them between the men’s legs.

  At least it may not hurt, thought Snitter. With any luck it may be over in a moment.

  “I’m sorry, Snitter,” mumbled Rowf through the bone. “It was all my fault.”

  “It’s all right, old Rowf,” answered Snitter. “The hen didn’t complain, after all.” His confusion was gone. He was astonished to find himself so calm.

  Suddenly a woman, screaming at the top of her voice, ran forward from the cowshed door, seized the already-levelled barrel of the gun and pushed it upward. As the man shouted and turned upon her angrily, she flung out a pointing arm towards the dogs, babbling a torrent of words which guttered down into whimpering and frightened tears. The second man uttered a low, corroborative word and at once all three began to back away, staring at Snitter and Rowf in wide-eyed horror. The dog, who had been moving towards them, bristling, was checked by a quick, “ ‘Ere Jed, ’ere Jed,” and, sensing his master’s fear, turned and slunk back across the yard.

  Dazed, Rowf looked about him. For a moment he wondered whether perhaps Snitter and he might already be dead. Perhaps this was what happened—some kind of trance? He took a few hesitant steps forward and at once the three humans, with quick, jerky scratchings of boots on the stones, sidled still further away. Then one of the men, at a run, stumbled across the yard, tugged open the gate, propped it wide and hurried back to his companions. At the same moment the woman, who had edged along the wall to the farmhouse door, fumbled an instant with the latch and disappeared inside.

  Snitter and Rowf, as stupefied as though they had been struck suddenly deaf or found all odour destroyed throughout the world, made their way across the yard and out through the open gate. They had gone no more than a few yards down the lonnin when there sounded behind them a thudding of boots. Rowf, looking quickly round, saw one of the men carrying the hen’s body on a garden fork. He tossed it, and it fell with a thump between the two of them, smelling of succulent flesh and warm blood. Hardly knowing what he did, Snitter snatched it up in his mouth and ran into the darkness with Rowf at his side.

  Looking back from among the bracken, they could see the farmyard lights still burning, the two men standing together, apparently deep in talk, and the dog sitting beside them with an air of amazement as deep as their own.

  “Snitter! What—what on earth did you—how—how did you do it? I don’t understand—”

  “I don’t know, Rowf! I’m as bewildered as you are! I must have done it, I suppose—at least—but I’ve no idea how.”

  “It’s—it’s terrifying! You might have killed them—set the farm on fire—you’re not safe! I never supposed you could really—”

  “The hen, Rowf; your bone! We’ve got food! Let’s forget the rest—it’s too—too frightening! I’ll never know what I did! Can you find the way back without the tod?”

  “Yes—yes, I think so. If the place is still there. If we’re still here. I—I don’t know what to—I can’t make head or tail of it. Snitter, you must be—”

  “Let it alone, Rowf! Drop it! Come on back!”

  They ate their kill at the top of the wood, strewing guts and feathers all abroad without a thought and then, their hunger satisfied, made their way back to Stang End without another word between them.

  Thursday the 18th November

  “I see,” said Digby Driver, “and the Research Station wouldn’t tell you anything?”

  “Nay, not a thing,” replied Dennis Williamson. “ ‘Noothing to say.’ I assked the boogger why he’d roong, like, if he’d noothing to say.”

  “What did he reply to that?”

  “Said he were returning my call as matter of courtesy. Ah said Ah’d return him dog through his bluidy window-pane if Ah got channce.”

  “Well, let’s hope we do get just that, Mr. Williamson. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve been all over your land pretty thoroughly, haven’t you, to try and find these dogs?”

  “Ay, Ah have thet.”

  “And you had a look into the old coppermine shaft above the tarn?”

  “Ay, well, there’d been soomthing in theer, but it were hard to tell whether it were dog or fox or owt. There were boanes an’ that layin’ around and there were smell of fox reet enoof. But fox could have browt boanes in on it oan, like. It could have been nowt but fox, or it could have been dog. But if it were dog, it’s not been back theer, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, if they’re still up there I mean to find them. You know the land. D’you think we could—”

  Gwen Williamson came out of the door of Tongue ‘Us into the yard.

  “Mr. Driver? It’s telephone—for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Ay—Mary Longmire from t’Newfield. I think she’s got a message. Happen soombody wants you.”

  Digby Driver went indoors, picked up the receiver and spoke.

  “Mr. Driver?” said Mary Longmire’s voice. “I thought you might be up with Dennis, so I just gave him a ring. Sorry to bother you. There’s been someone on the telephone enquiring for you. He wouldn’t leave his name, but he was speaking from Glenridding, over by Ullswater. Apparently your dogs were seen there lasst night.”

  “My dogs? Are you—was he—sure?”

  “No doubt about it, he said. They had green collars, and one had a terrible split all along it head. He wanted to know what he ought to do. Said he’d informed Medical Officer of Health, but his wife was still terrified on account of the plague.”

  “Did he leave a number? Any address?”

  “Nay, he did not.”

  “All right, Mrs. Longmire, many thanks. I’ll get over there right away.”

  Digby Driver put down the receiver and smote his forehead with his open palm.

  “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

  Digby Driver quite often said things like this. He could not have identified the context and would not have been particularly bothered if anyone had told him what it was.

  FIT 8

  N

  ow leave we to speak of Digby Driver and turn we unto Snitter and Rowf, that all this while had been awaiting darkness in their refuge upon Stang End. The rain, drifting across the bare, waste solitude, made, even to a dog’s ear, only the slightest sound in trickling between the stones. Snitter, watching his breath condense on the wall of the ruined flue, wondered whether Rowf were really as hungry as he smelt or whether the smell got its intensity from his own starved belly. He raised his paw from the chicken bone which it had been holding down and as he did so Rowf rolled over and gripped the bone between his teeth.

  “Oh—you’re going to gnaw that, Rowf, are you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Did I enjoy it?”

&nbs
p; “What?”

  “It’s the one you pushed across to me just now.”

  “Oh. Sorry, There’s been nothing left on any of them for hours, anyway.”

  “I know.”

  “I hate this place.”

  “We’ve got so many friends to help us choose a better one, too. The whitecoats, the farmers—”

  “I wish we’d never come here. That damned tod!”

  “I’m sure he was only doing what he’d have done by himself and for himself. I wish you hadn’t driven him away, Rowf. You terrified him—he won’t come back now.”

  “Good. Just the smell of him—”

  “But Rowf, we can’t kill sheep without him—not safely—or go on taking ducks and hens. I’m afraid we may not even be able to keep hidden. He knew such a lot that we didn’t.”

  “We killed sheep before we met him.”

  “One sheep. Without him we’d never have lasted this long. We’d have been caught long ago.”

  “I killed one above Bull Crag that morning.”

  “Rowf, it’s twice as hard without the tod, you know it is. We shan’t manage a kill tonight. We shall make a mess of it and have to give up again, that’s the plain truth.”

  “My paw’s painful. I can’t run on it properly. But even apart from that, it seems to get harder and harder. Like—like—”

  “Like what, Rowf?” Snitter changed his cramped position on the stones.

  “I was going to say, like the whitecoats’ tank. I feel just as though I were sinking, sometimes. And there’s no avoiding it, either. We’ve got to eat. But I’m afraid the time’s coming when I’m not going to be able to kill.”

  Snitter made no reply and they lay unspeaking for some time, while the rain billowed on across the fell.

  “Last night, Rowf—I still don’t understand. What happened? Those men were frightened—badly frightened. Did you smell them?”

  “Yes, I did. But Snitter, I’ve been thinking—if you can do all that to humans and other dogs, why do we need to hunt sheep at all? Why don’t we just go down there—”