I said I couldn’t farm without Pip, but when I ran in the sheepdog trials, nobody worried when I walked to the post.
“I’ve been a herd all me life, but I’m no hand at the trials me sel.”
I eased up. Pleasant fire. Good whiskey. How had I thought Scots were hard to understand? I said, “When I think of the dogs, it isn’t the trials. I value them for what they do at home.”
It happened last spring. Full-moon night. I was undressing for bed when a car started honking up on the road. My wife said, “The lambs are out.”
So long as nobody brought up that subject, bed was still a possibility. “Pip,” I called.
The Virginia State Road was the upper border of our farm. Above the road were eighteen thousand acres of unfenced, roadless, wooded Bullpasture Mountain: State Game Commission land. Sheep climb when they’re confused or afraid, and last fall my wife and I spent days up there scouring the rough ground for missing sheep.
I drove down the road with my lights off, looking for the lambs in the road, hoping to intercept them before they started up the mountain. Pip sat in the passenger’s seat, peering out the window. When I stopped the car, twenty lambs clambered through the fence back down into the field, but when Pip and I got out, there was no way of knowing whether all the lambs had gone back in or if others were farther down the road or up the mountain. There was a muddle of hoof-prints and droppings on the hard dirt road. I drove along slowly until I reached the steel bridge, the farthest the lambs would have gone, parked, and Pip and I walked back below the great looming mountain. Nobody else lives in that valley, and there were no lights and no cars. The glaucous moon shone on the low fog below. I kept my flashlight in my pocket.
Whenever I came to a hollow that’d take lambs up the mountain, I asked Pip to inspect it. “No, Boss. The sheep haven’t gone up here.”
The moon was very beautiful, the fog swirled. When I paused again, Pip assured me the sheep hadn’t gone up here either.
Beyond the farm’s east boundary is a decaying log house and a handful of ruined piebald apple trees. Tufts of wool clung to the torn fence. Below lay three hundred acres of ill-kempt ground between the road and the river.
I told Pip, “Go down there on the right hand and see if you find anything.”
Hunkered on that moonswept road above the ocean of fog, I waited ten minutes before Pip came back to report: no sheep. Pip’s tongue was hanging out. He was a very happy dog.
I asked my dog to go out to the left, around the old log house, and look for sheep there.
After a quarter hour, Pip emerged from the fog and told me there weren’t any lambs down there anywhere. Satisfied, man and dog went home. I’d fix the fence in the morning.
Tom Reid filled my glass. He said, “You don’t want to get caught by our police, drinking and driving. They’ll have your license for it.”
I said it wasn’t too far to my hotel.
“Will ye pay cash?” Tom Reid asked.
“Sure.”
“I know that McTeir. He’ll come over to the house and say, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Just working at the price you see.” Tom Reid leaned forward, past the fire. “I’m thinking I’ll let ye have the bonnie wee bitch,” he said.
I thought I already had her. It took me aback that the other man had been making up his mind as I talked about Pip.
“Ye’ll write? I’ll want to hear about her.”
“Yes. I’m sure she’ll do well.”
“We’ll hope she will. But I’ll want to hear whether she does well or ill.”
I said I’d send photographs. “It’s pretty where we live. All the hills are timbered.” I’d find out where to get Gael’s eyes tested. PRA (progressive retinal atrophy) and CEA (collie eye anomaly) occur often enough to be wary of them.
Tom Reid said, “Our bargain depends on the eye test?”
“Aye,” I said.
“Ach weel,” he eased his wooden leg.
When I took Tom’s hand this time, it was firm. Handshakes in Scotland are for sealing bargains, not for howdy-dos.
On the way back to the hotel, I kept an eye out for police cars but didn’t see any. I had a hard time squeezing into the hotel car park.
“Did you find your man then?” Robert, the hotel keeper asked.
“And the bitch. Drinks on me.”
In Montana, drinks for the house are a celebratory custom. This custom, though unknown in Scotland, was not unwelcome and served the same purpose: I met everybody. “So you like her?”
“Oh, she’s bonnie. Very wee. She won’t weigh thirty-five pounds.”
“Did ye get a look at her mouth?” the prison warder pointed into his open mouth, which was pink. “A gude sheepdog’ll have a black mouth.”
“Sure.”
It turned out everybody knew Carswilloch Farm where Tom Reid was living. Carswilloch Farm was the famous tup farm they’d talked about earlier.
“He canna have been there long,” the warder said, shaking his head. “I’ll ask me uncle about him.”
The young people who’d been in earlier returned for a nightcap. Robert, the hotel keeper, bought a pint and I returned the favor. Back and forth it went.
The next morning, over breakfast in the Creetown Arms, I realized I’d spent eleven hundred pounds (nineteen hundred dollars) for a dog I’d seen for five minutes at a trial and subsequently in the dark.
Hung over, I pottered back up the coast to Ayr. There were public phones in Ayr where I could call my wife and let her know about the bitch.
I’d spent less than nineteen hundred dollars on my farm truck.
I crossed into Ayr on an ancient stone footbridge and wondered they hadn’t torn it down. Like all Scottish towns, there was a decently clean public loo in the middle of town and signs pointing to it. (What few public toilets American cities have are well hidden for fear the wrong sort will gather there. Americans would not be thought sexual fools.)
I didn’t phone my wife after all. She’d be sure to ask questions about the bitch. The Glasgow Veterinary School said yes, indeed, there’s an eye specialist coming in: Tuesday, a week. I asked where I could catch the specialist sooner, and the vet school said he’d be in England. England seemed very far. It is not Scotland. It is a foreign land.
There’re more handlers at Dalrymple the second day of the trial. I ask John Templeton how it turned out with the fence contractor, and he says it was all right, the neighbor coughed up his share. I say I’ve found my bitch.
“Who had her?”
“Tom Reid. Reid. He’s no trials man. A dog breaker, that’s what he is.”
John Templeton’s face was blank.
“That’s him over there. With those three others. He’s the man with the tinted glasses. He’s got a bad leg.”
“Oh him.” Templeton made a face. “That man’d sell anything. He’d sell his shoes.”
I said something about how well she’d gone last night, how she was a “bonny wee bitch,” but the words sounded stagey in my mouth.
John Templeton said, “Excuse me. I’ll be running next.”
“Oh, sure. Sure.” When John Templeton jumped his dog out of the car, I asked, “Now, which dog is that?”
The dog was Roy, the distinctively marked dog I’d watched at Neilston … and Kinross … and Airtnock. …
“Roy,” John said, and turned away.
Tom Reid stayed deep among his friends. Their uniforms were wellies, waterproofs, weary sports jackets. Reid was, by far, the sharpest dressed and didn’t introduce me to anyone. I explained about Glasgow and eye testing, and it all seemed a complex, difficult notion. Reid’s dialect had thickened overnight, and I said, “Sorry?” and “Say again?”
Reid said he got his dogs tested when the vets came to the trials during the regular season. I said a week from Tuesday was long enough to wait. “I’ll drive you,” I said.
“Ach weel.” Reid said he’d like to get his other bitch, his trial bitch, tested, too.
I said
sure, I’d make that appointment as well. I wished Reid had brought the bonny wee bitch today. I was dying for another look at her. I really wanted to ask Reid if he sold a great many dogs but feared his answer. “Tuesday morning,” I said. “I’ll pick you up. Not this week, next week.”
I drove deeper into the countryside, no place in mind, taking the smaller road at every junction.
The Black Bull Hotel in Straiton was booked up, sorry. Wedding party. I hoped that was true. I was sick: white faced and sweat greasy and substandard. Outside town I found a horse farm that took guests, and upstairs, in my small clean room, at two o’clock I climbed into bed and didn’t get up until seven the next morning.
5
Sirrah
For a week I played tourist. Wednesday daybreak, no other soul in sight, I waded a tidal flat to the hulk of Castle Tioram. Gray-black stones clung to the sharp outcrop like a smashed barnacle. Outside, the redoubt was big and strong and I would have been afraid to attack it. Inside, it was cramped, scarce room for the fear and sweat and woodsmoke of those huddled here for protection while, across the sea loch, oily plumes told which hovels had been fired.
All over Scotland are sites where men tossed their lives away, gaily, for passions that are, today, incomprehensible. Usually men think their rulers know more than they do. Sometimes sheepdogs think so. Invariably, sheep do.
I drove to Killin in the Central Highlands and finally met the man other Scots had been pointing me towards: John Angus MacLeod. I spent a strange and unsettling weekend following John to the trials.
Next Tuesday, if Gael failed her eye exam, I’d be off the hook: “Terribly sorry, Mr. Reid. Glad to have met you. Too bad we couldn’t strike a bargain.”
Why hadn’t I taken time to inspect her, deliberately, in the daylight? Had I been so very desperate? Why hadn’t I seen the signs? Reid’s too sharp clothes, his tinted glasses, his polished dealer’s shoes?
I’d been blinded by the dream of a great dog.
Maybe that’s why I stopped in Hamilton to see Jock Richardson again. Although the local pub was the roughest I’d seen in Scotland, furniture that had been used as weapons in bar brawls, a sign that said, simply NO FOOTBALL COLOURS PERMITTED; council housing across the road was neat enough and the Richardsons’ duplex had flowers bordering its postage stamp front yard. Jock was in shirtsleeves—a vaguely smiling big man with no belt and his waistband turned inside out. “I do the vegetables,” he confessed. “It’s Mary does the flowers.”
He didn’t know why I’d come, he was no longer on the Hill, his great dogs were all dead, but Jock’s courtesy ran deep and he showed me into the parlor and Mary brought tea while he ruffled through the boxes that held his clippings and awards. “Mary, where’s Cap’s papers?”
He spoke about Sweep, a big black dog, very powerful with sheep: “If he couldn’t wear [bring] them to you, Sweep could practically carry them.” Wiston Cap? Cap made Jock confident when he went to the post.
Atop the trophy case, above the neglected, unpolished trophies, a photo showed Jock and Cap in their prime. Jock wears the bemused smile of a man who finds himself, briefly, immortal. Cap is smiling too.
Tied in the shed out back, Jock’s got a young dog. Yes, yes, he’s Cap breeding, two years old. No, Jock hasn’t trained him, he has no sheep.
The dog is strong chested and is desperately keen and Jock makes a slight motion of his hand and the young dog is glad to drop like a stone.
“A pity,” Jock says.
I think of the lovely, intricate conversations they will never have. I agree that yes, yes, it is a pity.
Later that afternoon, I went into a library to read James Hogg’s account of his grand dog, Sirrah.
It is all regrets.
I
SCOTLAND,1803
My dog was always my companion. I conversed with him the whole day—I shared every meal with him, and my plaid cloak in the time of a shower; the consequence was, that I generally had the best dogs in all the country. The first remarkable one that I had was named Sirrah. He was beyond all comparison the best dog I ever saw. He was of a surly unsocial temper—disdained all flattery and refused to be caressed; but his attention to his master’s commands and interests never will again be equalled by any of the canine race. The first time that I saw him, a drover was leading him in a rope; he was hungry, and lean, and far from being a beautiful cur, for he was all over black, and had a grim face striped with dark brown. The man had bought him of a boy for three shillings, somewhere on the Border, and doubtless had used him very ill on his journey. I thought I discovered a sort of sullen intelligence in his face, notwithstanding his dejected and forlorn situation, so I gave the drover a guinea for him, and appropriated the captive to myself. I believe there never was a guinea so well laid out; at least, I am satisfied that I never laid out one to so good purpose. He was scarcely then a year old, and knew so little of herding that he had never turned sheep in his life, but as soon as he discovered that it was his duty to do so, and that it obliged me, I can never forget with what anxiety and eagerness he learned his different evolutions. He would try every way deliberately, till he found out what I wanted him to do, and when once I made him to understand a direction, he never forgot or mistook it again. Well as I knew him, he often astonished me, for when hard pressed in accomplishing his task, he had expedients of the moment that bespoke a great share of the reasoning faculty. Were I to relate all his exploits, it would require a volume; I shall only mention one or two, to prove what kind of an animal he was.
I was a shepherd for ten years on the same farm, where I had always about 700 lambs put under my charge every year at weaning time. As they were of the short, or black-faced breed, the breaking of them was very ticklish and difficult task. I was obliged to watch them night and day for the first four days to prevent them from rejoining their mothers. During this time, I always had a lad to assist me. It happened one year, that just about midnight the lambs broke loose, and came up the moor upon us, making a noise with their running louder than thunder. We got up and waved our cloaks and shouted, in hopes to turn them, but we only made matters worse, for in a moment they were all round us, and by our exertions we cut them into three divisions; one of these ran north, another south, and those that came up between us, straight up the moor to the westward. I called out, “Sirrah, my man, they’re a’ [all] away;” the word, of all others, that set him most upon the alert, but owing to the darkness of the night, and blackness of the moor, I never saw him at all. As the division of the lambs that ran southward were going straight towards the fold, where they had been that day taken from their dams, I was afraid they would go there and again mix with them, so I threw off part of my clothes, and pursued them, and by great personal exertion, and the help of another old dog that I had besides Sirrah, I turned them, but in a few minutes afterwards lost them altogether. I ran here and there, not knowing what to do, but always, at intervals, gave a loud whistle to Sirrah, to let him know that I was depending on him. By that whistling, the lad who was assisting me found me out, but he likewise had lost all trace whatsoever of the lambs. I asked if he had never seen Sirrah? He said he had not, but that after I left him, a wing of the lambs had come round him with a swirl, and that he supposed Sirrah had given them a turn, though he could not see him for the darkness. We both concluded, that whatever way the lambs ran at first, they would finally land at the fold where they left their mothers, and without delay, we bent our course towards that; but when we came there there was nothing of them nor any kind of bleating to be heard, and we discovered with vexation that we had come on a wrong track.
My companion then bent his course towards the farm of Glen on the north, and I ran away westward for several miles, along the wild tract where the lambs had grazed while following their dams. We met after it was day, far up in a place called the Black Cleuch, but neither of us had been able to discover our lambs, nor any traces of them. It was the most extraordinary circumstance that had ever occurred in t
he annals of the pastoral life! We had nothing for it but to return to our master and inform him that we had lost his whole flock of lambs and knew not what was become of one of them.
On our way home, however, we discovered a body of lambs at the bottom of a deep ravine, called the Flesh Cleuch, and the indefatigable Sirrah standing in front of them, looking all around for some relief, but still standing true to his charge. The sun was then up; and when we first came in view of them, we concluded that it was one of the divisions of the lambs, which Sirrah had been unable to manage until he came to that commanding situation, for it was about a mile and a half distant from the place where they first broke and scattered. But what was our astonishment when we discovered by degrees that not one lamb of the whole flock was wanting! How he had got all the divisions collected in the dark is beyond my comprehension. The charge was left entirely to himself from midnight until the rising of the sun, and if all the shepherds in the Forest had been there to assist him, they could not have effected it with greater propriety. All that I can say further is, that I never felt so grateful to any creature below the sun as I did to Sirrah that morning.
I remember another achievement of his which I admired still more. I was sent to a place in Tweeddale, called Stanhope, to bring home a wild ewe that had strayed from home. The place lay at the distance of about fifteen miles, and my way to it was over steep hills, and athwart deep glens; there was no path, and neither Sirrah nor I had ever travelled the road before. The ewe had been caught and put into a barn over night; and, after being frightened in this way, was set out to me in the morning to be driven home by herself. She was as wild as a roe, and bounded away to the side of the mountain like one. I sent Sirrah on a circular route wide before her, and let him know that he had the charge of her. When I left the people at the house, Mr. Tweedie, the farmer, said to me, “Do you really suppose that you will drive that sheep over these hills, and out through the midst of all the sheep in the country?” I said I would try to do it. “Then, let me tell you,” said he, “that you may as well try to travel to yon sun.” The man did not know that I was destined to do both the one and the other! Our way, as I said, lay all over wild hills and through the middle of flocks of sheep. I seldom got a sight of the ewe, for she was sometimes a mile before me, sometimes two; but Sirrah kept her in command the whole way—never suffered her to mix with other sheep—nor, as far as I could judge, ever to deviate twenty yards from the track by which he and I went the day before. When we came over the great height towards Manor Water, Sirrah and his charge happened to cross it a little before me, and our way lying down hill for several miles, I lost all traces of them, but still held on my track. I came to two shepherd’s houses, and asked if they had seen anything of a black dog, with a branded face and a long tail, driving a sheep? No, they had seen no such thing, and, besides, all their sheep, both above and below the houses, seemed to be unmoved. I had nothing for it but to hold to my way homeward; and at length, on the corner of a hill at the side of the water, I discovered my trusty coal-black friend sitting with his eye fixed intently on the burn below him, and sometimes giving a casual glance behind to see if I was coming; he had the ewe standing there, safe and unhurt.
Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men Page 10