Шейла Барнфорд - The Incredible Journey

The Indian woman stroked him gently in reward, then ladled some of the meat from the pot onto the grass. The old dog limped towards it; but before he ate he looked up in the direction of the hillside where he had left his two companions.

A small stone rebounded from rock to rock, then rolled into the sudden silence that followed.

When a long-legged, blue-eyed cat appeared out of the darkness, paused, then filled the clearing with a strident plaintive voice before walking up to the dog and calmly taking a piece of meat from him, the Indians laughed until they were speechless and hiccupping. The two little boys rolled on the ground, kicking their heels in an abandonment of mirth, while the cat chewed his meat unmoved; but this was the kind of behavior the bull terrier understood, and he joined in the fun. But he rolled so enthusiastically that the wounds reopened: when he got to his feet again his white coat was stained with blood.

All this time the young dog crouched on the hillside, motionless and watchful, although every driving, urgent nerve in his body fretted and strained at the delay. He watched the cat, well-fed and content, curl himself on the lap of one of the sleepy children by the fire; he heard the faint note of derision in some of the Indians’ voices as a little, bent, ancient crone addressed them in earnest and impassioned tones before hobbling over to the dog to examine his shoulder as he lay peacefully before the fire. She threw some cattail roots into a boiling pot of water, soaked some moss in the liquid, and pressed it against the dark gashes. The old dog did not move; only his tail beat slowly. When she had finished, she scooped some more meat onto a piece of birchbark and set it on the grass before the dog; and the silent watcher above licked his lips and sat up, but still he did not move from his place.

But when the fires began to burn low and the Indians made preparations for the night, and still his companions showed no signs of moving, the young dog grew restless. He skirted the camp, moving like a shadow through the trees on the hill behind, until he came out upon the lake’s shore a quarter of a mile upwind of the camp. Then he barked sharply and imperatively several times.

The effect was like an alarm bell on the other two. The cat sprang from the arms of the sleepy little Indian boy and ran towards the old dog, who was already on his feet, blinking and peering around rather confusedly. The cat gave a guttural yowl, then deliberately ran ahead, looking back as he paused beyond the range of firelight. The old dog shook himself resignedly and walked slowly after—reluctant to leave the warmth of the fire. The Indians watched impassively and silently and made no move to stop him. Only the woman who had first befriended him called out softly, in the tongue of her people, a farewell to the traveler.

The dog halted at the treeline beside the cat and looked back, but the commanding, summoning bark was heard again, and together the two passed out of sight and into the blackness of the night.

That night they became immortal, had they known or cared, for the ancient woman had recognized the old dog at once by his color and companion: he was the White Dog of the Ojibways, the virtuous White Dog of Omen, whose appearance heralds either disaster or good fortune. The Spirits had sent him, hungry and wounded, to test tribal hospitality; and for benevolent proof to the skeptical they had chosen a cat as his companion—for what mortal dog would suffer a cat to rob him of his meat? He had been made welcome, fed and succored: the omen would prove fortunate.

5

THE TRIO journeyed on, the pattern of the next few days being very much the same, free of incident or excitement. Leaving their resting place at daylight, they would jog steadily along by day, their pace determined mainly by the endurance of the old dog. Their favorite sleeping places were hollows under uprooted trees where they were sheltered from the wind, and able to burrow down among the drifted leaves for warmth. At first there were frequent halts and rests, but daily the terrier became stronger; after a week he was lean, but the scars on his shoulders were healing, and his coat was smooth and healthy; in fact, he was in better condition and looked younger and fitter than at the outset of the journey. He had always had a happy disposition, and most of the time looked perfectly content, trotting along through the vast stillness of the bush with stolid, unalterable good humor. He was almost always hungry, but that skillful hunter the cat kept him provided with food which, while scarcely ever satisfying, was adequate by his new standard of living.

It was only the famished young dog who really suffered, for he was not a natural hunter, and wasted a lot of ill-afforded energy in pursuit. He lived mainly on frogs, mice, and the occasional leavings of the other two; sometimes he was lucky enough to frighten some small animal away from its prey, but it was a very inadequate diet for such a large and heavily built dog, and his ribs were beginning to show through the shining coat. He was unable to relax, his constant hunger driving him to forage even when the other two were resting; and he never joined them in their amiable foolery, when sometimes the cat would skitter away in pretended fear from the growling, wagging white dog, often ending in being chased up a tree. Then the Labrador would sit apart, aloof and watchful, nervous and tense. It seemed as though he were never able to forget his ultimate purpose and goal—he was going home; home to his own master, home where he belonged, and nothing else mattered. This lodestone of longing, this certainty, drew him to lead his companions ever westward through wild and unknown country, as unerringly as a carrier pigeon released from an alien loft.

Nomadic life seemed to agree with the cat. He was in fine fettle, sleek and well groomed and as debonair as ever, and had adapted himself so well that at times it appeared as though he were positively enjoying the whole expedition. Sometimes he left the other two for an hour or so at a time, but they had ceased to pay any attention to his absence now, as sooner or later he always reappeared.

They traveled mostly on old abandoned trails, astonishingly plentiful in this virtually uninhabited region; occasionally, they cut straight through the bush. It was fortunate that the Indian summer weather still continued for the short thin coat of the bull terrier could not withstand low temperatures, and although a thicker undercoat was already growing in to compensate it would never be adequate. The cat’s coat, too, was thickening, making him appear heavier; the Labrador’s needed no reinforcement and was already adapted to all extremes, the flat, thick hairs so close together that they made an almost waterproof surface. The short days were warm and pleasant when the sun was high, but the nights were cold: one night, when there was a sudden sharp frost, the old dog shivered so much that they left the shallow cave of their resting place soon after a bright-ringed moon rose and traveled through the remainder of the night, resting most of the following morning in the warmth of the sun.

The leaves were losing their color rapidly, and many of the trees were nearly bare, but the dogwood and pigeonberry by the sides of the trail still blazed with color, and the Michaelmas daisies and fireweed flourished. Many of the birds of the forest had already migrated; those that were left gathered into great flocks, filling the air with their restless chatter as they milled around, the long drawn-out streamers suddenly wheeling to form a clamorous cloud, lifting and falling in indecision. They saw few other animals: the noisy progress of the dogs warned the shy natural inhabitants long before their approach; and those that they did meet were too busy and concerned with their winter preparations to show much curiosity. The only other bear that they had encountered was sleek and fat as butter, complacent and sleepy, his thoughts obviously already running on hibernation, and quite uninterested in strange animals. He was, in fact, sitting on a log in the sun when the animals saw him; after giving them a sleepy inspection from his little, deep-set eyes he yawned and continued the lazy scratching of his ear. The cat, however, growled angrily to himself for nearly an hour after this encounter.