Eva Ibbotson - One Dog and His Boy

Kevin had come round to find his trousers torn, and both his backside and his nose still painful, but the knowledge that he would soon be a rich man consoled him. And the wretched boy had gone quiet at last; there was no sound from inside the shed.

His first sight of the white van coming up the track made him start to his feet angrily. He didn’t want any bloomin’ vegetables and what did the bloke think he was doing, trespassing like that? But Sprocket’s first words allayed his fears.

“Milton Sprocket, from MMM,” he announced. “I gather you have the boy.”

“I’ve got the boy, but have you got the money?’

“The money will be forthcoming,” said Sprocket grandly. “As soon as I deliver the boy.”

“All right,” said Kevin. “Come on. He’s in the shed there. I had a devil of a time keeping him in.”

“Is he violent?” Sprocket asked anxiously. Children grew up very early these days, he knew, and they were strong. It was all that healthy food they were given to eat, and the exercise they took.

Kevin threw him a contemptuous glance. He unlocked the padlock, loosened the bolt, and stepped back.

Nothing happened.

“Come on out. I know you’re in there.”

Silence. Kevin made his way into the shed – and came out again.

“He’s done a bunk, the little …”

The language Kevin used surprised Sprocket. Some of the words he simply did not know, although he was a poet.

“He was in here,” said Kevin when he had sworn himself to a standstill. “It was him all right.”

“I don’t doubt it. He was seen in Todcaster last night.”

“I won’t be beaten by a squirt of a boy,” said Kevin. “But it’s all right, I know a friend who’ll help us find him. Come on. You can leave the van here.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to see Colin. He’ll put Darth and Terminator on the job. The boy won’t get away from them, I promise you.”

Darth and Terminator were dogs. Sprocket had to tell himself several times that that was what they were. They were not hellhounds, not monsters out of a hideous dream, but as the beasts growled and slavered and threw themselves against the wire fence of their enclosure it was hard to believe. When Kevin had explained that they were going to get hold of Colin’s tracker dogs, Sprocket had been nervous but excited. He hadn’t taken the course on tracking with animals at his detecting college because it cost extra, but he knew all about bloodhounds, with their wrinkled faces and melancholy eyes, who could follow the scent of any human being.

But Darth and Terminator did not have wrinkled faces and they did not have melancholy eyes. They were grizzled, short-haired beasts, squat and barrel-chested with small ears and slightly bandy legs. And they were vicious. The pit bull in their ancestry was easy to see, but there were other strains there, and the whole animal, as Colin explained, was a high-powered machine for tracking anything in flight and running it to the ground.

As Colin let them out of their enclosure and snapped on their leads, Sprocket allowed himself a question.

“They wouldn’t harm the boy, would they? I don’t think the reward will hold good if he’s damaged at all.”

“Na, they’re trained to a tee,” said Colin, spitting on to the grass. “They’ll hold a runaway down but they wouldn’t bite him. Unless I told them to tear him apart.”

While the terrifying animals were loaded into the back of the pick-up, Kevin put Sprocket in the picture. “There’s no one knows more about tracking with dogs than Colin,” he said.

It seemed that Colin had brought the sport of urban hunting to Todcaster. With Darth and Terminator, and a gang of friends with similar dogs, he went out at night after foxes who had come into town to raid the dustbins. Having no coverts to hide in, the foxes were easy prey.

“People wrote in and made a fuss,” said Colin. “Didn’t like their children finding headless foxes on the way to school.” He laughed – a deep rumbling sound that shook his swollen belly. “Darth won’t eat the back legs. He’s a picky eater, is Darth.”

They reached Kevin’s lock-up and the dogs bounded out. Sprocket gave Colin Hal’s handkerchief and the dogs sniffed round the shed. Then suddenly they burst into excited cries and raced off up the hill.

“Told you,” said Kevin. “He’ll have taken to the moors.”

The next hours were a nightmare for Sprocket, panting after Darth and Terminator as they strained at the end of their leads. The dogs kept up a steady pace and as they ran there came from their throats an eerie, half-crazed baying – a sound to freeze the blood.

“You’re sure they won’t harm the boy?” Sprocket repeated from time to time, remembering the headless foxes.

“Gentle as lambs they’ll be, when they’ve got him,” said Colin.

And Sprocket could only say again that for a boy brought back in pieces in a bin bag nobody would pay a penny.

The hunt went on. They stumbled through bogs, and over piles of last year’s bracken. The weather was changing. A sharp wind had blown in from the sea, followed by the first spots of rain, and it was now that Sprocket felt a chill on his upper lip and realized that the worst had happened. Somewhere on the way he had lost his deeply loved moustache.

And still the terrifying beasts raced on.

Then, when Sprocket thought he could not go another step, the dogs checked, sniffed hard, circled … and suddenly took off in a different direction with a series of wildly excited yelps.

“They’re getting close,” shouted Colin over his shoulder. “I’m going to let them go.”

He slipped off the leads and the slavering beasts were off at speed, their noses down, sounding off in triumph.

“This is it! They’ve found him! There – behind those trees,” shouted Colin. “Come on!”

He ran after the dogs and Kevin and Sprocket followed him. As they came into the copse, they saw that Colin was right. The hunt was over.

Darth and Terminator stood opposite each other, both tugging at something they held in their teeth, each dog claiming whatever it was as his own.

The men came closer and saw what it was. A blue face flannel.

It was not a good moment. The dogs showed no wish to go on with the hunt. As far as they could see they had done their job. They went on playing tug-of-war with their trophy while deep growls rumbled in their throats. Then when the flannel came away in two halves, they settled down to devour their prize.

“It’s going to be a rough night,” said Colin, turning up his collar against the rain. “We’d better get some shelter and try again in the morning. They’ll pick up the scent again soon enough.”

“What sort of shelter?” asked Sprocket nervously.

He was right to be nervous. Half an hour later they came to a bothy that Kevin knew about. It was nothing more than a rough, windowless hut with an earthen floor covered in sheep droppings. The wind roared through the cracks in the building. Water trickled down the walls.

Kevin and Colin did not seem to be bothered. They took out their hip flasks of whisky, belched, told a few stupid jokes, and were soon in a drunken sleep.

But for poor Sprocket, huddled in his jacket and as far away from the dogs as he could get, there was no sleep. He had never been so wretched in his life. He had put a few biscuits into his pocket before he set off – the plain kind with no disturbing raisins or nuts which might scratch the lining of his stomach – but whenever he tried to put one in his mouth either Darth or Terminator came and fastened their teeth round his wrist till he had handed it over.

As the miserable hours passed and the rain beat down on the roof, Sprocket did his best to console himself. Perhaps if he brought the boy back safely, Curzon would allow him to come upstairs sometimes. Perhaps he would even let him have an office next to the beautiful Fiona. And perhaps too the awful writer’s block which had attacked him would lift and he would be able to write his plumbing poem.