The Incredible Journey (5 page)

They slept in the same place that night and most of the following day, and the weather mercifully continued warm and sunny. By the third day the old dog seemed almost recovered and the wounds were closed. He had spent most of the day ambling around and sleeping, so that by now he seemed almost frisky and quite eager to walk a little.

So, in the late afternoon, they left the place which had been their home for three days and trotted slowly along the track together again. By the time the
moon rose they had traveled several miles, and they had come to the edge of a small lake which the track skirted.

A moose was standing in the water among the lily pads on the far shore, his great antlered head and humped neck silhouetted clearly against the pale moon. He took no notice of the strange animals across the water but thrust his head again and again under the water, raising it high in the air after each immersion, and arching his neck. Two or three water hens swam out from the reeds, a little crested grebe popped up like a jack-in-the-box, in the water beside them, and the spreading ripples of their wake caught the light of the moon. As the three sat, ears pricked, they watched the. moose squelch slowly out of the muddy water, shake himself, and turn, cantering up the bank out of sight.

The young dog turned his head suddenly, his nose twitching, for his keen scent had caught a distant whiff of wood smoke, and of something else — something unidentifiable.… Seconds later, the old dog caught the scent too, and started to his feet, snuffing and questioning with his nose. His thin whippy tail began to sweep to and fro and a bright gleam appeared in the slanted black-currant eyes. Somewhere, not too far away, were human beings—his world: he could not mistake their message—or refuse their invitation.—they were undoubtedly cooking something. He trotted off determinedly in the direction of the tantalizing smell. The young dog followed somewhat reluctantly, and for once
the cat passed them both; a little moon-mad perhaps, for he lay in wait to dart and strike, then streaked back into the shadows, only to reappear a second later in an elaborate stalk of their tails. Both dogs ignored him.

The scent on the evening breeze was a fragrant compound of roasting rice, wild-duck stew and wood smoke. When the animals looked down from a hill, tantalized and hungry, they saw six or seven fires in the clearing below—their flames lighting up a semicircle of tents and conical birch-bark shelters against a dark background of trees; flickering over the canoes drawn up on the edge of a wild rice marsh and dying redly in the black waters beyond; and throwing into ruddy relief the high, flat planes of brown Ojibway faces gathered around the centers of warmth and brightness.

The men were a colorful lot in jeans and bright plaid shirts, but the women were dressed in somber colors. Two young boys, the only children there, were going from fire to fire shaking grain in shallow pans and stirring it with paddles as it parched. One man in long soft moccasins stood in a shallow pit trampling husks, half his weight supported on a log frame. Some of the band lay back from the fires, smoking and watching idly, talking softly among themselves; while others still ate, ladling the fragrant contents of a black iron pot onto tin plates. Every now and then one of them would throw a bone back over a shoulder into the bush, and the watching
animals gazed hungrily after. A woman stood at the edge of the clearing pouring grain from one bark platter to another, and the loose chaff drifted off on the slight wind like smoke.

The old dog saw nothing of this, but his ears and nose supplied all that he needed to know: he could contain himself no longer and picked his way carefully down the hillside, for his shoulder still pained him. Halfway down he sneezed violently in an eddy of chaff. One of the boys by the fire looked up at the sound, his hand closing on a stone, but the woman nearby spoke sharply, and he waited, watching intently.

The old dog limped out of the shadows and into the ring of firelight, confident, friendly, and sure of his welcome; his tail wagging his whole stern ingratiatingly, ears and lips laid back in his nightmarish grimace. There was a stunned silence—broken by a wail of terror from the smaller boy, who flung himself at his mother—and then a quick excited chatter from the Indians. The old dog was rather offended and uncertain for a moment, but he made hopefully for the nearest boy, who retreated, nervously clutching his stone. But again the woman rebuked her son, and at the sharpness of her tone the old dog stopped, crestfallen. She laid down her basket then, and walked quickly across the ring of firelight, stooping down to look more closely. She spoke some soft words of reassurance, then patted his head gently and smiled at him. The old dog leaned against her and whipped his tail against her
black stockings, happy to be in contact with a human being again. She crouched down beside him to run her fingers lightly over his ears and back, and when he licked her face appreciatively, she laughed. At this, the two little boys drew nearer to the dog and the rest of the band gathered around. Soon the old dog was where he most loved to be—the center of attention among some human beings. He made the most of it and played to an appreciative audience; when one of the men tossed him a chunk of meat he sat up painfully on his hindquarters and begged for more, waving one paw in the air. This sent the Indians into paroxysms of laughter, and he had to repeat his performance time and time again, until he was tired and lay down, panting but happy.

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.

T
HE 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.