The Incredible Journey

The young dog spent a restless night. The running sores on his face had been extended, by his continuous frantic clawing, into raw inflamed patches over the glands on one side of his neck; and the spreading infection was making him feverish and thirsty. Several times he left the others to drink from a small lake a short distance away, standing chest-deep in the cool, soothing water.

When the old dog woke shivering with cold he was alone. The cat was some distance away, belly to ground and tail twitching excitedly, stalking his breakfast. Stealing through the morning air came a familiar smell of smoke and something cooking—beckoning irresistibly.

The mists were rolling back from the valley, and a pale sun was lighting the sky when the old dog came through the windbreak of tall Norway pines and down outside the farmhouse door. His memory was short; already human beings were back on their rightful pedestals, cornucopias of dog food in their hands. He whined plaintively. At a second, louder whine, several cats appeared from the barn nearby and glared at him with tiger-eyed resentment. At any other time, he would have put them to instant flight; now he had more pressing business and chose to ignore them. The door swung open, a wondrous smell of bacon and eggs surged out, and the terrier drew up all the heavy artillery of his charm: with an ingratiating wag of his tail he glued his ears back, and wrinkled his nose in preparation for his disastrous winning leer. There was an astonished silence, broken by the deep, amused voice of a man. “Well!” said the owner of the voice, surveying his odd visitor, whose eyes were now rolled so far back that they had almost disappeared into his head. He called into the house, and was answered by the pleasant, warm voice of a woman. There was a sound of footsteps. The tail increased its tempo.

The woman stood for a moment in the doorway, looking down in silent astonishment at the white gargoyle on the step, and when he saw her face break into a smile that past master in the art of scrounging proffered a civil paw. She bent down and shook it, laughing helplessly, then invited him to follow her into the house.

Dignified, the old dog walked in, and gazed at the stove with bland confidence.

He was in luck this time, for there could not have been pleasanter people or a more welcoming house for miles around. They were an elderly couple, James Mackenzie and his wife Nell, living alone now in a big farmhouse which still held the atmosphere of a large, cheerful family living and laughing and growing up in it. They were well used to dogs, for there had been eight children in that house once upon a time, and a consequent succession of pets who had always started their adopted life out in the yard but invariable found their way into the household on the wildest pretexts of the children: misunderstood mongrels, orphaned kittens, sad strays, abandoned otter pups—Nell Mackenzie’s soft heart had been as defenseless before them then as it was now.

She gave the visitor a bowl of scraps, which he bolted down in ravenous gulps, looking up then for more. “Why, he’s starving!” she exclaimed in horror, and contributed her own breakfast. She petted and fussed over him, accepting him as though the years had rolled back and one of the children had brought home yet another half-starved stray. He basked in this aftection, and emptied the bowl almost before it reached the ground. Without a word Mackenzie passed over his plate as well. Soon the toast was gone too, and a jug of milk; and at last, distended and happy, the old dog stretched out on a rug by the warmth of the stove while Nell cooked another breakfast.

“What is he?” she asked presently. “I’ve never seen anything quite so homely—he looks as though he had been squeezed into the wrong coat, somehow.”

“He’s an English bull,” said her husband, “and a beauty too—a real old bruiser! I love them! He looks as though he’d been in a fight quite recently, yet he must be ten or eleven if he’s a day!” And at the unqualified respect and admiration in the voice, so dear to the heart of a bull terrier—but so seldom forthcoming—the dog thumped his tail agreeably, then rose and thrust his bony head against his host’s knee. Mackenzie looked down, chuckling appreciatively. “As cocksure as the devil—and as irresistible, aren’t you? But what are we going to do with you?”

Nell passed her hand over the dog’s shoulder and felt the scars, then examined them more closely. She looked up, suddenly puzzled. “These aren’t from any dogfight,” she said. “They’re claw marks—like the ones bears leave on fresh wood, only smaller—”