The Incredible Journey

The dogs lay quietly in the darkness, waiting. Soon there was a soft scrabbling of paws on wood, the latch clicked, and the door opened a fraction, just enough to admit the slight body of the cat. He trampled and kneaded the hay for a while, purring in a deep rumble, before curling up in a ball at the old dog’s chest. There were several contented sighs, then silence reigned in the stable.

When the young dog awoke in the cold hour before dawn only a few pale laggard stars were left to give the message which his heart already knew—it was time to go, time to press on westwards.

The yawning, stretching cat joined him at the stable door; then the old dog, shivering in the cold dawn wind; and for a few minutes the three sat motionless, listening, looking across the still dark farmyard, where already they could hear the slight stirrings of the animals. It was time to be gone: there were many miles to be traveled before the first halt in the warmth of the sun. Silently they crossed the yard and entered the fields leading to the dark, massed shadows of the trees in the farthermost corner, their paws making three sets of tracks in the light rime of frost that covered the field; and even as they turned onto a deer trail leading westward through the bush, a light came on upstairs in the farmhouse.…

Ahead of them lay the last fifty miles of the journey. It was as well that they had been fed and rested. Most of the way now lay through the Strellon Game Reserve, country that was more desolate and rugged than anything they had yet encountered. The nights would be frosty, the going perilous and exhausting; there could be no help expected from any human agency. Worst of all, their leader was already weak and unfit.

10

PIECES of a jigsaw puzzle were gradually joining together, and the picture was taking shape. In eastern Canada a liner was steaming up the St. Lawrence River, the heights of Quebec receding in the distance as she made her way to Montreal. Leaning against the railings on the upper deck, watching the panorama of the river, were the Hunters, returning from their long stay in England.

The children, Peter and Elizabeth, were wildly excited, and had hardly left the deck since the liner had entered the Gulf. Ever since they had wakened that morning, they had been counting the hours until their arrival home. There was all the joy and excitement of seeing their own homeland again, and soon their friends, their home and possessions—and above all they could not wait to see their pets. Over and over again Elizabeth had discussed their first meeting, for she was secretly longing to be reassured that Tao would not have forgotten her. She had bought him a red leather collar as a present.

Peter was perfectly happy and not in any way doubtful about his reunion; ever since he had been old enough to think at all he had known that, just as surely as Bodger belonged to him and was always there, so did he belong to the bull terrier—and his homecoming would be all the present that his dog would need.

And their father, seeing the endless arrowheads of mallards in the Canadian dawn, knew that soon he and the eager Luath would see them again, over the Delta marshlands and the stubble fields in the west.…

A thousand miles westward of the liner, John Longridge sat at his desk, a letter from his goddaughter in his hand, his thoughts as bleak as the empty, unresponsive house to which he had returned only a short while ago. He read the excited plans for her reunion with Tao—and of course the dogs—with a sinking heart, then laid the letter down unfinished, his despair deepening as he looked at the calendar: if the Hunters caught an early plane they would be home tomorrow night; in twenty-four hours’ time he must give them his heartbreaking news—his charges were gone; and he had no idea where, or what had befallen them.

Mrs. Oakes was equally miserable. Between them they had pieced together the fate of his charred note, and the course of confusion which had enabled three disparate animals to disappear without trace, and with perfect timing and perception. It was this perfection which had convinced him that his charges had not run away—if they had been unhappy, they could have gone at any time during the months of their stay.

He had already considered every possible catastrophe that could have overtaken them—death on the road, poison, traps, theft, disused wells—but not by the wildest stretch of imagination could he make any one of them account for three animals of such different temperaments. Nor could he understand how such a distinctive trio could pass unremarked in this small community: he had already spoken to some of Bodger’s friends at the school, and not one sharp-eyed child had seen them that last morning, or any strange car, or in fact anything out of the ordinary; and Longridge knew that the area covered by rural school children was immense. The vast network of the Provincial Police could report nothing, either.