Dingo: The Dog Who Conquered a Continent (10 page)

It was a day to make you glad you had a deep overhang, a sloping floor to drain away any water that blew in, a fire and a roughly tanned hopper skin.

Mosquitoes hummed in a dark cloud above the swamp. Loa slapped more mud on his neck and legs to keep them off, then threw another branch on the fire. He watched it steam and began to shred more of the inner bark, tearing then twisting it into a growing length of string, then holding it over the flame to singe it just enough to be waterproof.

Some of the string would replace the fraying cord at his waist; he'd make a net from the rest. A fish net, a bird net, a bat net … a net would have been useful when he and the dog had fought the monster lizard too.

He blinked as the dog appeared at the entrance of the overhang, her fur drenched, a wet puppy dangling from her mouth. It was the one he'd named Little Boy. She dropped the squirming puppy next to him, then turned around and vanished back into the rain.

What was she doing? Little Boy cowered, wet and trembling, on the muddy floor. Loa picked him up and put the puppy on his lap, tickling his tummy and
scratching his ears till he stopped shivering, then offered him some of his cooked snake. The puppy's tiny teeth tore off a bit, just as the dog appeared again.

Another puppy!

Loa lifted the latest drenched puppy onto his lap too. He was glad the snake was a big one …

It was only when the dog had brought the fourth puppy then settled herself between the fire and the ledge that he realised.

Four puppies. Not five. What had happened to the fifth?

This land had so many dangers for tiny puppies. She had brought them here for safety.

Little Girl wriggled off his lap. She padded over to the turtle shell where he kept fresh water. She lapped, then began to gnaw the edge of the shell.

Suddenly Loa felt like crying. It was like when his grandfather had given him his precious obsidian knife or when the younger boys of the clan had looked to him for guidance and help — the feeling of being connected and recognised.

The dog was saying, ‘I trust you with my puppies.'

He looked over at her, her fur steaming in the fire's warmth. ‘I'll look after you,' he said. ‘I'll look after you all.'

The scents this season were strong and rich, filled with life as well as the smells of water, mud and rotting wood.

It was time to teach the puppies about the world around them.

At first they tumbled after her as she climbed about the rocks and ledges between rainstorms, always in daylight, when Bony Boy was near.

As the season progressed and the rain eased to short showers each afternoon she took them out into the newly firm grasslands, green and rich from flood mud, the grasses long enough to hide them from birds of prey.

Several times she saw the grass shiver nearby as a croc moved stealthily towards them. Each time she ran. The puppies ran too.

The pups knew the scent of crocodile now; they knew the tracks it left in the mud, the swish it left with its tail.

She had them watch as she waited by the edge of the swamp, motionless, on her tummy, head down, till flocks of birds landed and began to feed, poking their
beaks into the mud. In one sudden leap she grabbed one.

The smallest puppy learned fastest, but soon they could all manage it, even if they weren't successful every time.

They hunted frogs together, jumping frog-like themselves across the mud, crunching the frogs, bones and all. Fat mice scurried through the grass now too. The dogs crunched them in two gulps.

She showed the puppies how to mark their territory, squatting and letting out a few drops here, and then more there, so that any dog who passed would know who owned this land. She showed them how to sit on the highest rock and smell the world: scents of big hoppers returning to the grasslands; the small ones on the hills; and the scent of Bony Boy and his fire.

She taught them how to smell where Bony Boy had been and how to track the small hoppers too. They learned how to drive them towards Bony Boy and his spear and net, because that was the way to get most meat for dogs and human too.

Once she had hunted only before dawn and at dusk. But Bony Boy liked to hunt in early and late daylight. Somehow she had become a dog of the daylight too, waiting for him to feed her and the puppies with hunks of hopper or pulling out the innards in a big steaming heap for them to nose through.

The two smallest puppies were even more daylight dogs than she was. Bony Boy was their family: they
slept curled up with him and played with him during the day, tugging on sticks he held or leaping up for bits of meat or bones. They were almost full-grown now, but they still clambered onto his lap, till he laughed and complained about their weight and the smell of wet fur. He stroked their heads or scratched their backs or rubbed off leeches in a way that meant the bites didn't itch.

The bigger two slept further and further from the fire now they were large enough not to need Bony Boy's protection. Sometimes they slunk off by themselves, coming back with feathers around their mouths, sleeping when she and Little Boy and Little Girl followed Bony Boy down the track to hunt.

She watched and understood.

Then one dawn she took them through the mangroves. They hunted frogs, snapping and jumping, more for fun than hunger. She sniffed the air. There was a danger scent. Where was it? She lifted her nose again.

Suddenly the bigger two pups broke away. They padded through the mud and shadows to where the water still ran in a shallow river at the edge of the swamp. She watched as they paddled into the river then began to swim away from them. She knew at once what they were doing. They were finding their own territory across the river.

The ripples changed upstream. A log became a crocodile. It had been a croc all the time they'd been here. It must have swum close last night while they slept.

‘Yip!' she yelped, desperately hoping they would hear and understand. She ran to the edge of the river and yelped again, trying to make the croc head for her instead.

It didn't. The croc knew her pups were easier meat. She watched it, a silent shape sliding through the water. Could she swim to it to distract it? She leaped into the water — then stopped.

The young dogs were on the other side now. They didn't wait to shake themselves dry. They had seen the croc too, or felt its movement in the water. She yipped another warning. They ran, swift and steady through the mangroves, till they were two shadows lost among the others.

She waded back to dry land. She could smell their scent getting fainter and fainter, as they ran beyond their mother's territory to find their own. She could smell their paw prints as she padded back through the mangroves, the other two young dogs at her side. They headed up the track to Bony Boy. He was the centre of her pack now. Her home.

 

That night she left the two young dogs curled up with Bony Boy. She climbed to the highest hill, as the moon cast its shadows on the world. She lifted up her head and sang.

It was a song of love, of loss, of understanding. It said, ‘I am here; and you are there.'

At last she stopped, and listened. For the first time in this new land she heard the howl back.

Her children were there. Not here, but safe.

This was a land of dogs now.

She howled once more and heard them answer again.

Then she padded back down the hill to Bony Boy and his dogs.

The Season of Fruit and Flowers

Loa gazed out across his land as the first of the sunlight glinted on the rocks. Little Boy and Little Girl sat next to him, chewing hopper bones from yesterday's hunt. He only had to say ‘down' now and they'd sit and then roll over, waiting for their treat. Beside them the fire flickered and flared.

The river had shrunk to a clear sweep of water down one end of the swamp; the once-submerged grasslands were again hard and flat and just beginning to brown off. Flocks of birds bobbed among the grass seeds.

The dog was out there, somewhere. Even as he thought it he heard her howl from the top of the ridge.

‘Hrrrrrl! Hrrrllll!'

The sound echoed across the rocks and another call came from the far-off hill towards the sea.

‘Hrrrl! Hrrrl!'

Little Boy and Little Girl stopped chewing to listen, but they didn't answer back.

So Big Boy and Big Girl were safe. He'd worried when they hadn't come back one day with the other
dogs. He grinned. Three dogs were enough for any hunter.

‘Hrrrl!' That was the dog's call again. Loa leaned back against the rock. He and the dogs would hunt again this morning, before the hoppers went to the shade of their midday resting places. Little Boy and Little Girl were getting even better at herding the game his way. Sometimes the three dogs even brought the game down themselves. But these days the dog knew to let him take the skin, the bladder and whatever else he wanted before they dragged away the rest. He smiled. Little Boy and Little Girl obeyed him every time he gave an order. Their mother obeyed only when she wanted to.

He had more spears now, with good bone points. He still used his obsidian knife as a spearhead for hunting hoppers and large birds, but the bone-headed spears were good enough to fish with.

Maybe we won't hunt hoppers today, he thought, idly rubbing Little Girl's ears. He never tried to rub the dog's ears — she might nip his hand. He could fish from the river bank — his fish hooks were useful now, strong enough to catch the biggest fish. This was the season for turtle and crocodile eggs. The dogs sniffed out the nests easily, crunching the soft bones of the baby crocs and turtles in the eggs. There were a couple of crocs near now, a big one and a small one towards the sea. He watched for their tracks every day, making sure he knew exactly where they were. The dogs seemed to be able to sniff out crocs as well as their nests too. They were so big now that no other animal could catch them.

Suddenly he sat straighter, staring at the horizon. Smoke!

Another wildfire? But this grass was still too green to burn easily. He hadn't heard thunder either. This smoke hung like a necklace in the sky: it was a campfire.

People.

For a moment all he felt was joy. He hadn't allowed himself to feel lonely this past season, but now it came swelling back like a storm tide.

Men to hunt with. Women's laughter, songs and stories around the fire. He had dreamed of finding people for so long. Reality struck him like a wave in the face. These people would be strangers — as strange, perhaps, as this new land he was just coming to know. He'd had no idea back when he'd landed just how different this country and its animals were from all he'd known. Worse — to the people here he would be a stranger too. And, he remembered, his dogs might be strangest of all. There were no other packs here.

A stranger might be an enemy. The unknown was always frightening.

Back home clans spoke different languages. The further away they were the more their language was different. He could learn a new language — but not in time to say, ‘I want to be a friend. I am a stranger in a new land. I will take to your ways. Just let me live.'

What if these people were head-hunters? The grandfathers told stories of clans who killed strangers and hung their skulls on trees around their camps.

He swallowed. What if the people who lived here were really different, just like the hoppers weren't like any animal he'd ever seen? Maybe they had tails, or swung from trees. Maybe this really was the land of ghosts …

Stop it, he told himself. You're a man, not a boy to be frightened by stories around a campfire. But a wise man, a hunter, should be cautious.

He held himself straighter. He
was
a hunter. He could move silently, a shadow among the trees, so no one could see him. The dogs moved silently too. Rubbish dogs were good at silence, at slinking around the edges of a camp. The dogs would scent out people long before they might see him.

He'd find these people and watch them, silently, secretly; he'd make sure of them before they even knew he was there.

He had learned to live with this new land. Now it was time to learn its people too.

He cut that afternoon's fish into long thin strips, enough for him and the dogs to eat for the next couple of days, then hung it over a green wood fire overnight. The smoke and dryness would stop the strips spoiling.

He covered his campfire with dry bones, and then big logs, damp from the swamp. The coals should stay slowly burning for days, but with almost no smoke — he didn't want the strangers to see it till he knew more about them.

The strangers' smoke still lazily spiralled into the sky. He headed towards it, the dogs padding at his heels.

 

The dogs stayed with him all day, skirting around rainwater lakes covered in water lilies, keeping to the high ground where the grass was shorter and the going easier. Clouds of birds flapped into the sky as they passed. I'll need to be careful, he thought. The birds' alarm might give him away.

He climbed up onto a hill, away from crocodiles. The strangers' campfire smoke was close now, possibly only a few bends along the river that curled below them. But no one would find him here. People stayed
by their campfires at night, unless they were ghosts, nightwalkers roaming the shadows …

No ghosts! he told himself firmly. And if they were … he could make a raft and paddle along the coast where the ghosts wouldn't find him. But would the dogs follow him onto a raft? What if they jumped off and tried to swim to shore?

Little Boy and Little Girl might let him tie them up. But the dog was too wise to be tricked. Nor did he want to do it: you didn't trick your friends.

All at once he knew how much the dogs meant to him. They were his family, his clan, his hunting partners. Had anyone ever had a friendship with animals like this before?

He didn't know. But he couldn't part with the dogs now.

The dog stood up in what could have been a signal. Little Girl and Little Boy stood up too. The dogs vanished into the shadows, returning almost immediately with a long-necked bird each. The younger dogs dropped their birds at Loa's feet. They sat obediently while he plucked them. He waited till they'd rolled over, then let them sit up and gave them back their birds, eating the smoked fish himself.

Darkness gathered like a woven basket across the sky. The moon rose, soft looking and silky. The darkness turned to shadows in the moonlight.

He stood and signalled the dogs to be quiet. It was silly to sign to dogs, he knew — they didn't know the hunting signals. And they always were quiet! But it felt right.

He trod carefully down the hill, then walked along the river, trusting the dogs to scent crocodile or snake. He could smell campfire smoke now and the fatty scent of charred hopper. The dogs lifted their noses. He was glad they'd just eaten. He thought they'd be wary of strange humans, just as he was, but at least they wouldn't be tempted too close by hunger.

He looked at them, his shadow companions, almost the same colour as the moonlit grass. What if the strangers speared his dogs?

Suddenly he was more scared for them than himself. The dog knew that humans could be dangerous. But Little Boy and Little Girl had known only him. He imagined Little Girl bleeding in the grass; or Little Boy with a spear through his side. He could hardly explain the dogs were his friends if he didn't know the strangers' language.

All at once he wanted to gather the dogs to him, to carry them away where they'd be safe. If only he hadn't brought them with him! Though in fact the dogs had brought themselves. Dogs went where they wanted to, even if they came when you called them — most of the time. He had no way to make them stay.

Please, he thought, stay with me now. Don't go near the strangers, no matter how interesting they smell. Stay.

Flames rippled around the next bend, the fire reflected in the water. Another few steps and he could see the fire itself, and then the figures around it.

‘Sit,' he whispered, soft as a breath of wind. Little Boy and Little Girl sat. The dog looked at Loa, then
at her puppies. She didn't sit. But she didn't leave his side either.

He let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, then looked at the strangers more closely.

They were as human as himself. Not ghosts. No tails either. A few wore strange breechcloths or necklaces, but others were naked.

They could almost have been his own clan, only taller and more long-legged, though maybe that was the effect of the leaping shadows from the flames. A few grandfathers and grandmothers, younger women with babies, children already curling up to sleep near the fire. A couple of men rubbed fat into their spears. They were longer and thicker than his weapons, he thought.

Something cold nudged his leg. It was Little Girl, trying to get his attention. She looked at him and then at the camp, as though to say, ‘Are we going there?'

The dog looked at him too. She seemed as wary of the strangers as he was. Did she remember being tied up by the cooking pit? He shook his head at Little Girl, though he didn't think she understood the gesture. But they understood when he began to creep away. They stayed at his side, as quiet as the moon.