Red Dog (2 page)

That evening Mrs Collins opened up a big can of Trusty, and Jack set his stopwatch to zero. Tally Ho had
a special gift for bolting food at lightning speed, and so far his record for a whole 700g can was eleven seconds flat. Tally Ho put his forepaws up on the table to watch the meat going into his bowl, and Mrs Collins put on her curt tone of voice and said, ‘Down, Tally! Lie down!’ He slumped down on the floor, and put on his most pathetic and appealing expression, so that she felt sorry for him even though she knew it was only an act. He sighed, and raised first one eyebrow and then another. His whole body was quivering with anticipation, the muscles in his legs just waiting for the moment when he could hurl himself at his dinner.

‘Are you ready?’ asked Mrs Collins, and Jack Collins nodded. She put the bowl down on the floor, Tally leaped up and Jack pressed the timer on his stopwatch. ‘Crikey,’ he declared. ‘One hungry mongrel! Ten point one seconds. Truly impressive.’

Tally cleaned his bowl conscientiously with his tongue, and then cleaned it again just to make sure. When there was definitely not one atom of food left in it, he strolled outside and lay down once more under the shade of the tree, his stomach feeling pleasantly stretched, and very soon he fell asleep. He dreamed of food and adventuring. When he awoke half an hour later, fully restored, he lay for a while, enjoying the way that the evening was cooling off, and thought about going walkabout. He felt curious about what might be going on in the wide world, and the thought of missing out on something made him feel uneasy. He got to
his feet, stood still for a time whilst he thought a little more, and then set off past the other caravans, and into the wilderness. He found a path worn through the spinifex by kangaroos, and set off joyfully down it, quickly losing all sense of time, completely absorbed by all the mysterious smells and noises. He was sure that he could find a bilby or a quoll.

In the morning Jack Collins said, ‘I think Tally’s gone bush again,’ and Maureen Collins replied, ‘I’m worried that one day he’s going to disappear for ever.’

‘Don’t say that,’ said her husband. ‘He always comes back eventually.’

‘It’s the call of the wild versus the call of the supperdish,’ laughed Mrs Collins.

‘He always seems to come back well fed, though.’

‘Maybe he’s got other people who feed him.’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ said Jack. ‘Tally’s no slouch when it comes to tucker.’

Three days later, just when the couple had almost given up hope of ever seeing him again, Tally Ho reappeared, bang on time for supper. He was dusty, his stomach was nice and full, his nose had a long scratch on it courtesy of a feral cat that he met on the roo-trail, and he was grinning with self-satisfaction. That night he polished off a big can of Pal in nine seconds flat.

RED DOG GOES TO DAMPIER

The time came when Maureen and Jack Collins had to move from Paraburdoo to Dampier, a long hot journey of about 350 kilometres, along a difficult, rutty dirt-track. In some places there are water-courses that cross the road, so that your vehicle can get buried up to the axles in mud, and you get completely stuck there until another vehicle arrives to pull you out. People usually take a couple of days’ worth of food and water with them, just in case.

The road runs alongside the railway line that takes the iron ore from Mt Tom Price to Dampier, and often you see trains so long that you cannot possibly count the number of wagons, heaped up with red earth, that need three vast locomotives to pull them slowly through that immense wilderness.

Before leaving Paraburdoo for that long trek, Jack Collins took the precaution of opening all the car windows so that the breeze would blow through and stop it turning into an oven, and began to pack it with the more precious and breakable things. Bigger and heavier items he packed into the trailer that they had hitched to the towbar on the back.

In the kitchen of the caravan, Maureen Collins packed an esky with cold drinks and sandwiches, because there weren’t too many decent places to stop for refreshment, and for the same reason she remembered to put some dunny paper into the front glove box of the car. You never knew when you might have to stop and take a short stroll into the crinkled cassia.

When they were ready to go, Jack called Tally Ho and opened the back door of the Land Rover. ‘Up, dog!’ he commanded, and as Tally jumped in Jack quickly shut the door and jumped into the driver’s seat before the dog could leap over and occupy it. Tally
looked disgruntled, and thought about clambering over into Maureen’s lap. It was against his principles to share a seat with anyone, however, so he sighed and reconciled himself to settling down in the back with his chin resting on a box.

It was early in the morning when they set off, because it was much cooler then. There would be less chance of the car boiling over, and anyway, it was pleasant to travel when the day was fresh and new.

They had hardly gone fifteen kilometres, however, before Tally’s stomach began to get to work on his breakfast, and a foul stink rolled over the two unfortunate folk in the front. ‘Oh, my God,’ exclaimed Maureen, ‘open the windows! Tally’s done it again!’

‘They’re already open,’ said her husband, pinching his nose with one hand and controlling the steering-wheel with the other as they lurched over the ruts and corrugations of the road.

Maureen rummaged in her bag and found her
bottle of scent. She poured a little onto her handkerchief, and held it to her nose. Jack thought that dogstink and lavender made a strange mixture.

Tally let off another one, even worse than before, and Maureen turned round and told him off. ‘Bad dog!’ she scolded, ‘stop it at once, d’you hear?’, but Tally just looked offended and puzzled, as if to say, ‘What’s she going on about?’

They had not gone much further before Jack had to stop the car, even though they were in the middle of nowhere. He got out and opened the back door. ‘Out!’ he commanded, and Tally leaped down to the ground, thinking that he was about to get a nice walk in the gum-trees. His heart was beating a little bit harder at the thought of all those shovel-nosed snakes and emus.

Jack grabbed Tally under the armpits and lifted him into the trailer, amongst all the furniture and the boxes of bits and pieces, saying, ‘Sorry, mate, but if you can’t hold it in, you’re not coming with us. You’re lucky we’re not leaving you and your horrible reeks out here in the desert.’ He tapped Tally on the nose with one forefinger, saying, ‘Good boy! Stay!’

Tally looked up at him reproachfully, hoping that if he looked sad it might persuade his master to let him back into the car, but to no avail. As the car set off once more, he settled down between the legs of a chair and watched the world go by. There was nothing he loved quite so much as travelling from one place to
another, simply for the pleasure of seeing what was going on.

‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’ asked Maureen, looking behind her. ‘The wheels are throwing up an awful lot of filth.’

Jack glanced in the rearview mirror, saw the great cloud of dust that they were trailing behind them and said, ‘Well, I’d rather have Tally get dirty than have to put up with all those stinks.’

Four hours later they arrived in Dampier. Both had done their share of the driving, because it was hard work to keep the wheel steady on such a bad road, and both she and her husband had aching shoulders and stiff limbs.

They clambered out of the car, stretched, fanned their faces with their hands because of the heat, and went to see how their dog was. When they saw him they put their hands to their mouths and laughed. Tally looked up at them and wagged his tail disconsolately. All they could recognise of him were two sorry-looking amber-yellow eyes, because the rest of him was an inch thick in dark-red dirt and dust.

TALLY HO AT THE BARBECUE

‘Why don’t you take Tally for a scamper on the beach?’ asked Maureen. The evening had brought pleasantly cool temperatures, and in any case she fancied the idea of having the house to herself for a while.

Jack looked at his watch. ‘Might be a nice idea,’ he said, ‘I’ve got some time to kill before I go on shift, and Tally could do with a run. Couldn’t you, mate?’ Tally seemed to agree, even though he had just been missing for several days, and had only recently returned, and so the pair of them set off for Dampier beach, just when the western sky was beginning to turn gold at the edges. A collared kingfisher sang ‘pukee, pukee, pukee’ as it flew overhead, and a posse of fork-tailed swifts sang ‘dzee, dzee, dzee’ as they swooped in the opposite direction, rolling and darting after insects. Man and dog
made their way down to the beach, where a gentle swell was dropping wavelets onto the sand. Opposite was the strangely named East Intercourse Island, and south-west of that you could see Mistaken Island huddling in the sea, though no-one seemed to know who had originally been mistaken about what, in order for it to have earned itself such a quirky name. The beautiful islands of the Dampier Archipelago lay strung out across the ocean.

A man was fishing off the beach with a handline, hoping to catch a garfish for the pan, but what really interested Tally Ho was the delicious, rich, juicy smell of frying steak, lambchops and sausages. His ears pricked up, his mouth watered and every nook of his brain began to engage itself in mischievous plans. Jack Collins sensed what was going on, and took hold of Tally’s collar before he could run off.

As they walked down amid the barbecues, Jack was puzzled and amazed by the number of people who seemed to know Tally Ho already. ‘Look, there’s Red Dog!’ said one man, and another patted him on the head and said, ‘Hello, Bluey, howya goin’? Welcome to the barbie.’ Jack Collins realised that Tally must have made a lot of acquaintances in his times off. It occurred to him that perhaps Tally had already attended a few barbecues on this very beach, which was a popular place for the local folk to come and cook up in the evenings.

He relaxed his grip for just one moment, and Tally
took that chance to leap free and scamper away. Jack called after him, but Tally was too busy to hear and too obstinate to obey. What Jack saw next made the blood rise to his cheeks from sheer embarrassment.