Doglands (3 page)

“They know, don’t they?” asked Furgul.

Keeva still could not look at him. She didn’t answer.

“The Gambler could see what we are,” said Furgul. “He told Dedbone that we’re not real greyhounds—we’re not pure—we’re just lurchers—”

“Enough!” said Keeva.

She looked at Furgul. Her brown eyes were filled with a sadness so deep that Furgul wanted to cry. He wanted to lick her face to make her feel better. But Keeva turned away again. Nessa and Eena and Brid huddled together at the back of the cage and said nothing. Keeva hurried over and crooned a song to comfort them. The sisters crowded beneath her legs and licked the teats on her belly to show that they loved her. Furgul wanted to join them. Instead he stood tall and waited by the door of the cage.

“What do you want me to do, Mam?” he asked.

Keeva stopped crooning. For a moment she couldn’t speak. She blinked away the tears in her eyes. Then she turned to look at him.

“Stay close to your sisters,” said Keeva. “Remember your father, Argal—the fiercest, fightingest dog that ever I saw—and be brave.”

Furgul smelled something foul—something evil—and turned his head.

Dedbone and the Gambler were coming back across the yard. Between them they carried a brown cardboard box that was almost as big as a cage. In the crook of Dedbone’s arm was a double-barreled shotgun. Furgul had seen him use it to kill crows.

Furgul turned back to his mother.

“Sure, Mam.” He swallowed the fear in his throat. “Whatever you say.”

A
s soon as Dedbone opened the door of the cage with his huge meaty hand, he slapped Furgul aside and grabbed Keeva by her collar, then shoved a muzzle on her snout so she couldn’t bite him. Eena and Nessa and Brid whimpered with terror. Furgul, dazed by the blow, watched Keeva howl and struggle as Dedbone dragged her from the whelping cage and locked her in a nearby crate. The sound of her cries broke Furgul’s heart. He was small and weak and he didn’t know what to do. Then he saw that Dedbone had left the whelping cage open. Furgul slipped out the door, past the fat, slavering Bulls, and ran toward Keeva.

“Mam!” barked Furgul. “Mam!”

“No!” barked Keeva through the bars. “Run away!”

Furgul sank his teeth into Dedbone’s ankle. But his teeth
couldn’t penetrate the leather. Dedbone laughed and kicked him in the chest with a steel-toed boot. Furgul flew through the air, gasping with the pain. Tic and Tac came after him and laughed as they gouged his ears and face with their big yellow fangs. They could have ripped him apart but they wanted to torment him. Furgul fought back, his own fangs flashing, and ripped open one of Tic’s nostrils. Tic backed away with a whimper of shock. Then Dedbone kicked Furgul in the head, and everything went dark.

When Furgul came to his senses, he was inside the big cardboard box that Dedbone and the Gambler had brought with them. Inside the box with him were Eena, Nessa and Brid. The top of the box was closed, and Furgul heard ripping sounds as the flaps were sealed shut. Then the pups tumbled about as the box was lifted from the ground and carried away.

Furgul could hear the masters panting and puffing. Once, the masters dropped the box and the pups were thrown into a squirming tangle in the blackness. Furgul heard Dedbone cursing him and his sisters in his bitter, hateful voice. The Bulls barked with glee. The box rocked over and almost caved in as Dedbone kicked it with his boot, and the pups bounced around inside in a state of panic.

Nessa and Eena and Brid cried out in fear, and one of them—or maybe all three—peed all over the place. Furgul didn’t blame them. He kept telling himself:
Be brave. Be brave
. But he no longer knew what being brave meant, or what good
it could possibly do them. The masters picked up the box again and on they went.

A moment later the box flew through the air and landed with a dull clang on something metallic. Doors opened and slammed. There came a roar and a tremble and a shudder. A burning, choking smell filled Furgul’s nostrils. Then everything moved forward and they swerved first one way and then another. Faster and faster they moved, with more and more roars and shudders. Furgul realized they must be on the pickup truck. He noticed a beam of light coming into the box through a rip in the cardboard on one side. He stood on his hind legs and put his eye to the rip and looked outside.

Green fields and blue skies whizzed by. In the distance he saw that the big wire fence that surrounded Dedbone’s Hole was already far behind. Behind the wire he saw the long stacks of greyhound crates and the squalid cage where he and his sisters had been born.

“What’s happening?” cried Eena.

“Where are we going?” asked Brid.

“I want to go back to Mama,” said Nessa.

Furgul’s heart ached. He was filled with despair. He didn’t know where they were going. He couldn’t tell them what was happening or why. He couldn’t tell them they would never see Keeva again. Perhaps he should. But he couldn’t. What could he do?

What could he do?

What could he do?

What was the last thing that Keeva had said to him?

Remember your father
.

“Argal,” whispered Furgul. Once again the very name gave him courage.

Argal would never give up. He was fearless and wild. Argal would escape. Was there a way to escape from the box? The Bulls had been left back at the farm. Their smell had faded away. So there was only Dedbone and the Gambler to worry about. If Furgul could get his sisters out of the box—before they got to wherever Dedbone was taking them—they could jump off the truck and run away.

Into the Doglands.

Furgul tried to widen the rip in the box with his claws, but the cardboard was too thick and too strong. He scrabbled around, searching for a weakness. His nose led him to a patch in the corner that had turned all soggy with pee. He clawed at it as hard as he could. The soft, wet cardboard peeled away in strips. But Nessa and Eena and Brid were so upset they were whimpering and squirming about, and their legs and bodies kept getting in his way.

“Listen,” he barked. “Be still.
Be quiet!
”

His bark was so fierce that the girls stopped all at once.

“Okay,” said Furgul. “We’re going to sing that song that Mam taught us.”

Their eyes shone with fright in the gloom. They didn’t seem very keen.

“I’ll start,” said Furgul. “And you can join in.”

Nessa and Eena and Brid were so sad they started crying. But they joined in the song.

While they sang, Furgul returned to the wet patch of cardboard and scratched and scratched and scratched. His claws began to hurt, but still he scratched. His claws felt like they were going to be ripped out of his toes, but he scratched even harder. A mound of damp peelings grew between his feet. The cardboard got thinner and thinner. Suddenly his paw burst through the wall. He could feel the wind on his pads. He pulled the paw back in and started to make the hole bigger. The wind rushed into the box. The girls stopped singing.

“What are you doing?” asked Brid.

“We’re going to escape,” said Furgul. “Get ready.”

“But where will we go?” asked Eena.

“To the Doglands,” said Furgul.

“Can’t we go back to Mama?” asked Nessa.

Furgul turned on her.

“No!”
he said. “Mam doesn’t want us to go back. Never ever ever. She wants us to be free.”

Furgul twisted his snout into the hole and took a bite of the cardboard in his teeth. He pulled and pulled and chewed and chewed, and a big piece ripped away. Now the hole was big enough to push his whole head through. And he did.

A lurcher is a sight hound. Furgul’s eyes were so good he could spot a squirrel in a tree at half a mile. Through the window in the cab of the truck he could see Dedbone and the Gambler. They were drinking amber liquid from a bottle that they passed between them. The truck roared along a desolate road that wound up the side of a craggy, barren mountain. In the side of the mountain Furgul saw a cave. He remembered the stories the old dogs had told. The mouth of the cave was jagged and black and in his gut he knew that the cave was the end of the road.

The hole in the box was still too small for his shoulders. He pulled back inside and took another bite. All the soggy cardboard was gone now, so the work became much harder than before. His face hurt from the bites of the Bulls and Dedbone’s steel-toed boot. His jaws hurt from the biting and the ripping. But he didn’t give up. The hole got bigger. He pushed his head out to test it. The hole was tight but big enough for him to squeeze through. He turned back into the gloom of the box.

“Nessa,” he said. Nessa was his favorite. He knew he shouldn’t have a favorite sister, but he did. “You go first.”

“I can’t,” said Nessa. “I’m too scared.”

“I’ll go first,” said Brid.

Furgul didn’t have time to argue. Nessa had missed her chance.

“Okay,” said Furgul. “When you’re out of the box, Brid, jump off the truck and run as fast and as far as you can. Don’t let Dedbone see you, no matter what happens.”

Brid plunged her head through the hole. Furgul rammed his shoulder under her tail and shoved hard. Brid popped out of the box. She scrambled to her feet on the bed of the pickup truck. She gave Furgul one last look. A love of adventure gleamed in her eyes, and he remembered she was Argal’s daughter. Then he watched her leap over the side of the truck. She landed and rolled on a bright green bed of moss. Her legs powered her forward down the glen. She did not look back. And then she was gone.

Brid had done it. She’d escaped. She was free.

In the distance Furgul could see golden hills and forests of green. A wild wind swept out of nowhere and roared down the valley and through the trees, as if to help Brid on her way. For a moment Furgul heard the howl of voices on that wind, ancient voices of hounds long gone, urging him to defiance. Furgul’s heart felt like it would burst. His tail was high and wagging. His legs wanted him to jump from the truck and run and run and run forever and ever. But he couldn’t leave Eena
and Nessa. With alarm he noticed that the mouth of the cave was getting closer and closer. The cave where Dedbone would kill them. The truck had slowed down as they climbed the hill. Once the truck stopped, their chance to escape would be gone.

“Eena, you’re next. Hurry.”

Eena kissed Nessa and went to the hole. She stood up on her hind legs and pushed her head into the hole. Just as Furgul prepared to give her a push, the truck lurched to a halt in a cloud of dust. Furgul and the two girls fell over and rolled in a heap at one end of the box. Furgul jumped up. He heard doors creak open. Big boots crunched in the dust. The doors slammed shut.

“Hurry, Eena, hurry!” Furgul barked.

Eena put her head through the hole. But then she stopped.

“Go on!” he yelled. “Get moving!”

Furgul pushed her hard. But Eena did not move. He heard her yelp with fright. A second later she was forced back inside, and Furgul saw that a hand was wrapped around her throat.

A wild rage rose inside him and he lunged forward. His teeth clamped around the hand’s thumb. He heard another scream—a human scream—much louder than Eena’s. It was the Gambler, in terrible pain. The Gambler dropped Eena and tried to jerk his hand back out of the box, but Furgul dug his paws into the floor and wouldn’t let go. His mouth filled with blood. The Gambler shook him around inside the box,
but still Furgul wouldn’t let go. Furgul snarled and crunched with all his might.

The Gambler jerked his arm back so fast that Furgul’s head was wrenched out through the hole. The Gambler had laughed and jeered at him, just because he was a lurcher. He wasn’t laughing now. He was screaming in agony. For a moment Furgul considered letting go. But then he remembered that the Gambler had revealed his secret to Dedbone. Furgul twisted his head and bit down hard. The Gambler’s thumb came off between Furgul’s teeth. Furgul dropped back into the box. He rushed back to the hole, but the box was hoisted up into the air. He heard the Gambler gibbering in pain.

“Gibber, gibber, gibber!” bawled the Gambler.

Dedbone’s face appeared at the hole. His bloodshot eyes were red with rage. His foul breath spilled into the box as he cursed and swore. Furgul snapped at Dedbone’s nose and nipped him between the nostrils. The box crashed into the dust as Dedbone dropped it. The pups fell into a heap, and everything went dark.

Furgul could hear Dedbone coughing and choking and bellowing. But where was the hole in the box? Furgul looked around, but it was gone. He realized that the box had fallen with the hole flat against the ground. They couldn’t get out.

The coughing stopped and Dedbone heaved the box up into his arms. The pups fell about higgledy-piggledy. The box started moving. The hole appeared again, but this time at the
upper end of the side of the box. It was too high to climb out because the box had turned upside down. Furgul stood on his hind legs and peeped out over the edge. He watched the cave get closer and closer and wrinkled his nostrils as a vile smell drifted out.

Furgul loved most smells, even, perhaps especially, the smell of poop and pee. After all, he was a dog. But this smell filled him with disgust. It was hideous and putrid. It made him feel sick. He wondered what could make a smell so horrible. As Dedbone carried the box inside the cave, the smell got stronger.

Furgul jumped up to the hole in the box and stuck his head out, hanging on to the rim with his claws. For a moment all he could see was blackness. He blinked, and his vision sharpened. The walls of the cave were rugged and dripped with slime. The air was cool and damp. A few yards later, Dedbone stopped, the box clutched to his chest. Furgul peered down from his perch in the hole. He saw that Dedbone’s toes had stopped right at a sharp edge of rock.