Part 4 (1/2)

'Why would anyone kidnap him?' demanded the vet, exasperated. 'It's so d.a.m.ned stupid.'

'Probably thought we were going to put him down,' said the ranger. 'That fella's got lots of friends.'

The two men resigned themselves to having lost their patient, and to leaving him full of the lethal worms until he showed up again, and the ranger hung up. He got his keys from the kitchen, finished his cup of coffee and went outside into the blazing light. In the distance there was a beautiful mirage of a sailing s.h.i.+p in full sail above the horizon, and the ranger stopped for a moment to marvel at it. Then he got into his vehicle and drove off in the direction of the Miaree Pool. He stopped for petrol and went inside to pay the cas.h.i.+er.

When he came out, he stuffed his wallet back into his pocket and then walked towards his yellow ute. The ranger could hardly believe his eyes, because there was Red Dog sitting next to the pa.s.senger door, asking to be let in. The ranger put his hand to his forehead, shook his head, and laughed.

So it was that Red Dog finished his treament for heartworm and took on a new lease of life. He went to find Don at the Dampier Salt Company, and made friends with the men there. They were the same kind as those who worked at Hamersley Iron: exiles, foreigners, transients, people earning a fast buck so that they could start a new life elsewhere. They seldom stayed for long, but always the tradition and custom of caring for Red Dog survived.

He was allowed to stay in whichever hut he liked; all he had to do was scratch at the door and he was welcomed in. The blokes made him a member of the union and the sports and social club, they kept a timesheet and they gave him a book of canteen tickets. His job was to polish off the leftovers. Don opened a bank account for him with the Wales Bank, under the name 'Red Dog', and money was paid into it whenever the lads had a whip-round to raise funds for his vet's bills. Don also registered him with the s.h.i.+re, so that he would no longer run the risk of being cla.s.sified as a stray, and his official t.i.tle became 'The Dog of the North-West.'

That may have been his official t.i.tle, but at Dampier Salt he acquired another name altogether. In Australia anyone with red hair shares the common fate of being called 'Bluey', and that's what they called him, too.

Back in the time when there were almost no houses and only two caravan parks in Karratha, Red Dog liked to call in on the caravans that belonged to his many friends and providers. He would expect to be washed, de-ticked, and fed, and then he would stay a couple of days until he felt like setting off on his travels once more.

Red Dog particularly liked one of the parks, because that was where his mate Red Cat lived, as well as Nancy and Patsy, but, and it was a big BUT, there was one small problem. Actually, the truth is that there were two big problems, and they were married to each other.

Mr and Mrs Cribbage were the caretakers of the caravan park. They lived off pigsnout sandwiches, sweet milky tea, and cigarettes, and it was their duty to keep the place tidy and neat. They would sort out any difficulties that people might have with water-supply or electricity. If the bulbs blew in the dunnies, Mr Cribbage would sigh with irritation and change them. If Red Cat raided a bin and overturned it, it was Mrs Cribbage who would sigh with irritation and set it upright. This is all to say that they were fairly typical caretakers, who were seldom pleased when their leisure was interrupted by their jobs, or when their cups of tea had to be abandoned in mid-sip.

The unfortunate thing about Mr and Mrs Cribbage was that they were pernickety about enforcing the rules, even the stupid ones that any normal person would ignore, and one of these rules was 'NO DOGS'.

The first time that Mrs Cribbage met Red Dog, he was just about to scratch on the door of Patsy's caravan. 'Hey, you!' she called, rus.h.i.+ng up to him and waving a dishcloth in his face. 'Be off with you! Shoo! Shoo!'

Red Dog looked at this fat woman and her dishcloth, and decided that she was probably mad. He ignored her politely, and scratched once more on Patsy's door.

'Off! Away!' shouted Mrs Cribbage, and at that moment Patsy opened her door. She looked from the dog to the woman, and asked, 'What's up?'

'NO DOGS!' announced Mrs Cribbage.

Patsy regarded her pityingly and told her, 'This isn't any old dog. This is Red Dog.'

'A dog's a dog,' replied Mrs Cribbage, 'and I don't care if it's one of the Queen's b.l.o.o.d.y corgis. This is a dog, and that's that. NO DOGS.' It occurred to Patsy that Mrs. Cribbage's voice sounded rather like a kookaburra.

'Red Dog has privileges,' said Patsy. 'Everyone knows that.'

'If you don't get rid of that dog,' said Mrs Cribbage, her voice rising still further, 'you'll have me and Mr Cribbage to answer to.'

'If you try to get rid of Red Dog, you'll have the whole of the Pilbara to answer to,' replied Nancy, 'so if I were you I wouldn't get my knickers in a knot.'

Mrs Cribbage huffed, 'And if you don't get rid of that dog, we'll shoot it, and evict you too. So don't say you didn't get warned.'

Mrs Cribbage turned her back and walked away importantly, confident that she, and only she, was queen in this little kingdom. Over the next few days, however, she kept thinking that she saw Red Dog out of the corner of her eye, and she mentioned it several times to Mr Cribbage, who was a small man with a toothbrush moustache rather like Hitler's. His moustache and his fingers were a nasty shade of yellowy-brown, rather like a pub ceiling, because he liked to smoke all the time, rolling himself tiny, tight little cigarettes. When he finished smoking one, he would open the b.u.t.t-end and take out the unsmoked tobacco so that he could use it again in another cigarette. He had become hollow-chested, and you always knew when he was coming, because of his perpetual dry cough.

The couple went into Dampier and bought a stencil from the stationer's in the mall, and then they spent a happy morning making lots of notices and signboards that said 'NO DOGS'. These they stuck up on every available tree in the caravan park, after which they felt that they had done a good day's work indeed. The people in the park shook their heads, and agreed that from now on they would have a coded alarm, so that the caretakers would never catch them out when Red Dog was about. Patsy proposed that their code-word should be 'p.u.s.s.ycats', and this was soon adopted. Mr and Mrs Cribbage wondered for quite a while why it was that people shouted 'p.u.s.s.ycats', without provocation, every time that they pa.s.sed by with their buckets and bins. 'I reckon they're all barking mad,' observed Mr Cribbage.

'Talking of barking, I still keep seeing that dog,' said his wife.

Now, it so happened that both Patsy and Nancy were scared of the dark. Back then there were almost no lights to make the sky glow orange, and you could see every star in the sky as brightly as if it were sparkling on the tips of your fingers. The moon lay on its back as if on holiday, setting down its cool watery light. If it was cloudy, however, you would not be able to see anything at all if your torch batteries ran out, and many poor souls found themselves s.h.i.+vering until dawn, absolutely lost even though they were only a few steps from their door.

Red Dog could smell his way around in the dark, as if his nose were an extra pair of eyes, but he did seem to understand that Patsy and Nancy were scared. Accordingly, when they needed to go to the dunny at night, he would turn up at their sides as if by magic, and then escort them back to their caravans again. They were grateful for this help, and rewarded him with plenty of snacks and affection. Before Red Dog's arrival, Red Cat had been the official protector of the site, but he had never provided as good a free service as this.

As mischance would have it, one night Mrs Cribbage needed to go at the same time as Patsy, and she caught her with Red Dog, strolling out of the dunny in the moonlight. She stopped in her tracks for a moment, puffed out her cheeks and worked up a good head of anger, until she had succeeded in making herself as mad as a cut snake. 'What's this?' she cried, 'What's this? You've still got that dog. What did I tell you? It's eviction for you, my girl, that's what.'

Patsy knew that if she was evicted she would have nowhere else to go, but at this moment she didn't seem to care. She had had enough of the Cribbages and their anti-dog campaign. She was cold, and she just wanted to get back to bed. Suddenly she heard herself saying, 'Aw, get lost, why don't you?'

'Cow!' exclaimed Mrs Cribbage. 'b.i.t.c.h! Just you wait!'

'I'll wait,' said Nancy. She looked down at Red Dog, whose yellow eyes were glowing in the moonlight. 'Come on Red, let's go back to bed.' Without another word she turned her back on Mrs Cribbage and coolly walked away.

The next morning, whilst she was having breakfast, she heard a rustling noise, and saw that a note was being pushed under her door. It was written in tiny neat handwriting: Due to you're being persistantly and unreasonnably in vyolation of the rules with respeck to dogs, you are hearby noterfied that as from tomorrow morning you are deklared evickted from this park and tomorrow morning at 9.30 I shall be ariving with a vehcle to tow you out of it. Sincerely, Mr and Mrs Cribbage.

Patsy read this note twice, and then took it round to Nancy's, saying, 'What am I going to do? Where am I going to live? This is just awful! They're going to make me homeless, just because of a dog!'

Nancy twisted her lip and shook her head. 'What a pair of dingbats. And just look at that spelling!' She put her hand on Patsy's arm. 'Don't you worry,' she said, 'and don't start packing either, 'cause I'm going to make sure that you don't have to go anywhere at all.' She took the note and went from caravan to caravan, in order to show it to everyone she could find.

The following morning at 9.20, Mr Cribbage straightened his greasy old tie, combed his. .h.i.tler moustache and arranged the few strands of his hair across his bald patch.

'There's an awful lot of people driving around this morning,' observed Mrs Cribbage, who was standing at the window. 'I wonder what they can all be up to.'

Mr Cribbage picked up his keys from the table, squared his shoulders, coughed and opened the door. He was feeling satisfied and fulfilled, because he was just about to exercise his power and authority. 'Now they'll take me seriously,' he was thinking.

Once he was outside, however, his pleasure quickly turned to gall.

For a moment he could hardly believe what he saw. Some of the inhabitants of the park had left their cars all around his, so that he was completely boxed in, and others had abandoned their vehicles all over the tracks that wound between the caravans. Worse than this, perhaps, the people themselves were standing around in small groups, smiling at him and gloating over his discomfiture.

'Reckon on towing Patsy out, do you?' called one, and nudged the person next to him.

'Want any help?' called another.

'Reckon you might have a problem,' called yet another.

Mr Cribbage felt fury and frustration rise up in his breast. His lips quivered, his eyes popped, sweat broke out on his forehead and his heart thumped. He spoke at last. 'Have it your way, then. That dog's a stray, and I'm calling in the ranger. It'll be put down, and that'll be the end of it.'

'That's no b.l.o.o.d.y use,' called someone. 'Red's the ranger's mate. And he ain't a stray either. He's registered.'

The caretaker stood for a moment quite still, and then turned on his heel and marched back into his office.

People were just wondering what was happening, when he re-emerged. In his hands was a twelve-bore shotgun. He broke the barrel, took two cartridges out of his coat pocket and slipped them into the chambers. He snapped the barrel shut and looked up at the caravaners, who by now were feeling distinctly uneasy. He put the gun under his left arm and patted it with his right hand. 'When I see that dog,' he announced, 'he's getting both barrels of this.' He turned round and went back inside. He took the cartridges out of the gun and propped it up in a corner. He was trembling with anger and with spite as he said to Mrs Cribbage, 'I'm going to have to shoot that dog.'

'You should shoot some of those drongos whilst you're about it,' said Mrs Cribbage, huffing. 'They're sc.u.m, nothing but sc.u.m. Got no respect, no respect at all, they haven't.'

Outside, things began to move quickly. 'I can't believe it,' people said to each other, 'the b.a.s.t.a.r.d actually wants to shoot Red Dog.'

'It can't be legal,' said others. 'He can't do that.'

'I'm calling the RSPCA,' announced Patsy.

'I'm calling the boys at Hamersley Iron,' said Nancy.

That afternoon the RSPCA officer arrived, and in no uncertain terms threatened the Cribbages with prosecution. But that was not the worst of it. Later still, a yellow bus arrived from Hamersley Iron. The workers inside had only just finished their s.h.i.+fts, and fatigue had made them feel doubly upset. Some of them were covered in soot, or with red dust, or with machine oil. They were fierce, hard men, and they were very angry indeed. They burst into Mr Cribbage's office without knocking, and the caretakers' cups of tea stopped midway to their lips. They were completely surrounded. Jocko put his hands on the desk and leaned forward; 'Now would you be the wee little sc.u.mbag that we've been hearing about?'