Red Dog Part 1

Red Dog.

Louis de Bernieres.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

The real Red Dog was born in 1971, and died on November 20th, 1979. The stories I have told here are all based upon what really happened to him, but I have invented all of the characters, partly because I know very little about the real people in Red Dog's life, and partly because I would not want to offend any of them by misrepresenting them. The only character who is 'real' is John.

There are two factual accounts of Red Dog's life. One is by Nancy Gillespie, first published in 1983, and now out of print. There is a copy in Perth public library, Western Australia. The other is by Beverley Duckett, 1993, obtainable at the time of writing from the tourist office in Karratha, Western Australia, and in local libraries. Dampier and Karratha public libraries also keep press-cuttings about Red Dog, and I wish to thank their librarians for their invaluable and freely given help.

Non-Australians will find a glossary of Aussie terms at the back of the book.

'Strewth,' exclaimed Jack Collins, 'that dog's a real stinker! I don't know how he puts up with himself. If I dropped bombs like that, I'd walk around with my head in a paper bag, just to protect myself.'

'Everyone likes their own smells,' said Mrs Collins. Jack raised his eyebrows and smirked at her, so she added, 'Or so they say.'

'Well, it's too much for me, Maureen. He's going to have to go out in the yard.'

'It's his diet,' said Maureen, 'eating what he eats, it's going to make smells. And he gulps it down so fast, he must be swallowing air.'

'Tally would let off even if you fed him on roses,' said her husband, shaking his head, half in wonder. 'Shame it's a talent you can't be paid for. We'd all be millionaires. You know what I think? We should hire him out to the airforce. You could drop him in enemy territory, he'd neutralise it for three days, more or less, and then you could send in the paratroops. It'd be a new era in airborne warfare.'

'Don't light any matches, he's done it again,' said Maureen, holding her nose with her left hand, and waving her right hand back and forth across her face. 'Tally, you're a bad dog.'

Tally Ho looked up at her with one yellow eye, keeping the other one closed for the sake of economy, and thumped his tail on the floor a couple of times. He had noted the affectionate tone of her voice, and took her words for praise. He was lying on his side, a little bit bloated after gnawing on one of his oldest bones. He was only a year old, so his oldest bone was not too old, but it certainly had plenty of flavours, and all the wind-creating properties of which Tally Ho was particularly fond.

Tally was the most notorious canine dustbin in the whole neighbourhood, and people delighted in presenting him with unlikely objects and encouraging him to eat them. With apparent relish he ate paper bags, sticks, dead rats, b.u.t.terflies, feathers, apple peel, eggsh.e.l.ls, used tissues and socks. On top of that, Tally ate the same food as the rest of the family, and at this moment carried in his stomach a goodly load of yesterday's mashed potato, gravy and steak and kidney pie.

This is not to say that Tally ever raided dustbins or browsed on garbage. That would have been very much beneath his dignity, and in any case, he had never found it necessary. He had never lacked success in obtaining perfectly good food from human beings, and ate odd things in good faith, just because human beings offered them to him. He made up his own mind as to what was worth eating again, and whilst he would probably be quite happy to eat more eggsh.e.l.ls, as long as they still had some traces of egg in them, he probably wouldn't try another feather.

'I'm going to take him to the airport,' said Jack, 'he can work off some energy, and get some of that gas out.' He went to the door and turned. Tally Ho was looking up at him expectantly, both yellow eyes open this time. His ears had p.r.i.c.ked up at the magic word 'airport'.

'Run time,' said Jack, and Tally sprang to his feet in an instant, bouncing up and down with pleasure as if the floor was a trampoline. The caravan shook and the gla.s.ses and cutlery in the cupboard started to rattle. Tally Ho seemed to be grinning with pleasure. He was shaking his head from side to side and yelping.

'Get him out before he demolishes the whole place,' said Maureen, and Jack stood aside for Tally Ho to shoot out of the door like the cork from a bottle of champagne. He bounded out of the small garden, and did some more bouncing up and down outside the car. Jack opened the back door, said 'Hop in' and Tally Ho jumped onto the back seat. In an instant he hopped over and sat in the front seat. Jack opened the front pa.s.senger door and ordered 'Out!'

Tally looked at him coolly, and then deliberately looked away. He had suddenly gone deaf, it appeared, and had found something in the far distance that was terribly interesting.

'Tally, out!' repeated Jack, and Tally pretended to be looking at a magpie that was flying over the caravan.

Jack used to be in the Australian army, and he liked his orders to be obeyed. He didn't take it lightly when he was ignored by a subordinate. He picked Tally bodily off the seat, and deposited him in the back. 'Stay!' he said, wagging his forefinger at the dog, who looked up at him innocently as if he would never consider doing the slightest thing amiss. Jack closed the door and went round to the driver's side. He got in, opened all the windows, started the engine and called over his shoulder, 'No bomb-dropping in the car. Understood?'

Tally waited until the Land Rover had started off down the road, before springing lightly once more over onto the front pa.s.senger seat. He sat down quickly and stuck his head out of the window, into the breeze, so that he would have a good excuse for not hearing his master telling him to get in the back. Jack raised his eyebrows, shook his head and sighed. Tally Ho was an obstinate dog, without a doubt, and didn't consider himself to be anyone's subordinate, not even Jack's. It never occurred to him that he was anything less than equal, and in that respect you might say that he was rather like a cat, although he probably wouldn't have liked the comparison.

Seven kilometres away the car stopped outside the perimeter fence of Paraburdoo airport, and Tally Ho was let out. A Cessna light aircraft bounced along the runway and took off. Tally chased its shadow along the ground, and pounced on it. The shadow sped on, and Tally ran after it in delight, repeatedly pouncing, and wondering at its escape.

Jack got back into the car, and drove away. He blew the horn, and Tally p.r.i.c.ked up his ears.

It was a red-hot day in February, which in Australia is the middle of the summer, and all the vegetation was looking as if it had been dried in an oven. It was one of those days when you are physically shocked by the heat if you go outdoors, and the sun feels like the flat of a hot knife laid directly onto your face. The air shimmers, distorting your views of the distance, and you can't believe that it really is that hot, even if you have lived there for years, and ought to be used to it. If you have a bald patch, and you aren't wearing a hat, it feels as though the skin on the top of your head is made of paper and has just been set alight. It seems as if the heat is going straight through your shirt, so you go as fast as you can from one bit of shade to another, and everything looks white, as if the sun has abolished the whole notion of colour.

Even the red earth looked less red. Visitors to that place can't believe that the mining companies are actually allowed to leave all those heaps of red stones and red earth all over the place, without caring about it at all, but the strange fact is that all those heaps and piles were put there by nature, as if She had whimsically decided to mimic the most untidy and careless behaviour of mankind itself. The difference is that nature managed to do it all without the help of bulldozers, diggers and dumper trucks. Through this ungentle landscape galloped Tally Ho, raising his own little plume of red dust in the wake of the greater plume raised by Jack Collins' car. His whole body thrilled with the pleasure of running, even though the day was at white heat, and even though he had to blink his eyes against the dust. He was young and strong, he had more energy than his muscles could make use of, and the world was still fresh and wonderful. He understood the joy of going full tilt to achieve the impossible, and therefore he ran after his owner's car as if he could catch it with no trouble at all. As far as he was concerned, he really did catch it, because after seven kilometres there it was, parked outside the caravan, its engine ticking as it cooled down, having given up the chase, too tired to continue. As for Tally, he could have run another seven kilometres, and then another again, and caught the car three times over. When he arrived home he came leaping through the door, headed straight for his bowl of water, and slurped it empty. Then, his tongue hanging out and leaving drips along the lino, he went back outside and lay down in the shade of a black mulga tree.

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 antic.i.p.ation, 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 supper-dish,' 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.

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 ca.s.sia.

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 G.o.d,' 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.

'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 p.r.i.c.ked 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, 'h.e.l.lo, 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 embarra.s.sment.

There was a man lifting sausages off his grill with a fork and bending down to put them on a plate that was on a rug beside him. On the plate were some salad and some new potatoes. When there were three sausages on the plate he straightened up to collect a burger from the grill, and when he looked down again, he had to look twice. There were no sausages. He gasped with surprise and shook his head in puzzlement. He scratched his head and looked around. Everyone was minding their own business. 'Me snags!' he said, 'someone's swiped me snags!' He called to the man next to him, ''Ere, mate, did you swipe me snags? 'Cause if so, I want 'em.'

The man turned his head briefly, 'Not me, mate. I got me own. If you want one, you're welcome.'

'I'll be d.a.m.ned,' said the first man, 'they were just there and then there they were, gone.'

Jack Collins called after Tally, but the dog was licking his lips to get off the last lovely traces of sausage-grease, and planning his next foray. He went down on his stomach and laid his head flat on the sand, with his nose pointing in the direction of a nice succulent steak that had just been put on a plate. The man who was about to eat it looked away for a second, and Tally darted in and s.n.a.t.c.hed it, leaving his victim with nothing but a sliced tomato and a few sc.r.a.pings of mustard. Tally bolted the steak and set off in search of a burger that he could smell quite distinctly at the other end of the beach.

'Did you swipe my steak?' the second man accused his neighbour, and 'Who swiped me snags?' called the first man, soon to be joined by 'b.l.o.o.d.y 'ell, where the devil's me burger?'

Jack saw all this and crept away as quietly and inconspicuously as he could. He knew that Tally would find his own way home, and he wasn't going to hang about to be blamed for his dog's behaviour. An angry miner wasn't the kind of man you'd want to have a blue with.

'I don't think he's coming back,' said Maureen Collins.

'It's easily the longest he's ever been away,' said Jack, shaking his head. They felt a little sad, as though they had both known that they were going to lose him, and had been trying not to think about it.

'I hope he hasn't been run over.'

'We would've heard. In a small place like this, all the news goes round in a flash. Anyway, that one's got more lives than a cat.'

'I heard,' said Maureen, 'that he's been going from door to door, bludging.'

'He's got a knack for locating tucker, that's for sure,' said Jack.

'I suppose he's probably all right, then. Still, it's a shame. I miss the little fella.' Tally had finally left home. Unlike most dogs, who are happy to spend the day either sleeping or watching life go by, he found life too interesting to stay in one place. He wanted to see what the world was like, wanted to know what was going on round the next corner, wanted to join in with things.

He was too bright to spend his time being bored, and, whilst there were a lot of people he liked, he hadn't yet found anyone he could really love, the way that dogs are always supposed to love. There wasn't anyone to be devoted to. He would call in on Jack and Maureen from time to time, and he would always be happy to see them. He might stay a couple of days, and get fed and watered, but he and they knew that he had moved out for ever.

It was lucky for him that the town was so full of lonely men. There had been a few aborigines and even fewer white people there before the iron companies and the salt company had moved in, but just recently a ma.s.sive and rapid development had begun to take place. New docks were constructed, new roads, new houses for the workers, a new railway and a new airport. In order to build all this, hundreds of men had arrived from all corners of the world, bringing nothing with them but their physical strength, their optimism and their memories of distant homes. Some of them were escaping from bad lives, some had no idea how they wanted their lives to be, and others had grand plans about how they could work their way from rags to riches.

They were either rootless or uprooted. They were from Poland, New Zealand, Italy, Ireland, Greece, England, Yugoslavia, and from other parts of Australia too. Most had brought no wives or family with them, and for the time being they lived in big huts that had been towed on trailers all the way up from Perth. Some of them were rough and some gentle, some were honest and some not. There were those who got rowdy and drunk, and picked fights, there were those who were quiet and sad, and there were those who told jokes and could be happy anywhere at all. With no women to keep an eye on them, they easily turned into eccentrics. A man might shave his head and grow an immense beard. He might to go to Perth for a week, go 'blotto on Rotto', and come back with a terrible hangover and lots of painful tattoos. He might wear odd socks and have his trousers full of holes. He might not wash for a week, or he might read books all night so that he was red-eyed and weary in the morning when it was time to go to work. They were all pioneers, and had learned to live hard and simple lives in this landscape that was almost a desert.

These brawny individuals took a rapid shine to Tally. They had little affection in their lives, and they could feel lonely even with all their workmates around them, so it was good to have a dog that you could stroke, and have playfights with. It was good to have a dog to talk to, who never swore at you and was always glad to see you. Tally liked them, too, because they ruffled his ears and roughed him up a bit, and rolled him on his back to tickle his stomach. They fed him meaty morsels from their sandwiches and dinner plates, and they brought him special treats from the butcher. Even though he was sometimes absent for days on end, there would always be a can of dogfood on the shelf, along with all the tools and oily rags, and there would always be a bit of steak left over from the weekend's barbecue.

No-one knew his real name, and before long he was simply called 'Red Dog'. A dog is happy to have lots of names, and it was no bother to him if someone wanted to call him 'Red'. In any case, a red dog is exactly what Tally was. He was a Red Cloud kelpie, a fine old Australian breed of sheepdog, very clever and energetic, but some people thought that Red Dog might have had some cattle dog in his ancestry. He was one of three puppies, and Tally turned out a lovely dark, coppery colour, with amber-yellow eyes and p.r.i.c.ked-up ears. His tail was slightly bushy, and on his shoulders and chest the fur was thick like a mane. His forehead was broad and his nose was brown, a little bit turned up at the end. His body was solid and strong, and if you picked him up you were surprised by how heavy he was.

Red Dog and the men from the Hamersley Iron Transport section got to know each other, because one of their bus drivers adopted him and became the only person to whom he ever belonged.

John was not a big fierce man like some of the miners. He was small and quite young, and he loved animals almost more than anything else. He had high cheekbones because he was half Maori, and people used to say of him that he was a friend to everyone. One day John met Red Dog in a street in Dampier, when he was standing outside his bus waiting for some of his daily pa.s.sengers to arrive. When he caught sight of Red Dog he reacted with instinctive pleasure, crouching down on one knee and saying, 'Hey, boy! Here!' and clicking his fingers and tongue. Red Dog, who had been busy with his own thoughts, stopped and looked at him. 'Come on, mate,' said John, and Red Dog wagged his tail. 'Come and say g'day,' said John.

Red Dog came over and John reached down and took his right paw. He shook it and said, 'Pleased to meet you, mate.' John took Red Dog's head in both hands, and looked into his eyes. 'Hey, you're a beauty,' he said, and Red Dog knew straight away that from now on his life was going to take a new direction.

When the miners turned up to take their big yellow bus to work they found John sitting in the driver's seat, and Red Dog sitting in the seat behind him.

One day someone turned up on the bus whom no-one had ever seen before. Nancy Grey was new in town, having come to work as a secretary at Hamersley Iron, and she had never heard about Red Dog.

When she got on the bus to go for her first morning at work, she found it full of miners, and with no empty seats, except for a seat behind the driver, which had a red dog in it. She looked at the rows of men grinning at her, and she gazed at the red dog, who looked away as if he had not noticed her.

None of the men offered her their seat, because they wanted to see what would happen when Nancy tried to move Red Dog.

'Down!' said Nancy, who wasn't going to take any nonsense from an animal. Red Dog looked up at her, and settled himself into his seat more firmly.

'Bad dog!' exclaimed Nancy, and Red Dog curled his lip and gave a low growl. Nancy was a little bit shocked, and drew back but at the same time she was almost sure that this dog would never bite her. His expression wasn't quite fierce enough. The men in the bus began to laugh at her. 'You'll never get him out of there!' said one.

'That's his seat,' said another. 'No-one sits there when Red wants it.'

Nancy faced the men, and began to blush. It was embarra.s.sing to be outfaced by a dog and a busload of miners. Determined not to give in, she sat down gingerly on the very edge of the seat, where Red Dog wouldn't be disturbed.

Red Dog was disturbed, however. This was his seat, and everyone knew it. What was more, the whole seat was his, and not just a half of it. Ever since he had met John, he had travelled around as much as he wanted on the company buses, no matter who the driver was, and he always had the seat behind the driver. It was emphatically his seat, and no-one else's. He showed Nancy his teeth and growled again.

'Well, aren't you a charmer?' she said, but she didn't budge.

Red Dog could see that threats weren't doing any good, so he decided to push her off the seat. He turned around, stuck his muzzle under her thigh, and pushed. She was surprised by how strong he was, and she was almost tipped off. Behind her the men began to laugh again, and she grew even more determined.

'I'm not moving,' she told the dog quietly, 'so you'll just have to put up with me.'

Red Dog wasn't going to give in either, and he pushed Nancy until she only had one tiny bit of her backside on the seat. He felt that he had made his point, and let her perch there, uncomfortable as she was.

The next day Nancy got on the bus again, and there was Red Dog, sitting behind the driver's seat once more. 'Oh, no,' she thought, because once again the bus was full, and all the men were waiting to see what was going to happen. The people in the office had told her about the dog after she had got into work the previous morning, and now she knew that this was the dog who travelled around as the fancy took him. He lived mostly in the transport workshops, keeping an eye on what was going on, and he was a paid-up member of the Transport Workers' Union. When the action in the workshop got too slow, he got lifts all over the area. Sometimes he travelled on the water-truck, sometimes in the company utes, sometimes in the giant train-trucks.

As he got to know more and more people, he began to take lifts in their private cars as well. You had to watch out for Red Dog when you were driving, because he never forgot a vehicle that he had had a lift in, remembering both the paintwork and the sound of the engine, and he would wait by the side of the road until one of them came along. Quite suddenly he would run out in front of the car so that you had to screech to a halt and let him in, so you learned to watch out for him in the same way that you watched out for rock-wallabies and wallaroos. Red Dog always insisted on the front seat, especially on the company buses, even more especially when John was driving, and that was that.

Nancy sat down a little closer to Red Dog than she had yesterday, and he looked sideways at her, showing the whites of his eyes, as if he were about to bite her. Instead he got down, stuck his muzzle under her thigh and once more tried to push her off. Nancy was conscious of the sn.i.g.g.e.rs of the men in the bus, and, mustering as much dignity as she could, she said, 'None of you's a gentleman, that's for sure.'

Red Dog seemed a little put out by this remark and he sat up and pretended that there was no-one else on his seat. If he couldn't move that obstinate woman, he would just have to treat her with the disdain that she deserved. He let her put a little bit more of her backside on the seat.

The next morning Red Dog realised that he was looking forward to sitting next to Nancy, and when she sat next to him he forgot to try to push her off. He thought that he might just try being a bit aloof, but when she said 'Hi, Red!' and patted him on the head, he couldn't help smiling a little in the way that dogs do. He thumped his tail on the seat, once only, and then went back to looking out of the window, not wanting to give way too much to begin with.