knew what Faro would do. He would track me to the store, from the store back to the pond, and from the pond to where I sat, but Mr Loomis could not see that from the house. I could almost time Faro’s movements. Sure enough, in about ten minutes he came up through the woods, wagging his tail.
I patted him and was glad to see him, but that was all I did—I was still intent on watching the scene below. He stayed with me for about ten minutes and then, after sniffing around inside the cave, he trotted off down the hill, back to the house. I had been used to feeding him in the morning; it was time for his breakfast and his food-dish was in the garden near the front porch. I suppose he thought I would follow him.
I made a mistake. I should have fed him here at the cave, because I did have a few tins of meat—three to be exact—and also some tinned hash that he would have eaten at a pinch. But it did not occur to me until after he left, and even then only as a small worry, not a big one. Not until later did I begin to realize that Faro could—quite innocently—lead Mr Loomis to me and that if I had fed him and kept him with me, I might have prevented that. And then it was too late.
Because what happened was that a few minutes after Faro reappeared in the front garden Mr Loomis came out of the front door, carrying his dish, and it was full of food. He put it down, and as Faro began to eat it I could see that Mr Loomis had something else in his hand. Through the binoculars it looked like a belt, and that is what it was—one of David’s or Joseph’s, I suppose, from their clothes cupboard. He had cut it off short, and as Faro ate he slipped it around the dog’s neck and fastened the buckle.
Faro did not seem to mind much; he gave a shake or two and then went back to his eating. Mr Loomis meanwhile went to the porch and got something else. At first I thought it was piece of rope but then, from its bright green colour, I knew it was not. It was a long electric cord, the one from my mother’s vacuum cleaner. He slipped it through the belt around Faro’s neck and knotted it. He tied the other end to the porch rail.
Poor Faro! He had never in his life been tied up before. When he finished eating he shook himself again, trying to get the collar off, and then trotted away. When he came to the end of the tether his head snapped back and he fell down. He stood up, shook himself, and tried again. Next he turned around and backed off, trying to pull the collar over his head. Mr Loomis watched: at last, having seen that the dog could not get away, he turned and went back into the house.
Faro, following the instinct of all dogs, sat down and chewed on the cord. But it was made of heavy wire with a tough plastic coating, and though he kept gnawing for half an hour it was too much for his teeth.
After that he cried, a thin mournful yipping sound he had not made since he was a puppy. I wanted to run down and untie the knot, but of course I couldn’t.
So I sat where I was and watched. Also, I began to think about what I should do, what was going to happen. I thought about all the routine things I should be doing—milking the cow, feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs, weeding the garden. Could I just live up here, keeping my distance, and continue to do them? Perhaps the outdoor things I could. Cooking the meals I could not do, since that would mean going into the house. Mr Loomis would have to cook his own. Should I continue to bring him supplies from the store? I did not think he could walk far enough to get his own, not yet. I could not let him starve, no matter what he had done.
I decided that somehow or other we would have to work out a compromise, a way that we could both live in the valley even though not as friends. There was enough room, and he was welcome to have the house. Perhaps I could live in the store or church. I was willing to do the work as necessary. And we could stay apart, and leave each other entirely alone.
The trouble was, I knew I would be willing to do that, but I was not sure he would be.
Still the effort had to be made. I decided I would go and talk to him. I could do it from a distance. I was thinking of how and what to say, when I fell asleep.
I woke up in late afternoon, my neck was sore and stiff, and I was hungry. I had only a smattering of food supplies still in the cave, but I opened a tin of hash and ate it cold.
Today I am going to figure out where I can build a fire, by day so he will not see the smoke, or by night so that he will not see the flames. I expect the second way will be easier.
Chapter Twenty
After supper, in the cave.
Mr Loomis does plan to use Faro to catch me. Yesterday, late in the afternoon, he came outside carrying Faro’s plate of food. The dog had stopped crying and gone to sleep, curled up in the grass beside the porch. Mr Loomis did not give him the food immediately, but put the plate down on the porch. He untied the leash, the electric cord, from the porch, looped up most of it in his hand like a lasso (it was 25 feet long), and led Faro out to the road still tied to the other end.
Faro, not used to being led, had a hard time at first—he kept trying to run and being brought up short. He learned quickly, however, and in a few minutes was walking along docilely enough, his nose to the road and wagging his tail. He was following my trail again, but this time leading Mr Loomis behind him.
They went in this manner only a few yards up the road, perhaps fifty. Then they turned and came back to the house, Mr Loomis once again limping slightly, Faro trotting beside him, pulling a little to get to his dinner. But in that few yards I began to realize the mistake I had made, and also why Mr Loomis had tied Faro up. If he could teach him to track on a leash, he could find me whenever he wanted to. Not yet, perhaps, but when he could walk farther.
Suddenly I had a feeling he knew I was watching. Or worse, that he hoped I was. Along with it came another feeling which made me feel slightly sick again: that I was in a game of move-counter-move, like a chess game, a game I did not want to be in at all. Only Mr Loomis wanted to be in it, and only he could win it.
After he had tied the dog up and fed him, Mr Loomis walked back to the road and stood looking, first in the direction they had walked, towards the store: having seen nothing there, he turned slowly in a full circle, inspecting all of the valley that he could see. At one point he stared straight at me, and I had a fearful impulse to put down the binoculars and duck into the cave. But he could not see me, I knew; in a moment his gaze went on past, he completed his circle, and went into the house.
I took stock of what I had in the cave: a few pounds of cornmeal in a paper bag, some salt, three tins of meat, three of beans, one of peas, two of corn. That was all the food—not very much. I had the two guns and a box of shells for each. A sleeping bag, a pillow and two blankets—but no change of clothes except for the extra shirt I had brought from the store: the rest I had taken back to the house. A pot, a frying pan, a plate, a cup, a knife, fork and spoon. Two candles, a lamp and a gallon of kerosene. One book:
The sun was going down, and I decided before it was fully dark I would see about making the fire. What I had in mind was to build, if I could, a wall of some kind near the cave, not very big, but enough to hide the glow of a small fire from the direction of the house.
It turned out to be quite easy. I found a more or less flat place, a shelf, on the hillside a few yards up. I dug into it with a stick, raking the loosened earth with my hands into a low pile on the downhill side. The resulting hole was about six inches deep, about the size of a wash basin, big enough for a cooking fire. The pile of earth was too low to hide it, so until dark I collected rocks, about brick-sized, to pile on top of it. When I had enough, or nearly, I could no longer see to fit them properly; I left it to finish the next day, by daylight, and ate cold beans for supper. I remember thinking, tomorrow night I can cook some cornmeal. I hoped also to have some milk.
After I had eaten I carried two of my bottles to the brook and refilled them with fresh water. I also rinsed my spoon and washed my hands and face. I felt very tired; I was yawning continuously and realized there would be no staying awake that night. That alarmed me somewhat because sound asleep at night I was vulnerable, as I had learned. I decided as a precaution at least not to sleep in the cave—with only one entrance, and a small one, it would be like a trap.
I took my sleeping bag and a blanket up to the small shelf where I had been building the fire-wall. There was
