Waggit's Tale Read online

  Lowdown joined him and lay down by his side. Waggit hated to see how hard it was becoming for his friend to do this. Lowdown’s joints were feeling the effects of aging and lack of medical care that came with the life of a park dog, but he rarely let his aches and pains affect his genial disposition.

  “Look at those little devils,” Lowdown said affectionately. “Don’t it seem just like yesterday that you was doing the same thing yourself?” He paused and looked at Waggit. “Well, of course for you it was yesterday.”

  Waggit smiled. “I guess it was, but it feels like a lot longer ago than that.”

  “Yeah, you grow up quick around here,” said Lowdown. “Come to think of it, you grow old quick too.”

  “You’re not growing old,” said Waggit, playfully nudging his friend with his nose. “You’re just getting grumpier. Pretty soon you and Gruff will be agreeing with each other.”

  “Oh Dear Vinda!” Lowdown laughed. “If that ever happens, put me out of my misery—please!”

  Just then Tazar appeared. He nodded to them as he passed.

  “I’ll see you guys later,” he said, and then trotted off into the woods.

  “I wonder where he goes every day,” said Waggit.

  “I doubt we’ll ever know,” said Lowdown.

  A sudden thought occurred to Waggit.

  “Why not?” he said. “Why shouldn’t we know? What if I follow him and find out?”

  “You’d never make it,” said Lowdown. “Tazar’s too smart to let himself be followed. He’d know you was there before you got to the Deepwoods.”

  “Hey,” Waggit protested, “remember who you’re talking about. It’s me—the best hunter on the team. Think of all the things I’ve tracked without them knowing. I’m going to give it a try.”

  “All right,” said Lowdown. “I’d tell you Tazar won’t like it—but it don’t matter, since he’ll sniff you out faster than you sniff out a scurry.”

  Waggit started out in the direction that Tazar had headed and soon picked up his scent. The wind was blowing from the Deepwoods End, which not only made it easier to track Tazar, but also meant that he would be unlikely to smell Waggit if the younger dog followed far enough behind.

  Within moments Waggit saw the big black dog loping casually along a wooded path. Every so often he paused to sniff at a tree or a patch of grass. He seemed unaware of Waggit’s presence, and on occasion stopped to talk with a loner. If he knew he was being followed he gave no indication of it but kept going farther into the deepest and most wooded part of the park.

  Tazar suddenly became more wary, quickening his stride, and looking over his shoulder, zigzagging from side to side, trying to break the scent trail that all dogs leave. He suddenly stopped and looked around him in a full circle. Fortunately Waggit knew his leader’s body language quite well by now and was able to anticipate many of his movements. This allowed him just enough time to hide behind a large maple tree. He waited a few moments before looking around it. When he did, to his surprise Tazar had gone—he had simply disappeared.

  Very carefully Waggit started to scout the area, doing exactly what he would if he’d lost sight of his prey on a hunt. Backward and forward he went, moving low to the ground, his nose twitching as he tried to pick up the scent again. He would get tantalizing whiffs of it and then it would vanish, so he knew Tazar was still in the area. Waggit had moved into a clump of trees when something caught his attention. He dropped to the ground and very carefully lifted his head.

  Not far from him, in a bowl made from the roots of a large oak tree, were Tazar and a pretty female dog. They seemed to be hiding something that Waggit couldn’t see. He moved very slowly and carefully to get a better view. There, nestled against the female’s body, were two puppies, neither of them more than a few days old. Both Tazar and the female seemed absorbed in watching the litter, when suddenly Tazar lifted his head and sniffed the air. Waggit froze; he realized in a flash that in moving around to get a better view he was now upwind of the black dog, who had picked up his scent.

  “Waggit,” barked Tazar, “come on out. I know you’re there.”

  Waggit lay still, his heart pounding. There would be a price to pay for this. Maybe he could get away without being seen and then deny that he had ever been in this part of the woods. He edged around the side of the trees that were protecting him. Lying flat to the ground he gingerly moved forward, but once again his tail gave him away. Wagging furiously because he was so nervous, it stood up above the low bushes that were hiding his body, and couldn’t have been more noticeable had a flag been tied to it.

  “Waggit,” came Tazar’s booming voice, “if there’s one tail in this world that I would recognize anywhere, it’s yours. No use hiding; I know you’re there.”

  Sheepishly, if that’s possible for a dog, Waggit stood up and walked toward the leader. As he got closer his head got lower and his ears flatter. Tazar looked at him sternly.

  “Waggit, how’d you find me here?” he asked.

  “I tracked you,” said Waggit in a low voice.

  “You did what?” Tazar was incredulous.

  “Tracked you,” replied a very miserable Waggit.

  “All the way from camp?”

  “Yeah.” Waggit’s voice was barely a whisper by now.

  “Brother, you are one good tracker,” said Tazar in a mixture of disbelief and admiration. “I never suspected you were there for one moment, and I always know when I’m being tracked. At least I thought I did.”

  “If I was that good a tracker we wouldn’t be having this talk now,” said Waggit, “’cause I would’ve been out of here.”

  “Yes,” agreed Tazar, “that’s the trouble with mistakes. You make just one and all the good stuff’s gone. But still you tracked me all this way, and that’s impressive.”

  Waggit began to realize that Tazar wasn’t angry at being followed, but was quite proud of the fact that the young dog had managed to do it.

  “So why did you want to follow me in the first place?” Tazar inquired.

  “Well,” said Waggit, “you’ve been spending so much time away from the team lately, and I was just curious about what you did.”

  “What did you think I was doing?” asked Tazar.

  “Lowdown, Cal, and Raz said you were getting intelligence about the park, and that’s why you know what’s gonna happen before it does. Gruff said it was because you needed to get away from us all from time to time, as he would if he wasn’t feelin’ so poorly.”

  “And you, Waggit?” asked Tazar. “What did you think?”

  “I didn’t know,” said Waggit. “That’s why I was curious.”

  Tazar said nothing but just stood and looked at Waggit. The younger dog could feel no hostility coming from him, in fact quite the opposite. He felt Tazar’s warmth, a fondness for him like a father feels toward a gifted son.

  “Come here,” Tazar eventually said. “I want you to meet someone.”

  He led Waggit to the bowl at the foot of the tree where the female dog and her puppies lay. The female looked up as they approached, and you could see that she was very shy, even shier than Alona.

  “Waggit, I’d like you to meet Solosa,” said Tazar.

  “Very pleased to meet you,” said Waggit politely.

  The female dog said nothing but kept her eyes fixed on Tazar.

  “She’s my mate,” he said, “and these are my”—he corrected himself—“our puppies.”

  Waggit looked from Tazar to Solosa and to the little bundles of fur that lay happily next to their mother. It was a lot of information to take in all at once.

  “So now you see why I’ve been spending so much time away from the team,” said Tazar. “I’ve got other responsibilities now.”

  “Does that mean you’re leaving us?” asked Waggit—somewhat selfishly maybe, but that had been his biggest fear all along.

  “Leave you?” said Tazar. “Why would I leave my team? Of course I won’t leave you. You’re my family just a
s much as these little ones and this beautiful dog.”

  Solosa really was beautiful; there was no denying that.

  “Why doesn’t she come and join the team?” asked Waggit.

  “Solosa was born in the park. She’s been a loner all her life. No way could she become a team dog now. We’ve agreed that when the little ones are old enough they’ll come to the team, but it’ll be a few risings before that happens,” Tazar replied.

  “Why didn’t you tell us about her and about the puppies?” asked Waggit.

  “What was the first thing you said when you found out? You said, ‘Are you leaving us?’ The rest of the team would have had exactly the same response,” Tazar replied. “And not everyone would have believed me when I said that there was no way I would leave you all.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “In fact, little brother,” he continued, “it’s probably best if they still don’t know until the puppies are big enough to join us; so you and I have a secret to keep.”

  Waggit didn’t know how he felt about this. His initial reaction was pride at sharing something so important with the leader, something that nobody else knew. But then he realized that keeping it secret would mean not being entirely honest with Lowdown and the others. This made him very uncomfortable, for Lowdown and he had no secrets, and that was what made them so close.

  Tazar could see all this in Waggit’s face.

  “You know,” he said, “the job of a leader is to keep the team safe, provided for, and happy, and sometimes what they don’t know is more important to their happiness than what they do. Now I don’t lie to the team—never have and never will—but there are times when it’s best not to tell everyone everything, and this is one of them. So you’ve got to keep it a secret—just for now.”

  Waggit thought for a bit and then made up his mind.

  “Okay,” he said, “I can do that.”

  He looked around the area where Solosa and the puppies lived. In many ways the Deepwoods End was the prettiest part of the park, because it was the wildest. Few humans ever came here, even in the summer when there were streams running and birds singing. It was as if the city, with its noise and smells and traffic, was another world away.

  “Why don’t you want to live here with them?” he asked Tazar.

  “Well, you know, sometimes it seems like a wonderful idea,” the black dog replied, “but in my heart of hearts I know it wouldn’t work. I’ve been a team dog as long as I’ve been in the park, same as Solosa’s always been a loner. We live different lives because we’ve got different natures. I love the team. I love waking up in the morning and knowing everyone’s around. I love laughing with them and caring for them when they’re sick or upset. I love calming them down, or jazzing them up. To me, being a team dog is a bigger life than being a loner, but Solosa doesn’t see it that way. It’s just the way you are, I guess, just what you’re used to. In the end you have to stay true to your nature.”

  Waggit remained with the two dogs and their puppies for a little while longer. The puppies were still too young to play, and although they were cute, he didn’t find them very interesting. Tazar and Solosa seemed to want to be together, so he said his good-byes and headed back toward the Risingside. As he walked back along the paths that led to his home he thought about what Tazar had said, and wondered what his own true nature was.

  The first dog he met when he got back to the tunnel was Lowdown. He looked up and laughed his wheezing laugh.

  “Did he sniff you out?” he asked. “I bet he did. He sniffed you out, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” admitted Waggit, “he sniffed me out.”

  “I knew he would,” said the delighted Lowdown. “That Tazar, he’s so smart, ain’t no dog could track him down without him knowing it, not even you, and you’re good.”

  It was true that Tazar had picked up his scent when he moved upwind to see better, so Waggit felt he hadn’t lied to his friend. It was like Tazar had said, there are occasions when it’s best not to tell everyone everything.

  13

  Captured

  Spring was in the air. You could feel it and smell it. Even the humans could smell it.

  As the days became longer and warmer, the pace of life in the park picked up. Now instead of hurrying, shoulders hunched and collars pulled up around their ears, the humans strolled at a more leisurely pace. For the dogs, life became a bit easier, and yet more difficult at the same time. Because there were more people around, there was more food, but also more rangers, or so it seemed. As far as they were concerned, getting the park ready for spring included not only blowing away the dead leaves with noisy, smelly machines, but also taking a much more aggressive approach to any dog off a leash. A couple of loners who had ventured too close to the Skyline End had already been captured, and Cal and Raz had to make an undignified escape while foraging near the Bigwater when they were chased by a female worker brandishing a spade.

  The big question was, What would happen to the restaurant in the park now that Tashi’s team no longer existed? The Tazarians had seen neither hide nor hair of Tashi and his evil lieutenant, Wilbur. It was assumed that the restaurant and its magnificent, often overflowing Dumpsters would be handled on a first-come, first-served basis by the rest of the dogs, now that it was no longer in anyone’s realm. It was going to require very fine timing. You couldn’t get there too early, while the restaurant workers were still filling the containers, but if you arrived too late all of the good stuff would be gone.

  Waggit still thought they should’ve moved to the Goldenside and taken over Tashi’s realm for themselves, but Tazar continued to reject this idea. For one thing they had not been able to find a shelter there that was as safe, dry, and comfortable as the tunnel, although Waggit and Lowdown had spent many hours looking for one. Tazar also felt that the restaurant should be available to all of the dogs in the park, not hoarded by one group or another. In his opinion there was more than enough food to go around, and that the huge amount they had found in Tashi’s stash was evidence of his greed. Waggit, remembering the many days of the recent past when they had no food at all, didn’t agree. To him it was good planning on Tashi’s part to have prepared for the lean winter days.

  As for the rest of the team, Little One and Little Two had grown enormously since they had been adopted. They were obviously going to be big dogs, but nobody had bothered to rename them, and Waggit suspected that they never would. It would soon be time to send them out on their first hunts to test the skills that they had developed at play. Lowdown was feeling much better with the warmer weather, his joints no longer as creaky as they had been during the bitter cold. However, Gruff was predicting a wet spring according to the feelings in his bones. Alicia spent most of her time washing her coat with her elegant tongue and generally preening herself—for what, nobody knew, because she rarely left the tunnel; when she did she looked magnificent. Actually she was the dog that could move most freely through the park, with the least amount of harassment; she was such a fine and expensive-looking creature that everyone who saw her assumed that she must have an owner. This would have been a great benefit to the team had she ever condescended to go anywhere on their behalf, but when asked to do anything, she either decided that the request was beneath her or she was too tired. Why they all put up with her behavior they were not quite sure, but that was the way she had always been, and she was a kind of fixture now.

  Alona was the opposite of Alicia in almost every way. Had she been on a leash led by the mayor she would still look like a park dog. She moved like one, always avoiding open spaces, hurrying into the thick undergrowth. Her coat was always matted and covered with leaves or bits of twig, and she was suspicious of everyone and everything except her fellow team members, whom she had come to love. She was really halfway between a team dog and a loner, and would often disappear for days at a time, then return and sleep from sunrise to sunset. She was a good, although not a great, hunter, but her biggest contribution to the team wa
s the information she brought back from the far reaches of the park. Although loners lived solitary lives, they nevertheless had a strong network among themselves, and surprisingly were the most terrible gossips. It was through Alona that the team got most of its news about park happenings.

  Magica and Gordo had fully recovered from their near-death experience, which, in a strange way, had brought them closer together, and they were rarely seen apart. As the team had predicted, Gordo no longer played the role of security officer. Either he had forgotten or become bored with it. The other two dogs who were rarely apart were Cal and Raz, the perpetual adolescents, who goaded each other into taking the biggest risks and were always courting disaster. They were the best scavengers on the team because they would always get closer to the food vendors or the customers outside the snack bar than the other dogs dared. On many occasions they had avoided capture by inches. Although they teased each other with accusations of cowardice or weakness, in reality they were the two animals who were most closely bonded; they would have died to protect each other.

  Tazar continued to be the dominating presence in the team and the undisputed leader. He was spending less time away now that his puppies were a little bigger, but their existence and that of Solosa was still a secret. Alona had picked up a snippet of news about Solosa’s new family, but not who the father was.

  So this was the team at the beginning of spring. They were a tight-knit and strongly bonded group, well led, well housed, and looking forward to the summer months, when they would be well fed. They faced the future with optimism, blissfully unaware how short-lived their cheery confidence was destined to be.

  The problem began when Waggit and Lowdown were walking along some paths that led to the Deepwoods. They were supposed to be foraging, but they were just enjoying being together and feeling the balmy breeze and the warmth of the sun. On days like this being a free dog in the park seemed to both of them the best possible life. It was amazing how quickly the hardships of winter vanished from memory with the mildness of spring. As they sauntered along talking about this and that, they suddenly heard the sound of a human singing. It was a woman’s voice, and it would stop every so often while she took a mouthful of something to eat. They could smell the food that was her meal—some kind of meat, that much they knew. They were surprised that she was in this part of the park, because humans hardly ever came here even in the height of summer, let alone this early in the year. Neither dog had eaten much that day, or even the day before, and they were both hungry.