The Crowstarver

by Dick King-Smith

  Within a couple of weeks the broncos would allow Ephraim to come amongst them, though at first only if accompanied by Spider, but before too long the horseman was permitted to lead them about, and it was becoming plain that the six wild horses were wild no longer, but would, in due course, make biddable tractable mounts, each happy to carry upon its back one of those humans that now, thanks to Spider, they did not any more fear or hate.

  Then the time arrived when Spider’s reward for all this was decided upon. Mrs Yorke thought of the idea, as she’d said she would, and Major Yorke thoroughly approved, as did Tom and Kathie when he told them, out of Spider’s hearing, what the proposed gift was to be.

  Fate, which was to play a part in the life of Spider Sparrow just as it does in the lives of normal people, decreed that, early in 1941, one of the Yorkes’ many dogs, an Irish setter bitch, escaped from custody whilst in season, and made her way down to the village. Here she must have encountered some rustic swain, identity unknown, for nine weeks later she gave birth to a litter of puppies.

  By the time that the broncos had begun to trust Ephraim, the pups were eight weeks old, and one of them, the pick of the litter indeed, was to be offered to Spider. Good red Irish blood they may have had in part, but from the look of things their father had been some sort of hairy Wiltshire cowdog. A day was fixed, a Sunday it was, when Tom and Kathie were to bring their boy along to make his choice.

  Spider knew nothing of all this until that morning. Then, at breakfast, his parents decided it best to prepare him for the coming treat.

  ‘Spider,’ said Tom.‘This morning we’re going to see Mister. He’s got something for you.’

  ‘Mister?’ said Spider. He took out his knife. ‘Mister!’ he said.‘Find knife! Spider give fish!’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Tom.

  Busy with the broncos, Spider had not had so much time for carving recently, but he had made one model, his biggest yet, of the shire mare Flower, for his friend Ephraim.

  ‘Mister’s got a present for you,’ Kathie said.

  ‘For being such a good boy with the broncos,’ said Tom.

  ‘Good broncos!’ said Spider, and he whinnied loudly.

  ‘He’s not going to ask what it is,’ said Kathie. ‘Shall we tell him? We’re going to look silly if we get there and he doesn’t want one.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Kath,’ said Tom, and they smiled at one another. As instructed, they did not go to the house but to the Yorkes’ stables, where Mister and his wife met them after church.

  Inside, they went along to a loose-box at the door of which Mister stopped.

  ‘Spider,’ he said. ‘I’m very grateful indeed to you for all the wonderful work you’ve done with those broncos.’

  Spider nodded and grinned widely, whinnying once more, to be answered from their stalls by Sturdiboy and the Yorkes’ other two horses.

  Mister opened the door. Inside were four droop-eared, long-tailed, ginger-haired puppies, that came bumbling up, whining and wagging eagerly.

  ‘Lurchers you’d have to call them, I suppose,’ said Mister to the shepherd, ‘but they’re a nice healthy lot. All four of them are bitches, but I don’t suppose that’ll worry the boy. Let him have his pick. Which one d’you fancy, Spider?’

  ‘Pup-pies,’ Spider said and he held up four fingers. ‘Four pup-pies.’

  ‘Only one of them is for you,’ said Tom, and he held up one finger and then pointed it at Spider.

  The four adults watched the boy struggling to understand what was happening. He looked at each of them in turn, he looked at the pups, he held up one finger and prodded himself in the chest with it.

  ‘For Spider?’ he said.‘Pup-py, for Spider?’

  ‘Yes!’ they all chorused, watching the play of emotion on his face as the truth of the matter dawned upon him.

  ‘You must choose one,’ Kathie said. ‘Which one d’you want?’

  In looks the four puppies were very alike. Crossbred they might be but they all promised to grow into attractive dogs. The only discernible difference in their behaviour at this particular moment was that three of them were playing around the feet of the farmer and the shepherd and their wives, jumping up and asking to be petted, while the fourth puppy seemed to have eyes only for Spider. She sat in front of the boy, gazing up at him, and then she gave one little puppy yap. ‘Pick me,’ she was saying as plain as could be, and Spider dropped on his knees and took her in his arms, and rubbed his cheek against the top of her hairy head.

  He looked up at Major Yorke. ‘Spider’s pup-py?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mister. ‘For you.’

  ‘What d’you say, Spider?’ asked Kathie, and when there was no answer, ‘Aren’t you going to say thank you?’

  Spider grinned his lopsided grin. ‘Ta, Mis-ter,’ he said, and they all laughed.

  Back at home, Moss greeted the puppy amiably, but she showed little interest in him. Already it was plain that, for her, Spider was all in all.

  As they watched the two of them playing in the garden, Tom said, ‘What are we going to call her, then?’

  ‘Let Spider choose,’ said Kathie.

  ‘We’ll have to help him. Try some different names on him. He’ll probably pick the first one we say anyway.’

  But he didn’t. They explained to him that, just as Molly had had a name and Moss now had a name, so must his puppy.

  ‘You start, Kath,’ said Tom.

  ‘How about “Bess”?’ said Kathie, pointing at the pup and looking at Spider. ‘Bess?’

  Spider shook his head.

  “‘Nell”,’ said Tom, but that too got a shake and so did half a dozen other suggestions.

  ‘Well,’ said Kathie, ‘what d’you want to call her, Spider?’

  ‘Mis-ter,’ said Spider.

  ‘Aah!’ said Kathie. ‘Because it was a present from him, that’s nice, isn’t it! But you can’t call her that, Spider love. She’s got to have a girl’s name, you can’t call her Mister.’

  Tom laughed. ‘You’d have to call her “Sister”,’ he said jokingly.

  Spider’s face lit up. ‘Sis-ter!’ he said. ‘Good un! Call Spider’s pup-py Sister!’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘He can’t call it that!’ said Kathie later. ‘Don’t worry,’ Tom said. ‘It’ll soon shorten, I’ll see to that,’ and, right from the start, he spoke of and to the puppy as ‘Sis’, and Spider soon followed suit.

  The summer of 1941 was, for Spider, the happiest time of his life so far. Not that he knew what year it was, nor would the number have meant anything. When on his fifteenth birthday, his father held up the fingers and thumb of one hand three times, and said ‘That’s how old you are now,’ he doubted if the boy could understand.

  Spider’s happiness was almost wholly due to Sis. Most people have to work, sometimes very hard, at training their dogs, but from an early age Sis seemed to sense what it was that Spider wanted from her.

  He had of course watched his father working old Molly, and then, later, Moss, and he had picked up the basic commands like ‘Sit’ and ‘Down’ and ‘Stay’ and ‘Come’, nice short words for him to say, all of whose meanings Sis learned very quickly. She would come to the whistle too, the big silver whistle he used to scare the ‘croaks’, but there was seldom need for this, since she generally stuck to him like a limpet. Before she was much older (and once Kathie was satisfied about house-training), Sis slept on an old rug at the foot of Spider’s bed, and whatever jobs Percy found for him during the week, she would be sitting or lying near, her eyes always on him.

  ‘Nothing’s never going to surprise me about young Spider,’ said Billy to his nephews, ‘after what he done with they bleddy horses. Thik dog’ll be walking on its hindlegs afore long, I dessay, and next thing after that, he’ll be teaching she to talk. Not many words, mind you, because the poor little bagger don’t say much hisself, but enough to say “Hullo, Billy” when I do come in stables of a morning.’

  ‘Oh, I do
n’t think she’d say that, Uncle,’ said Frank. ‘She’m a polite sort of dog.’

  ‘Frank’s right,’ said Phil. ‘More likely she’ll say “Good morning, Mr Butt”.’

  ‘Ar, you’m right,’ said Billy.‘T’would be more respectful-like.’

  When the spring corn was drilled, Sis was still very young, and merely followed the crowstarver up and down the fields as he banged and yelled and shouted at the black thieves.

  But by the time of the autumn drilling the bitch had changed out of all recognition. Strictly, Mister had been wrong in describing her as a lurcher, for lurchers should have greyhound blood, but nonetheless she looked like one, long-legged, long-bodied, deep-chested, hard-muscled, and with no hint of superfluous flesh. She looked in short like a dog born to run, and run she did as the crowstarver patrolled the winter wheat.

  Once she realized – which she very quickly did – that Spider wanted her to chase those flocks of black birds, she extended his range enormously. For a second year both Maggs’ Corner and Slimer’s were down to wheat, but now the ‘croaks’ could not escape harassment by simply flying from the first to the second, for while slow Spider marched in one, speedy Sis was racing round the other.

  The thought that she might catch and kill a bird did not occur to Spider, though it would certainly have worried him if it had. For, as Tom had told him at the very beginning of his crowstarving, he was not expected to hurt the ‘croaks’, but just to shout and bang at them.

  In fact, despite her speed, there was no chance of her pulling down a crow, a rook or a jackdaw, for their ultimate safety lay in flight. Other creatures however might flee but could not fly, and one day something happened that caused Spider great confusion and distress.

  Crossing from one field to the other, boy and dog came out of the spinney – where Spider’s house still stood, though now somewhat weather-beaten – to see a host of ‘croaks’ hard at work. Sis looked up at Spider – she would not go until told – and he said ‘Good dog!’ and pointed at the birds, and away she dashed. Spider walked out towards the opposite end of the field and stood, watching her. Suddenly he saw, not far in front of him, a low brown shape. The hare lay motionless in its form, long ears flat. Big barrit! said Spider to himself, and then he saw Sis, her job done, racing back towards him.

  A puff of wind brought the boy’s scent sharply to the hare, and it rose and began to lope away. Because of the set of their eyes, hares have poor forward vision, and for a moment this one, looking back, saw the human but not the fast approaching dog. When it did, it was too late.

  It jinked, but before it could gather itself for the highspeed run that the dog could not have matched, Sis swerved and took it across the back. The hare screamed like a child in agony.

  ‘No, Sis, no!’ yelled Spider, and he ran towards them in his awkward way, but by the time he reached the hare, it was dead. That afternoon Spider did no more crowstarving. He sat in his house, the body of the hare in his lap, his dog at his feet, whining now and then for she sensed that something was wrong though she knew not what.

  Spider’s thoughts were in a whirl. He had seen death in the animal world before, of course; dead lambs, dead chickens, hedgehogs squashed on the road, naked baby birds fallen from the nest. He knew that Molly had died, though he did not understand how. But this creature, this beautiful ‘big barrit’, had been killed by his own dog, and its screams still rang in his ears. He did not know what to think.

  At last, at dusk, he got up and began to make his way home, carrying the hare, the dog at heel.

  Kathie was in her kitchen when Spider came in. He laid the body of the hare upon the kitchen table. Then he sat down in a chair, rested his arms on the table, leaned his head upon them, and began to weep. Apart from the time when he was a small baby and reacted as small babies do, Kathie had never seen Spider cry. He might be feeling ill, or be disappointed over something, or have hurt himself in some way, but he never cried.

  Tom came in. He looked at the body on the table. He looked at the weeping boy. He looked at the dog lying at the boy’s feet, whining softly.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said to Kathie.

  ‘I don’t know. He just came in and put that hare on the table.’

  ‘Dog must have killed it,’ said Tom. He bent and fondled the bitch’s ears.‘Oh dear, Sis,’ he said. ‘Anyone else would have been ever so pleased with you.’

  He put a hand on Spider’s shaking shoulders. ‘It’s all right, son,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. You don’t want to blame yourself, nor Sis, she only done what’s natural to a dog,’ but Spider continued gently to sob.

  ‘You’d best get that thing out of here, Tom,’ said Kathie. ‘I want to lay up for your tea.’

  ‘Wass want me to do with it?’ said Tom.

  ‘Oh just get rid of it, bury it, so’s he can’t see it no more.’

  Tom took the hare away, and Kathie fetched Spider’s new book that they had given him for his fifteenth birthday. It was another picture book of animals, but this time of exotic ones, lions, tigers, camels, elephants and so forth, to help him if he should want to try carving some creature that he could not set eyes on in the flesh, and indeed he had made a model of a giraffe.

  Now she opened it and put it in front of him. ‘Have a look at this, Spider love,’ she said, ‘while I get your tea.’

  She wiped his nose and his eyes, and Spider looked up and saw that the table was empty, and his sobs subsided.

  ‘Where big barrit?’ he asked, sniffing.

  ‘Dada’s gone to bury it,’ said Kathie.

  Gradually, now that he could no longer see the dead animal, Spider began to look less miserable, and the dog, sensing this somehow, put her head on his lap and he stroked it.

  Later he ate his tea – in silence, but that was usual – and then, as his mother was clearing away the plates, he said to his father, ‘Sis killed big barrit, Dada.’

  ‘I know,’ said Tom. ‘T’wasn’t your fault, t’wasn’t her fault. Next time she goes after one, you blow your whistle and she’ll come back.’

  After Spider was in bed, Sis on her rug at its foot, Kathie said ‘What did you do with it?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘That hare. Did you bury it?’

  ‘Some of it,’ said Tom.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Oh look, Kath, that was a good big hare, that was. I skinned him and I paunched him, and I buried his skin and his guts and the rest of him’s in the larder. Tisn’t as though we can afford all that much fresh meat on my wages. You cook him, he’ll go down a treat.’

  ‘Oh Tom, but what if Spider should ask what we’re eating?’

  ‘He never does, you know that. He just puts down whatever’s set in front of him. Apart from his precious liquorice allsorts, I don’t reckon he ever knows what he’s eating.’

  ‘But suppose he does ask?’

  ‘Tell him it’s chicken.’

  Tom was right. To Spider food was simply food, and thoughts of the morality of people killing animals in order to eat them had never crossed his mind.

  Kathie was right too. Had Spider been told that what in due course was set before him was the ‘big barrit’ that Sis had killed, he might well have been terribly upset.

  But he didn’t ask, he simply cleared his plateful.

  Because of that bout of bitter weeping, Tom and Kathie worried that the whole incident might somehow have thrown out of balance the even – if odd – tenor of Spider’s ways.

  But a couple of days later, he came home and told them, in his own limited language and by gesture, of something that had obviously made him feel very much happier.

  Sis had put up another hare and set off in hot pursuit of it, they gathered, and Spider had blown his whistle, and the dog had broken off the chase immediately and come back to him.

  ‘Good Sis!’ he had said, and now he said it again, while his dog looked up at him in adoration.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Overseas, i
n different theatres of war, battles were fought and men died, men of Great Britain, Germans, Russians, but life in the village went on quietly and peacefully. Percy Pound’s son was dead, to be sure, and Mister’s a prisoner, but most other families had not a great deal of which to complain.

  They were not in immediate personal danger, they had clothes on their backs and food on their plates – much more than many, for most kept a few hens and grew their own vegetables, and though the news was all of war, day to day existence in the Wylye Valley was not greatly different from what it had been in peacetime. Petrol was rationed of course, but few of the villagers had aspired to owning a motor car, and for most the bicycle, or Shanks’ pony, were adequate ways of getting about.

  This is not to belittle the worries that people carried about with them. Victory was assured in the end, they told themselves, but just suppose, they could not help thinking, the Germans won the War? Things didn’t seem to be going too well – we’d been driven from Europe, we were getting nowhere in Africa, the Americans were still sitting on the fence.

  It was a time when it was difficult to see ahead clearly, and everyone, in some degree, felt fear for the future.

  Except Spider.

  Despite the shooting down of the Messerschmitt, despite seeing Albie Stanhope on leave in his uniform, despite having been told that Percy’s sojer son would never return, Spider had no real concept of the outer world and the cataclysm that was shaking it. Of shortages he knew nothing, he had all that he wanted. Of danger he knew nothing, he could imagine no life except the safe one that he lived, day in, day out, with his mother and father, with Sis and Moss, with his friend Ephraim and the others.

  Never in his life had he been to the nearest town, for his world was simply the extent of Outoverdown Farm, bounded at one end by the River Wylye, and at the other end by the Far Hanging, away up on the downs.

  Within that world there were favourite places: the shepherd’s hut, the carthorse stables, his bedroom in the cottage, and his house in the spinney between Maggs’ Corner and Slimer’s.