The Dog Who Wouldn't Be by Farley Mowat

Author:Farley Mowat [Mowat, Farley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55199-300-3
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 1957-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

The Coot got by Big Island and Coyote Creek all right, for at 7:50 P.M. the watcher at Barners Ford reported that she had just passed him, accompanied by two drowned cows, also presumed to be en route for Halifax. At 8:02 she went by Indian Crossing … at 8:16 she sideswiped the Sinkhole Ferry … at 8:22 she was reported from St. Louis (Saskatchewan, not Missouri) … and so it went. The ferrymen tried to “speak” the speeding ship, but she gave them no reply and would not even deign to make her number. So swiftly did she pass that a hard-riding stockman who spotted her near Duck Lake could not even draw alongside.

In the city room at the newspaper, reporters marked each new position on a large-scale map of the river, and someone with a slide rule calculated that if The Coot could maintain her rate of speed, she would complete her passage to Halifax in six more days.

By nine o’clock that evening the darkness of an overcast and moonless night had so obscured the river that no further reports were to be expected from the watching ferrymen. However, we presumed that on Sunday morning the observers would again pick up the trail. A number of people even drove out at dawn from Prince Albert to see The Coot go past the junction of the two branches of the river. They made that trip in vain. The flood passed and the river shrank back to its normal, indolent self, but no Coot appeared. She had vanished utterly during the black hours of the night.

All through that tense and weary Sunday we waited for news, and there was none. At last Aaron’s son-in-law called on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for help, and the famous force ordered one of its patrol aircraft up to make a search. The plane found nothing before darkness intervened on Sunday evening, but it was off again with the following dawn.

At 11 A.M. on Monday the following radio message was received in Saskatoon:

COOT LOCATED FIVE MILES NORTHWEST FENTON AND TWO MILES FROM RIVERBANK. AGROUND IN CENTER LARGE PASTURE AND ENTIRELY SURROUNDED BY HOLSTEIN COWS. CREW APPEARS ALL WELL. ONE MAN PLAYING BANJO, ONE SUNBATHING, AND DOG CHASING CATTLE.

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