Angus and Sadie Read online

  “This way,” Missus said. “Let’s go all the way around the house, out around the vegetable garden, and then down to the barn. They can start to learn where everything is.”

  There was still some daylight left in the air, and also some light coming from the porch. The puppies trailed after Mister and Missus, their noses down on the wet, muddy ground and in the wet grass. They were smelling everything. Some smells they already recognized, the Mister smell and the Missus smell and the watery, grassy, dirty smell. But everything else was new, and some of it was strong. Angus ran back and forth, smelling, while Sadie hobbled back and forth after him. He stopped, crouched, and peed. That reminded Sadie, who did the same.

  “Good dogs, good,” said Mister.

  “Good Angus and Sadie,” said Missus. “Good dogs.”

  Mine.

  Mine, too.

  They all walked together down a muddy path to a big, dark building with a big, dark doorway. “I’ll get the light,” Mister said, and suddenly the building was bright inside.

  “Should we leave it on for them?” Missus wondered. “The barn can be pretty dark at night.”

  “They need to get used to it. They’ll be fine. They have a blanket and water.”

  With the light on, the puppies ran into the barn. But something moved and they stopped. The something was big and it made a loud noise when it moved, so they ran out again.

  “It’s all right.” Mister knelt down and held out his hand. “Come here, Angus. You, too, Sadie, everything’s all right.” Angus and Sadie both came up to be petted. Then Sadie ran over to Missus to be petted, and Angus followed, to push Sadie out of the way.

  “It’s only Bethie and she’s in her stall, with Annie.” Missus picked Angus up in her arms and carried him over to where the sounds came from. “Bethie, Annie, this is Angus,” she said to the big animals inside the dark box.

  “And Sadie,” said Mister, holding Sadie.

  Smells good.

  Mine.

  Animals!

  But not dogs.

  Then Mister and Missus carried the puppies across the barn to the opposite side, past something bigger than the Bethie and Annie animals. But this wasn’t an animal, and it didn’t smell good. It had a nasty strong smell that a dog would never want to eat. Angus yipped at it from his safe place in Missus’s arms. Get away!

  Sadie buried her head under Mister’s shoulder.

  “It’s only the tractor,” Missus said. “It won’t hurt you.”

  “It could,” Mister told her.

  “Not when it’s in the barn and turned off,” she said.

  Beyond the tractor was another big stall. “This is your bedroom,” Mister said, as he pulled open the half door and set Sadie down. Missus set Angus down beside Sadie. Mister and Missus closed the door, but they remained, leaning over the wall to see what the puppies did.

  The stall was like a pen, only it didn’t have wire walls you could see through. It had the same kind of animal smell that the Bethie and the Annie had, only faint and faded. The floor was covered with straw, and a blanket had been set in one corner, with a bowl of water nearby. The puppies ran all around the stall, smelling everything.

  We have water!

  I drank!

  Me, too!

  This is soft! Come here!

  Soft!

  “They’re going to spill the water. They’ll get water all over their blanket,” Missus said. “Slow down,” she called. “Take it easy.”

  Both puppies ran over to where she stood, and jumped up, trying to reach Mister and Missus.

  “We’re just getting them overexcited,” Mister said. “We should leave. Good night, Angus and Sadie. Welcome home.”

  “They’re so little. Do you think they’ll be all right in here?”

  “Why not? There are only the cows.”

  Cows?

  The Bethie?

  The Annie, too?

  “You forgot the cats,” Missus said. “Those cats are half wild.”

  Cats?

  The Annie and the Bethie?

  “The puppies are going to have to learn how to get along here, with the cats and the cows, and with us, too. Angus is smart and strong. He can take care of himself.”

  “But Sadie,” Missus said, sounding doubtful. Then she smiled, and reached down to stroke Sadie’s head. “She’s so sweet—who could be mean to her? You’ll take care of her, won’t you, Angus?” and she stroked his head, too.

  Mister reached down to give Angus and Sadie a final pat, and then he and Missus just looked down at the two puppies.

  Angus and Sadie stared back up at them and wagged their tails.

  “They don’t look much alike,” Missus said.

  “They don’t act much alike,” Mister said.

  “Do you think they’ll get along with each other?”

  “I hope so,” Mister said, “because they don’t have any choice about it.”

  Mister and Missus went away. Angus and Sadie listened to their footsteps. Then the lights went out.

  Dark!

  Uh-oh!

  Listen!

  Noises moved around the dark barn, and not all of them came from the Bethie and the Annie, who might be cows but might also be cats. Sadie curled up next to Angus because he was warm, and he curled up next to her. They fell asleep, tired out by the day, so deeply asleep that they didn’t even stir when the two barn cats crept in to examine them.

  2

  How Angus and Sadie get in trouble and learn their way around, and how Angus is a hero

  As soon as they heard the big barn door sliding open the next morning, the puppies awoke and started to feel hungry. They were ready to get out of that stall.

  “Good morning, Angus, and good morning, Sadie,” said Mister, opening their stall door. “It’s good to see you. Sleep well? Ah, I see you did knock over your water.”

  They ran up to him, as he bent down to pet them.

  Good.

  Mine.

  “Listen up now, you two. We have a routine to establish. I know you need a routine,” Mister said. “First, we let Bethie and Annie out, because they need attention first thing in the morning.”

  The puppies followed him after their own little side trip to smell the stalls where the Bethie and the Annie were shuffling their feet and making low sounds and to see if the tractor smelled any better. Whenever the puppies started heading off in their own direction, Mister called, “Angus and Sadie, stick with me. Come.”

  When they came out into the cool, brightening morning air, Angus went running off around the side of the barn. What’s this? What’s there?

  Me, too, said Sadie, following as fast as she could, although her cast kept that from being very fast.

  “No! Stop! Come! Angus and Sadie!” called Mister, running along behind.

  Angus did stop, because there was a fence with wooden railings and wires. He stopped, and then crawled under it. There was a smell of an unknown animal. All of the mud had that animal smell.

  What? He wondered, smelling the railings.

  Sadie was trying to get her cast under the fence.

  Mister came up and said, “Come on, you two. Come with me.” He held out his hand to them, and there was food in it.

  Hungry!

  Me, too!

  When they got back to the driveway, they heard Missus calling, “Angus and Sadie, breakfast,” in a voice that made them want to run up to her. So they did, and Mister walked behind.

  “Where did you go?” asked Missus.

  “They discovered the sheep pen,” Mister reported. “It’s a good thing the sheep aren’t still there.”

  Sheep, Angus told Sadie. That smell is sheep.

  Smell that! she answered.

  There was a smell of food in the air. Angus went right up the stairs, but Sadie needed to be carried and set down at the top.

  This time, there was only one big bowl filled with brown bits. They put their faces into that bowl and ate fast, until the bowl was emp
ty.

  “How long will it take them to learn their names? And what are we going to do with them all day?” Missus asked.

  “I think we just have to let them be puppies for a couple of weeks. They’ll amuse themselves.”

  “What if they run away?” Missus asked.

  “Why should they run away?” Mister asked. “We’re here. Food’s here. They’ll stick together. And Sadie can’t go far, or fast. You’ll see. We’ll keep them close to us for a day or two, and by then they’ll be used to everything.”

  “I’m putting a bucket of water and some rags out here, so we can wash off their paws before they come in the house,” Missus said. “It’s mud season, you know.”

  “In Maine, we call that spring,” said Mister.

  Angus and Sadie quickly learned that their food was put out on the porch in the morning, at midday, and in the evening. Because of Sadie’s cast, their water bowl stayed down at the bottom of the steps. After a day, they had learned how to find their way back to the house—and the barn, too, from anywhere on the farm.

  They learned that if they ran around behind the barn and got lost, they could run across the sheep pen to get to the vegetable garden. They also learned that it was not good to run into the Bethie and the Annie, thump!

  When they did that, Mister ran out to say, “Angus and Sadie! Stop that! Leave the cows alone!”

  So they learned what the cows were.

  They learned that it also wasn’t good to run yipping all around the chicken cage, and make the chickens gabble and squawk and flutter up into the air, scurrying back into their little house. Missus would come running to say sternly, “Angus and Sadie, you stop that right now! Leave the chickens alone.”

  Most of what the puppies learned in those first days getting used to the farm was what got them into trouble. It was bad to drink from the pails of milk Mister got from the cows every morning. That was very bad, very very bad, and if the puppies did that they would get a smack on the rump, both of them. Also very bad was to grab two corners of the seed trays Missus had set out on a low table, and pull as hard as you could, twisting your heads, pulling, until the dirt all spilled out and the tray broke, and you had to go get another one to play with. When the puppies did that, Missus came out with her broom and she swept at them. Worse than that, she didn’t want them close to her while she picked up the trays and the little tomato and pepper seedlings. She didn’t want to talk to them either.

  Some other things that got the puppies into trouble were taking a boot from beside the doorway and carrying it down the steps to play keep-away with, bringing a whisk broom out from the barn and chewing on it until it was all crumbled away, climbing up into the tall bin in the kitchen where Missus sometimes hid food in a lot of paper, and taking the squares of cloth Missus kept in her quilting basket in the living room for a game of tug-of-war.

  The puppies also learned that it was good to keep still while their paws were being rinsed off and dried before they went into the house. It was good to run around after each other inside the house and to stand looking out the windows together. It was good to chew on sticks of wood from the pile beside the fire, although you got in trouble if you chewed on the legs of the kitchen chairs.

  “Those puppies need some toys,” Missus decided, and she took the pickup into town. She came back with special toys that made squeaky noises when the puppies bit on them. She kept some of the toys in the kitchen, but she also put one for Angus and one for Sadie in their stall in the barn. When Sadie woke up alone at night she chewed gently on it, and it squeaked to tell her everything was all right. Angus was happy to have his in the stall, because he needed some time to work on it, to find out what that squeaker was. In the morning, after he had done that, and fixed it so it would never squeak again, he took Sadie’s.

  Mine, he said. I need it.

  All right, and she ran her head right into his shoulder, so that he turned—dropping the toy—and tried to chew on her hip. That knocked her over. Play!

  Play, yes!

  They called it playing, but Mister and Missus called it wrestling and wouldn’t let them do it inside the house. “Angus and Sadie, stop that wrestling around. If you have to wrestle, you better go outside,” Missus said, and she held the kitchen door open.

  All right.

  Let’s go!

  Not down the stairs.

  Yes, you can.

  So Sadie learned how to clump and stumble down the porch steps to the yard, where they could play without getting into trouble.

  It didn’t take the puppies long to learn about the farm and where everybody on it belonged. Mister and Missus belonged everywhere, anywhere they wanted to go in the house and the fields and the barn. Bethie and Annie belonged in the barn and in their pasture, where the stream ran. The absent sheep belonged in their pen behind the barn and also in a little warm room next to the kitchen, which Mister called the lambing room, and Missus called the dairy room because she made butter there.

  The chickens had their cage, with its own little low house. Patches stayed in the farmhouse, going anywhere he wanted inside, and sometimes out onto the porch, if there was sun. The puppies belonged wherever Mister and Missus went.

  The puppies liked every day on the farm, and Mister and Missus liked them, too, every day. The only bad things about the farm were the barn cats.

  The barn cats did not welcome Angus and Sadie, and they did not plan to get used to them. The barn cats didn’t get along with anyone, and they were proud of it. They had their own lives to live. They couldn’t be bothered with puppies. They weren’t one bit afraid of dogs, either. In fact, Sadie was afraid of them. They knew that—and they enjoyed it. If it was a cold and rainy day and the barn cats were hungry, or if it was a fine day and they were full but they were bored—one of them would smack Sadie across the nose or grab her tail to make her yelp. The cat would attack, Sadie would yelp and run away, and the cat would feel better.

  Call me Fox, the white barn cat said to Sadie.

  But you’re not a fox, Sadie said.

  Oh yeah? And my friend’s Snake, and those are our own names.

  All right, Sadie said. She guessed everybody could have her own name.

  Fox was the bigger of the barn cats, and the meaner. Sometimes, in the dark of night, she jumped up onto the door of their stall so she could leap down on Sadie, letting out a long, lovely, high shriek as she descended. When Fox fell shrieking onto Sadie, Sadie woke up yelping, and that woke up Angus. He barked his loudest, but by then Fox would have run off, entirely satisfied, while Sadie was trying to tunnel under the blanket to safety.

  In the daytime, if Angus was there with Sadie, the cats lifted their noses and yawned. We can’t be bothered with puppies, they said. Don’t think we’re afraid of anything like a puppy.

  Oh yeah? Angus asked, staring right at them with his fixed unwavering border collie stare. Oh yeah?

  The cats would walk away, tails high, noses in the air. We have something important to do over there, or we’d show you what’s what.

  For the first couple of weeks, Angus and Sadie were always together, in the house with Missus while she cooked or in the garden with her when she checked on the seedlings in her planting trays. They went together to the barn with Mister as he took apart the tractor engine and polished the pieces. They explored the gardens and pastures together, getting wet in the stream and muddy in the sheep pen. They took naps together and they slept together at night, in their stall in the barn. They chased each other’s tails and wrestled.

  “Poor Sadie is always getting the worst of it,” said Missus. “Angus is always starting fights and he always wins.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Mister.

  “Don’t know about the starting or the winning? Because it’s always Angus standing over Sadie at the end.”

  Just then Angus and Sadie came racing around the barn, Angus far in the lead. He stopped when he saw Fox standing in the barn doorway. When he stopped, Sadie cau
ght up with him, and she bit at his ears to pull him over. He bit at her muzzle until their mouths were locked, and then she pushed at him with her head. But her cast kept her clumsy and off-balance, so she was the one who fell over. Angus jumped to stand over her and keep her on her back.

  I win.

  Play!

  “I guess you’re right,” said Missus. “I guess maybe she likes wrestling.”

  Angus jumped off and Sadie jumped up, and he grabbed her by the tail.

  “They’re getting bigger fast,” said Mister.

  Sadie grabbed Angus by his tail, and they chased themselves in a circle until they both fell over.

  “Angus and Sadie!” called Missus. “What are you two doing?”

  I’m Angus, said Angus. Just Angus.

  All right.

  And you’re just Sadie.

  I know.

  And doesn’t count, said Angus.

  After that first couple of weeks, Mister and Missus decided it was time for the puppies to be apart sometimes. Mister took Angus with him to work at clearing out the winter treefalls in the woods. As long as Sadie had her cast, they thought she would be better off at home with Missus. “She can’t walk far,” Mister said.

  Sadie couldn’t go as far as Angus, but she did walk almost every day with Missus, down the long driveway to the mailbox, after the lunch dishes were washed and Mister and Angus had returned to their work. Missus took a leash from the hook by the kitchen door and called, “Let’s go, Sadie!” Sadie came thumping onto the porch and down the steps, keeping right in front of Missus, and they set off.

  The long driveway smelled of warm sunny dirt and of the pickup tires; after a rain its puddles tasted of mud. Ditches lay on both sides. Even with the cast on her leg, Sadie could get down into the ditch to smell everything there and bring Missus back a nice stone or chunk of grass. At the last curve before they came to the road, Sadie had to stop so Missus could clip the leash onto her collar. “We can’t have you going out into the road, can we? And we certainly don’t want you to even think about chasing cars.” Missus and Sadie walked the last section of driveway together. Then, after Missus emptied out the mailbox, they turned around to walk back up the driveway, back home.