The Drover's Dogs

By Susan Price

Ten-year-old Sandy's childhood ends when his mother sells him to a farmer who half-starves and beats him.

 

So he runs away for good, away from the farm and from home.

Alone on the road, penniless, Sandy is lucky to find friends: Spot and Patch, two drover's dogs, who are making their way home all by themselves.

With no idea where they are going, Sandy joins them, following them across Scotland, through a wild landscape of loch and mountain, to the Hebridean island of Mull in the West.

When the dogs lead him to their croft, Sandy's deepest wish seems to have come true. He, too, has found a loving home.

He is happier at Lachlan's croft than he thought he could be, until he discovers that he is not really wanted there at all.

 Unwelcome, he takes to the road again. But without his four-legged friends.

 

Will he go through his whole life friendless and lonely?

 

Susan Price is an acclaimed writer of books for the young. She has won the Carnegie medal and the Guardian Fiction prize and her books have been translated into many languages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Price
• Release date: Jun 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223786276

Book preview

The Drover’s Dogs

Published by PriceClan Publishing, 2015

Copyright © 2015 Susan Price

Design: Andrew Price

All rights reserved.

The Drover’s Dogs

Susan Price

CONTENTS

1   I Am Given Away

2 Bobby Thomson

3 My Mother Dear

4 I Run Away

5 Met by Night

6  Betrayed

7  Boy Droving

8  The Night of the Ghosts

9  The Drover on the Pony

10  A Silver Threepenny Bit

11  Sailing to Mull

12  Coming Home

13  The Croft

14  Hector and Colm

15  The Drove Road

16 The Tryst

17  Farmer Thomson at the Tryst

18 The Cow Pat

19  Canada

Historical Notes

CHAPTER 1

I Am Given Away

WHEN I WAS TEN YEARS old, my Birds, I committed a theft. It was a hanging offence.

What did I steal? I stole myself. I stole myself from the man who owned me— and away I did run. Over the hills and far away.

I remember the day my mother sold me very well. That morning, when she handed me an oatcake for my morning meal, she said, Now Sandy, you must be brave.

I knew that meant trouble, but I didn’t ask why I had to be brave. I looked at her and waited for what she would say next.

Tidy yourself up, she said, and dragged her fingers through my hair. Wash yourself. And come with me.

There was little I could do to tidy myself. The shirt I wore was dirty, and I had only one other. It had belonged to some older, bigger boy, and flapped loose around me. Still, I put it on, and scraped some of the mud off my old tacketty-boots. Then my mother and I left the cottage together.

Where are we going? I asked.

She said, You’ll know when we get there.

I followed her by paths across fields, along the edges of woods and beside walls.  We climbed stiles and trudged along deep trodden paths, all of them ways I knew. My mother’s boots trudged ahead of me, and the hem of her skirt flowed and fluttered above them. My eyes searched the hedgerows for something to eat, but there was nothing but leaves and flowers. It was late summer, just when poor families like ours were always hungriest, because our stores from last year were running out, and next year’s food was still growing in the fields.

The few blackberries and hazelnuts weren’t ripe, and it was too early for mushrooms. I pulled some hawthorn leaves, folded them up and nibbled them. We used to call them ‘bread and cheese’ but they’re only good to eat in spring, when they’re young and fresh.

My mother led me up a muddy path and into the yard of a much bigger farm than our bit of land. There was stone house, and outbuildings, and carts. The door of the big house stood a little open. My mother went up to it, and knocked.

The door was pulled wide, and a woman stood in the doorway, on the step, and looked down at my mother.

I stayed at a distance, in the middle of the yard, while my mother and the woman talked. I watched hens running about. At the yard’s other side, was a pig in a sty. It seemed a fine big pig, and I wanted to go and look at it, but it seemed rude to do that while the farm-wife stood at her door watching me.

When my mother turned and waved at me, I walked over to the door. Sandy, said my mother, you know Mrs. Thomson. I nodded. I did know the woman, a little. Now Sandy, you’re a big boy. You’re to live here now, with Mr. and Mrs. Thomson, and work for them.

They both looked at me, and I looked at them. I understood the words. Yet I could not understand their meaning. I’m to live here?

Aye. And be good, and work hard, and do as you’re told.

Mrs. Thomson took a packet from her apron’s pocket, and passed it to my mother, who tucked it away in her own apron. I didn’t know it then, but that was the money the Thomsons paid for me.

I was still trying to understand. You mean... Stay here at night as well? I’m to stay here all day and all night?

Mrs. Thomson, standing on the step above us, said nothing. My mother said, What have I just told you? You’re to live here. And work.

You mean... You’ll go home and I’ll stay here?

Oh, I never knew you were so stupid! cried my mother.  I am going home now. You are staying here. You don’t live with us anymore. You live here. Good day, Mrs. Thomson. And my mother turned round and walked away.

I followed her. It pains me, now, when I think about it, how I toddled after my mother. I could not understand that she was leaving me behind, with people I hardly knew.

My mother turned and shouted at me. Can’t you understand anything? she said. Get back there! Don’t dare follow me another step or you’ll feel the back of my hand!

So I stopped following her. I stood and watched her walk away, until a bend in the lane, and the hedges, stopped me from seeing her anymore.

I turned my head and looked at Mrs. Thomson, who was still in her doorway. Then I looked back at the lane where my mother had disappeared. My heart, or some place inside me, seemed to be tugged two different ways on painful hooks. One tugged me towards home and everyone and everything I knew. That was the more painful one. The other tugged me the other way, because I had been told to stay where I was.

I looked at Mrs. Thomson again, hoping she would tell me to go home. She said, Will you stand there ‘till the cows in? Come here, and I’ll give you a piece.

I was uncertain whether to trust her. She waited for a little while, then gave a snort, turned and disappeared into her house.

I went on standing in that same spot in the farmyard. I looked at the lane where my mother had disappeared, and then at the door of the house. I didn’t know what to do.

After a short while Mrs. Thomson appeared at her doorway again, and held out to me a slice of bread. Come and fetch it, if you want it.

I was hungry– I was always hungry– so I slowly crossed the yard. Every step was hard. I reached the doorstep and stood looking up at her and the thick slice of brown bread. I could smell it.

Do you want it or no? she said.

I took it, and bit off a corner. It was good bread, and a slice of butter had been laid on top of it. I think it was the best meal I ever had at the Thomson’s house.

You stay there, Mrs. Thomson said, until my husband is home. He’ll know what to do with you.

Mind that she did not ask me into the kitchen. I was to stand in the yard until her husband came home, and he would know what to do with me– as if I was some new tool. I was to stand outside and eat in the yard, like the rest of the farm’s livestock. I was not good enough to step into the kitchen.

I leaned against the wall and ate my bread; and then I sat on the step; and I puzzled and puzzled over why my mother had brought me there, and told me to stay.

That was the start of the worst time of my life. I had hard times in later years, my birds: hard living and hard work. But there has never yet been a time worse than that.

CHAPTER 2

Bobby Thomson

I THINK IT TRUE TO say that the dogs were better treated at the Thomson’s farm than was I.

For most of the time I spent there, I was kept outside in the yard, like the animals. My breakfast and mid-day meals were handed to me at the kitchen door, and I ate standing in the wind. If my hands were dirty, well, I could wash them at the pump, in cold water, and dry them on my clothes.

At first, I was allowed into the kitchen for the evening meal. As I went up to the door, I would hear them talking inside– but as soon as I went in, all the talk stopped and they stared at me. I had to sit at the corner of the table, near the door, and leave as soon as I’d finished. The whole family watched me in silence while I ate. As soon as I’d cleared my plate— and there wasn’t much to clear— I was told to be away to my bed. As I stepped into the yard, I’d hear the talk begin again, behind me.

The farm dogs were welcome inside. They spent their evenings lying by the fire, even if they were turned out into the yard last thing at night. But it was plain to me that the Thomsons thought me lower than the dogs. I was the lowest thing on the farm, and very lonely.

Every morning Mrs. Thomson handed me a slice of bread spread with dripping for my breakfast, together with a cup of weak beer. I’d get the same at mid-day. I had no complaint about that, though I could have eaten twice as much and more— but then, I’d hardly known a time when there had been enough food to stop me being hungry.

What galled me was that the beer was always in the same cracked cup. It was kept for me, and no one else drank from it– just like the old, cracked bowls that were kept for the dog’s food and water, and that no one else used.

My evening meal was a bowl of oats, or maybe a bit of broth and bread, and another cup of beer in that same, cracked cup. I always went to my bed hungry.

My ‘bed.’ Don’t go thinking of a bed like yours, with legs and a mattress, sheets and soft blankets. My bed at the Thomson’s farm was in the corner of a shed, where tools and oddments were stored. Some tools were hung on racks, but most of the space was taken up by the old, broken things that get pushed into corners. There were bins, tubs, old horse-collars, and one small cart.

In my corner, on the floor, was an old sack, stuffed with straw, which was damp, and stank. I had a couple of old sacks for blankets. However I lay, there seemed to be something– some broken crate or bit of old iron– sticking into me. Even so, it wasn’t too bad at first. It was summer, and the weather at its mildest. At night, breezes came through the gaps in the planking walls and nipped my bum, and knees, and back, but I was so tired that I never lay awake long. Still, I had sense enough to know that summer wouldn’t last forever, and the shed would be a bad place to sleep in winter.

I once asked Mr. Thomson where I would sleep when it got cold. Where you sleep now, he said.

I could sleep with the horses or cows, I said. It would be warmer with them, and sleeping in the straw more comfortable than that damp mattress among the tools.

I don’t want you sleeping with my animals, he said. Is that clear?

I tried to ask why, but he said, If I catch you in with my animals, I’ll skelp you.

But worse than the unfriendly people, the bad food, and the damp shed were my own feelings. I felt sad and angry all the time– it was like being fastened into a suit of tight, scratchy, itchy clothes that I could not take off. There was a chafing of homesickness because I was away from all my friends and everything that felt safe to me. And a pinching and rubbing from feeling that I was not loved, and was all alone, because my mother had sold me to the Thomsons. The money Farmer Thomson put in her hand was worth more to her than I was. It hurt to know that.

Aye, she sold me. She bonded me a labourer to the farmer. He paid her some money– I don’t know how much– and he owned me then until I was twenty-one. I’d be a grown man then, and no longer my mother’s to sell.

As unhappy as I was, I could have endured it. I had mostly fended for myself since I could toddle. I’d run around the countryside, finding work on farms. I could catch fish, rabbits and birds, and knew where all the things you could eat grew.

Mostly, I worked in the open— potato-picking or throwing stones to scare birds away from the seeds in fields— so I’d been cold and wet before, and hungry. I’d been tired before– potato-picking is cold, back-breaking work. So, although I didn’t like being bonded to Farmer Thomson, I could have put up with it.

As the old song says, ‘what can’t be cured, must be endured.’

I could have endured it all, if it hadn’t been for Bobby.

Good old Bobby Thomson, the Thomson’s son. It was he who made the Thomson farm hateful and beyond bearing.

Bobby thought he was in charge of me. He would strut up saying he had come ‘to see if I had done my work right.’ Then he would point out mistakes and say that he would teach me how to do better.

The truth was, he didn’t know how to do my work. His parents sent him to school, and that’s where he spent his days: on a school-bench, with a chalk and slate in his hands.

Now learning is a great thing– that is why I send you to school, my Birds. But Bobby had no other kind of learning.

I couldn’t read or write then. I never went to school. But there were a lot of other things I knew, and Bobby didn’t— and he was a fool to pretend that he did.

One time, I had been set to weed Mrs. Thomson’s vegetable