The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King [114]
She had led them easily from Peyna's farm to the deserted house where Dennis had spent some four days, eating raw potatoes and thinking sour thoughts about turnips which turned out to be as sour as the thoughts themselves. In that empty Inner Baronies farmstead, the bright-blue scent she had followed this far had been everywhere-she had barked excitedly, running from room to room, nose down, tail wagging cheerfully.
"Look," Naomi said. "Our Dennis burnt something here." She was pointing at the fireplace.
Ben came and looked, but he could make out nothing-there were only bundles of ash which fell apart when he poked at them. Of course, they were Dennis's early tries at his note.
"Now what?" Naomi asked. "He went to the castle from here, that's clear. The question is, do we follow or spend the night here?"
It had then been six o'clock. Outside it was already dark.
"I think we had better go on," Ben said slowly. "After all, it was you who said we wanted Frisky's nose, not her eyes and I, for one, would testify before the throne of any King in creation that Frisky has a noble nose."
Frisky, sitting in the doorway, barked as if to say she knew it.
"All right," Naomi said.
He looked at her closely. It had been a long run from the camp of the exiles, with little rest for either of them. He knew they should stay but he was nearly frantic with urgency.
"Can you go on?" he asked. "Don't say you can if you can't, Naomi Reechul."
She put her hands on her hips and looked at him haughtily. "I could go on a hundred koner from the place where you dropped dead, Ben Staad."
Ben grinned. "You may get your chance to prove it, too," he said. "But first we'll have a bite to eat."
They ate quickly. When the meal was finished, Naomi knelt by Frisky and quietly told her that she must take up the scent again. Frisky didn't have to be asked twice. The three of them quit the farmhouse, Ben with a large pack on his back, Naomi with one only slightly smaller.
To Frisky, Dennis's scent was a blue mark in the night, as bright as a wire glowing with an electric charge. She began to follow at once, and was confused when THE GIRL called her back. Then it came to her; if Frisky had been human, she would have slapped her forehead and groaned. In her impatience to be off, she had started sniffing up Dennis's backtrail. By midnight she would have had them back at Peyna's farmhouse.
"That's all right, Frisky," Naomi said. "Take your time."
"Sure," Ben said. "Take a week or two, Frisky. Take a month, if you want."
Naomi cast a sour glance Ben's way. Ben shut up-prudently, perhaps. The two of them watched Frisky nose back and forth, first across the dooryard of the deserted farm, then across the road.
"Has she lost it?" Ben asked.
"No, she'll pick it up in a minute or two." I think, Naomi didn't say aloud. "It's just that she's found a whole tangle of scents in the road and she has to sort them out."
"Look!" Ben said doubtfully. "She's off into the field there. That can't be right, can it?"
"I don't know. Would he have taken the road to the castle?"
Ben Staad was human, and he did slap his forehead. "No, of course not. I'm a dolt."
Naomi smiled sweetly and said nothing.
In the field, Frisky had paused. She turned toward THE GIRL and THE TALL-Boy and barked impatiently for them to follow. Anduan huskies were the tame descendants of the great white wolves the residents of the Northern Barony had feared in earlier times, but tame or not, they were hunters and trackers before they were anything else. Frisky had isolated that bright-blue thread of scent again, and was in a fever to be off.
"Come on," Ben said. "I just hope she's found the right scent." "Of course she has! Look!"
She pointed, and Ben was just able to make out long, shallow tracks in the snow. Even in the dark Ben and Naomi knew the tracks for