Waggit Forever Read Online Free PDF Page B

time; they had to make a decision soon. The period that Beidel would allow them to scavenge in his territory was almostover, and not only was Tazar still adamantly opposed to moving, but they hadn’t found an alternative food source either. Waggit turned to Lowdown.
    â€œWhat are we going to do?” he asked his old friend. “Something’s got to happen. We can’t go on like this.”
    â€œYou’re right there,” agreed Lowdown. “I can’t eat any more of that food, for one thing. It makes me all jumpy, and I’m way too old to be jumpy.”
    â€œTazar’s never going to agree to the move, is he?” Waggit sighed. “His mind’s made up.”
    â€œWell,” said Lowdown, “you can never tell with Tazar. Something might happen to turn him around.”
    And indeed it did, but it was nothing that any of them could have anticipated.

5
Rescue and Resolution
    T he way it happened was like this. The warm spring weather continued, and the park filled up every day with people happy that the bleak days of winter were finally over. This meant there was more wasted food to scavenge, but the visitors still weren’t venturing into the Deepwoods, so the dogs continued to travel into the lower reaches of the park to pick up whatever they could find. This wouldn’t have been a problem if they could have done it at dusk, when there were fewer people, but one of the features of the new and,at least from a human point of view, improved park management was more frequent trash pickups. Now the window of opportunity to scavenge food from the trash cans was very narrow indeed. But the desperate situation meant that the dogs had to take greater risks in order to supplement the Chinese food, which was rarely enough to feed the whole team.
    So it was that Waggit and Magica were making their cautious way from shrub to shrub, staying away from the paths whenever possible. They were looking for trash cans with no humans in the immediate area. Because of the dogs’ remarkable sense of smell, they knew which cans had food in them and even what kind it was. They had learned from their previous experience that hiding food anywhere was risky. Once they had retrieved it, they would race back to the pipe as quickly as possible and then return to look for more. All this had to be done with speed, but no matter how fast the two dogs worked, it was still dangerous. Often the crashing sounds that the trash can made as it fell on its side were enough to attract unwanted attention. Because finding and ferrying the food almost the entire length of the park took so much time, they were at risk of capture for longer than usual.
    Though this method was less than perfect, it was the best they had come up with, and if you had to do it with anyone, Lady Magica was the dog you would choose. Waggit always loved working with her, whether hunting or foraging. She was fast, smart, and focused. While he enjoyed Cal and Raz as playmates, they were too scattered and prone to making rash decisions. Magica was completely reliable.
    They had gone as far as the hill overlooking the lake, where, in days gone by, Lowdown and Waggit used to sit for hours watching the Uprights as they rowed boats across the water. There were no humans nearby, so he and Magica rested for a moment; then she looked around and sighed.
    â€œYou know,” she said, “it seems to me that there were never this many Uprights around when we lived closer to the Skyline End.”
    â€œYou’re right,” Waggit agreed. “There weren’t even this many during the hottest rising of the Long Light. If it’s like this in the Warming, they’ll be bumping into each other later on.”
    â€œWell, that’ll be worth watching,” said Magica, giggling, “as long as they don’t bump into us.”
    Suddenly the two dogs heard a terrified scream.They looked over and saw that a young child, no more than