“I hope you’re right,” said Treasure.
“It’ll have been scary, and he’ll be really thirsty by now,” said Dawie, “but we’ll find him. When we turn off the highway at Aus, we must just keep our eyes peeled for that gravel track.”
Treasure didn’t think it would be that simple. It was at least a hundred kilometres to Aus. How many more from there to where they’d left Leo? And that was how long ago? Four or five hours? Leo couldn’t have come through the storm unscathed. “I wish we’d never gone down that track,” she muttered and cast Dawie an accusing look. It had been his idea to explore it. He could never resist taking side roads. Look where this one landed us, she thought.
On they went, hurtling past those dusty sidings that punctuated the railway line going west to the diamond port of Lüderitz on the Atlantic coast. Through Guibes and on, neither of them speaking, past Asbospan, and, ten minutes later, Schakalskuppe, at least thirty kilometres from Aus.
Dawie checked the time. “It’s gone five already. Let’s hope we get to the picnic spot before dusk.”
Treasure barely heard him above the words that screamed inside her head . . . a boy vanished without trace. It could happen again.
* * *
A snuffling sound and something soft touching Leo’s face brought him back to the present. He forced his eyes open. A blur of brown huffed hot air on him. Something pink and damp – damp! In the desert! – wiped across his face. Compared to the puffs of hot air, it felt cool.
The dog, he realised when a furry face came into focus. Close up, the features seemed magnified: the nose like a patch of black leather; the tongue pink and long; the white whiskers bristly against Leo’s cheek; the eyes big, oval, softly brown. Troubled.
The dog whined, pawing Leo’s shoulder. Wake up. Get up, he might have been saying.
Leo groaned. Somehow he managed to find the strength to push himself up onto his hands and knees. Exhausted, dehydrated, aching all over, he couldn’t decide whether he was glad to be alive or miserable that he wasn’t dead. He vaguely remembered falling over. How long had he been lying out for the count in the sand?
The dog nudged Leo’s arm with his nose. Get up. Get up.
“I can’t.”
The dog pawed him again, and again, and licked his face and neck. Come on. Get up.
Leo hauled himself onto his feet. His head spun. Or was it the world spinning around him? He closed his eyes until everything slowed down.
The dog barked at him. Let’s go.
When Leo looked, he was trotting away.
Perhaps he was on his way to somewhere. I’ve got nothing to lose, thought Leo. Either I stay here and die, or walk for as long as I can. Mustering up every last bit of strength, he forced himself on, concentrating on the paw marks in the sand. It was a while before he realised the sun was much lower in the sky, its heat almost spent. That was one consolation at least. He looked up and noticed something else: the dog was heading for a rocky hill.
It looked familiar. It’s the inselberg I climbed! He had gone round in circles. Thanks to the mongrel though, he was back where he started. That must mean he was a tracker dog after all. The others must have raised the alarm and the dog was brought in to find him. “Phew. That was a close shave.”
Rescue and water were just moments away.
* * *
“If he found his way back to the road, he might have hitched a lift,” Dawie said when they were nearing Aus.
A lorry heading east flashed past them on the other side of the highway.
“You really think so?” Treasure said.
“Someone else must have gone along there,” said Dawie. “We couldn’t have been the only ones on that road all day.”
Treasure shook her head. Dawie was clutching at straws. During most of the journey before the storm, they’d seen hardly another soul.
* * *
The dog lay down to rest at the foot of the inselberg. Leo got there a minute or two later and slumped down next to him. “So where’s everyone?” he said when there was no welcoming shout, no rush of eager friends to bring him water.
The panting dog ignored him, his eyes closed.
“I guess they’re waiting further down the track,” Leo said. “Or on the road.” He picked himself up and set off in the direction of the road, making sure the inselberg was behind him and to his left. That way, even though the track was hidden beneath the sand, he wouldn’t lose his bearings again.
The further he trudged, though, the more nervous he got. The desert went on and on. There was no sign of a track or a road. Not only that; the sun was in front, sinking toward the horizon – the western horizon.
It means I’m going west. But we turned left off the road and headed west. So I should be going the other way, east, to get back to the road. “Unless,” he said out loud, “this isn’t the same place and the dog’s no search dog but just a stray after all.”
A stray that had led him on a wild goose chase!
Confused, he turned to see the dog digging a hole at the bottom of the hill. It was a deep hole, judging from the way only his tail and hindquarters were visible. His head, shoulders, back and chest were right inside the hole.
“What’s he doing now?”
The dog backed out of the hole and looked across to Leo. A glistening wetness darkened the fur around his mouth.
“Water!” Leo cried. “You’ve found water.”
They hadn’t been wandering aimlessly. The dog was as good as a St Bernard. He had known all along where he was going: to a hidden well at the foot of an inselberg that looked like any other in the desert. It was like he’d purposefully fetched Leo to lead him there.
Side-by-side, and upside down, they steeped their faces in the small pool. They drank, and drank, and drank. Slurpily, messily, greedily. Even though it was gritty with sand, the water was the most delicious Leo had ever tasted. It broke the drought inside his mouth and gave him back his life.
“How did you know it was there, dog?” he said when his thirst was slaked. “Could you smell it?” They’d pulled themselves out of the well and were watching the sand collapse back in, making a secret of the water again. Leo took careful note of where it was: in front of a huge triangular boulder that jutted out between two round rocks. If the dog abandoned him, he’d at least know where to find the water.
For the time being, though, the dog was going nowhere. He was dozing at Leo’s side.
Leo looked at his ribs and the jutting right angle of his hip bone. “You could do with some food, hey, dog,” he said and began to feel his own hunger. What was there to eat in the desert? Just about nothing, going by the dog’s lean figure.
The pair lay stretched out on the sand. To the west, the sun was a giant tangerine ball hanging low in an orange sky. Its heat was just a memory now. But the sinking sun would soon bring a new problem.
Night.
Then what? Heat and thirst had been Leo’s enemies by day. What enemies would the night bring? Deadly scorpions he could not see? Nocturnal predators, hyenas even, that he had no defence against? Bitter cold? And worst of all, darkness that would make him invisible to people who might be searching for him.
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