Red Dog Read Online Free

Nancy tried to move Red Dog.
    ‘Down!’ said Nancy, who wasn’t going to take anynonsense from an animal. Red Dog looked up at her, and settled himself into his seat more firmly.
    ‘Bad dog!’ exclaimed Nancy, and Red Dog curled his lip and gave a low growl. Nancy was a little bit shocked, and drew back but at the same time she was almost sure that this dog would never bite her. His expression wasn’t quite fierce enough. The men in the bus began to laugh at her. ‘You’ll never get him out of there!’ said one.
    ‘That’s his seat,’ said another. ‘No-one sits there when Red wants it.’
    Nancy faced the men, and began to blush. It was embarrassing to be outfaced by a dog and a busload of miners. Determined not to give in, she sat down gingerly on the very edge of the seat, where Red Dog wouldn’t be disturbed.
    Red Dog was disturbed, however. This was his seat, and everyone knew it. What was more, the whole seat was his, and not just a half of it. Ever since he had met John, he had travelled around as much as he wanted on the company buses, no matter who the driver was, and he always had the seat behind the driver. It was emphatically his seat, and no-one else’s. He showed Nancy his teeth and growled again.
    ‘Well, aren’t you a charmer?’ she said, but she didn’t budge.
    Red Dog could see that threats weren’t doing any good, so he decided to push her off the seat. He turned around, stuck his muzzle under her thigh, and pushed. She was surprised by how strong he was, and she was almost tipped off. Behind her the men began to laugh again, and she grew even more determined.

    ‘I’m not moving,’ she told the dog quietly, ‘so you’ll just have to put up with me.’
    Red Dog wasn’t going to give in either, and he pushed Nancy until she only had one tiny bit of her backside on the seat. He felt that he had made his point, and let her perch there, uncomfortable as she was.
    The next day Nancy got on the bus again, and there was Red Dog, sitting behind the driver’s seat once more. ‘Oh, no,’ she thought, because once again the bus was full, and all the men were waiting to see what was going to happen. The people in the office had told her about the dog after she had got into work the previous morning, and now she knew that this was the dog who travelled around as the fancy took him. He lived mostly in the transport workshops, keeping an eye onwhat was going on, and he was a paid-up member of the Transport Workers’ Union. When the action in the workshop got too slow, he got lifts all over the area. Sometimes he travelled on the water-truck, sometimes in the company utes, sometimes in the giant train-trucks.
    As he got to know more and more people, he began to take lifts in their private cars as well. You had to watch out for Red Dog when you were driving, because he never forgot a vehicle that he had had a lift in, remembering both the paintwork and the sound of the engine, and he would wait by the side of the road until one of them came along. Quite suddenly he would run out in front of the car so that you had to screech to a halt and let him in, so you learned to watch out for him in the same way that you watched out for rock-wallabies and wallaroos. Red Dog always insisted on the front seat, especially on the company buses, even more especially when John was driving, and that was that.
    Nancy sat down a little closer to Red Dog than she had yesterday, and he looked sideways at her, showing the whites of his eyes, as if he were about to bite her. Instead he got down, stuck his muzzle under her thigh and once more tried to push her off. Nancy was conscious of the sniggers of the men in the bus, and, mustering as much dignity as she could, she said, ‘None of you’s a gentleman, that’s for sure.’
    Red Dog seemed a little put out by this remark andhe sat up and pretended that there was no-one else on his seat. If he couldn’t move that obstinate woman, he would just have to treat her