Babe: The Gallant Pig Read online

  “Don’t you know that, you silly Babe?” said one.

  “Sheep are animals with thick woolly coats.”

  “And thick woolly heads.”

  “And men can’t look after them without the help of the likes of us,” said the fourth.

  “Why do they need you?” said Babe.

  “Because we’re sheepdogs!” they all cried together, and ran off up the yard.

  —

  Babe thought about this matter of sheep and sheepdogs a good deal during the first couple of weeks of his life on the Hoggets’ farm. In that time Fly’s puppies, now old enough to leave home, had been advertised for sale, and Fly was anxious to teach them all she could before they went out into the world. Daily she made them practice on the ducks, while Babe sat beside her and watched with interest. And daily their skills improved and the ducks lost weight and patience.

  Then there came, one after another, four farmers, four tall long-legged men who smelled of sheep. And each picked his puppy and paid his money, while Fly sat and watched her children leave to start their working life.

  As always, she felt a pang to see them go, but this time, after the last had left, she was not alone.

  “It’s nice, dear,” she said to Babe. “I’ve still got you.”

  But not for all that long, she thought. Poor little chap, in six months or so he’ll be fit to kill. At least he doesn’t know it. She looked at him fondly, this foster child that now called her “Mum.” He had picked it up, naturally enough, from the puppies, and it pleased her to hear it, now more than ever.

  “Mum,” said Babe.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “They’ve gone off to work sheep, haven’t they?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Because they’re sheepdogs. Like you. You’re useful to the boss, aren’t you, because you’re a sheepdog?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Well, Mum?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Why can’t I learn to be a sheep-pig?”

  CHAPTER 4

  “You’m a polite young chap”

  After the last of the puppies had left, the ducks heaved a general sigh of relief. They looked forward to a peaceful day and paid no attention when, the following morning, Fly and Babe came down to the pond and sat and watched them as they squattered and splattered in its soupy green depths. They knew that the old dog would not bother them, and they took no notice of the strange creature at her side.

  “They’ll come out and walk up the yard in a minute,” said Fly. “Then you can have a go at fetching them back, if you like.”

  “Oh yes, please!” said Babe excitedly.

  The collie bitch looked fondly at her foster child. Sheep-pig indeed, she thought, the idea of it! The mere sight of him would probably send the flock into the next county. Anyway, he’d never get near them on those little short legs. Let him play with the ducks for a day or two and he’d forget all about it.

  When the ducks did come up out of the water and marched noisily past the piglet, she half expected him to chase after them, as the puppies usually did at first; but he sat very still, he ears cocked, watching her.

  “All right,” said Fly. “Let’s see how you get on. Now then, first thing is, you’ve got to get behind them, just like I have to with the sheep. If the boss wants me to go round the right side of them (that’s the side by the stables there), he says ‘Away to me.’ If he wants me to go round the left (that’s the side by the Dutch barn), he says ‘Come by.’ O.K.?”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “Right then. Away to me, Babe!” said Fly sharply.

  At first, not surprisingly, Babe’s efforts met with little success. There was no problem with getting around the ducks—even with his curious little seesawing canter he was much faster than they—but the business of bringing the whole flock back to Fly was not, he found, at all easy. Either he pressed them too hard and they broke up and fluttered all over the place, or he was too gentle and held back, and they waddled away in twos and threes.

  “Come and have a rest, dear,” called Fly after a while. “Leave the silly things alone, they’re not worth upsetting yourself about.”

  “I’m not upset, Mum,” said Babe. “Just puzzled. I mean, I told them what I wanted them to do but they didn’t take any notice of me. Why not?”

  Because you weren’t born to it, thought Fly. You haven’t got the instinct to dominate them, to make them do what you want.

  “It’s early days yet, Babe dear,” she said.

  “Do you suppose,” said Babe, “that if I asked them politely…”

  “Asked them politely! What an idea! Just imagine me doing that with the sheep—‘please will you go through that gateway,’ ‘would you kindly walk into that pen?’ Oh no, dear, you’d never get anywhere that way. You’ve got to tell ’em what to do, doesn’t matter whether it’s ducks or sheep. They’re stupid and dogs are intelligent, that’s what you have to remember.”

  “But I’m a pig.”

  “Pigs are intelligent too,” said Fly firmly. Ask them politely, she thought. Whatever next!

  —

  What happened next, later that morning in fact, was that Babe met his first sheep.

  Farmer Hogget and Fly had been out around the flock, and when they returned Fly was driving before her an old lame ewe, which they penned in the loose box where the piglet had originally been shut. Then they went away up the hill again.

  Babe made his way into the stables, curious to meet this, the first of the animals that he planned one day to work with, but he could not see into the box. He snuffled under the bottom of the door, and from inside there came a cough and the sharp stamp of a foot, and then the sound of a hoarse complaining voice. “Wolves! Wolves!” it said. “They never do leave a body alone. Nag, nag, nag all day long, go here, go there, do this, do that. What d’you want now? Can’t you give us a bit of peace, wolf?”

  “I’m not a wolf,” said Babe under the door.

  “Oh, I knows all that,” said the sheep sourly. “Calls yourself a sheepdog, I knows that, but you don’t fool none of us. You’re a wolf like the rest of ’em, given half a chance. You looks at us, and you sees lamb chops. Go away, wolf.”

  “But I’m not a sheepdog either,” said Babe, and he scrambled up the stack of straw bales and looked over the bars.

  “You see?” he said.

  “Well I’ll be dipped,” said the old sheep, peering up at him. “No more you ain’t. What are you?”

  “Pig,” said Babe. “Large White. What are you?”

  “Ewe,” said the sheep.

  “No, not me, you—what are you?”

  “I’m a ewe.”

  Mum was right, thought Babe, they certainly are stupid. But if I’m going to learn how to be a sheep-pig I must try to understand them, and this might be a good chance. Perhaps I could make a friend of this one.

  “My name’s Babe,” he said in a jolly voice. “What’s yours?”

  “Maaaaa,” said the sheep.

  “That’s a nice name,” said Babe. “What’s the matter with you, Ma?”

  “Foot rot,” said the sheep, holding up a foreleg. “And I’ve got a nasty cough.” She coughed. “And I’m not as young as I was.”

  “You don’t look very old to me,” said Babe politely.

  A look of pleasure came over the sheep’s mournful face, and she lay down in the straw.

  “Very civil of you to say so,” she said. “First kind word I’ve had since I were a little lamb,” and she belched loudly and began to chew a mouthful of cud. Though he did not quite know why, Babe said nothing to Fly of his conversation with Ma. Farmer Hogget had treated the sheep’s foot and tipped a potion down its protesting throat, and now, as darkness fell, dog and pig lay side by side, their rest only occasionally disturbed by a rustling from the box next door. Having at last set eyes on a sheep, Babe’s dreams were immediately filled with the creatures, all lame, all coughing, all, like the ducks, scattering wildly before his
attempts to round them up.

  “Go here, go there, do this, do that!” he squeaked furiously at them, but they took not a bit of notice, until at last the dream turned to a nightmare, and they all came hopping and hacking and maa-ing after him with hatred gleaming in their mad yellow eyes.

  “Mum! Mum!” shouted Babe in terror.

  “Maaaaa!” said a voice next door.

  “It’s all right dear,” said Fly, “it’s all right. Was it a nasty dream?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “What were you dreaming about?”

  “Sheep, Mum.”

  “I expect it was because of that stupid old thing in there,” said Fly. “Shut up!” she barked. “Noisy old fool!” And to Babe she said, “Now cuddle up, dear, and go to sleep. There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

  She licked his snout until it began to give out a series of regular snores. Sheep-pig indeed, she thought, why the silly boy’s frightened of the things, and she put her nose on her paws and went to sleep. Babe slept soundly the rest of the night, and woke more determined than ever to learn all that he could from their new neighbor. As soon as Fly had gone out on her rounds, he climbed the straw stack.

  “Good morning, Ma,” he said. “I do hope you’re feeling better today?”

  The old ewe looked up. Her eyes, Babe was glad to see, looked neither mad nor hateful.

  “I must say,” she said, “you’m a polite young chap. Not like that wolf, shouting at me in the middle of the night. Never get no respect from them, treat you like dirt they do, bite you soon as look at you.”

  “Do they really?”

  “Oh ar. Nip your hocks if you’m a bit slow. And worse, some of them.”

  “Worse?”

  “Oh ar. Ain’t you never heard of worrying?”

  “I don’t worry much.”

  “No no, young un. I’m talking about sheep-worrying. You get some wolves as’ll chase sheep and kill ’em.”

  “Oh!” said Babe, horrified. “I’m sure Fly would never do that.”

  “Who’s Fly?”

  “She’s my m…she’s our dog here, the one that brought you in yesterday.”

  “Is that what she’s called? No, she bain’t a worrier, just rude. All wolves is rude to us sheep, see, always have been. Bark and run and nip and call us stupid. We bain’t all that stupid, we do just get confused. If only they’d just show a bit of common politeness, just treat us a bit decent. Now if you was to come out into the field, a nice well-mannered young chap like you, and ask me to go somewhere or do something, politely, like you would, why, I’d be only too delighted.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “Keep yelling, young un”

  Mrs. Hogget shook her head at least a dozen times.

  “For the life of me I can’t see why you do let that pig run all over the place like you do, round and round the yard he do go, chasing my ducks about, shoving his nose into everything, shouldn’t wonder but what he’ll be out with you and Fly moving the sheep about afore long, why don’t you shut him up, he’s running all his flesh off, he won’t never be fit for Christmas, Easter more like, what d’you call him?”

  “Just Pig,” said Farmer Hogget.

  A month had gone by since the Village Fair, a month in which a lot of interesting things had happened to Babe. The fact that perhaps most concerned his future, though he did not know it, was that Farmer Hogget had become fond of him. He liked to see the piglet pottering happily about the yard with Fly, keeping out of mischief, as far as he could tell, if you didn’t count moving the ducks around. He did this now with a good deal of skill, the farmer noticed, even to the extent of being able, once, to separate the white ducks from the brown, though that must just have been a fluke. The more he thought of it, the less Farmer Hogget liked the idea of butchering Pig.

  The other developments were in Babe’s education. Despite herself, Fly found that she took pleasure and pride in teaching him the ways of the sheepdog, though she knew that of course he would never be fast enough to work sheep. Anyway the boss would never let him try.

  As for Ma, she was back with the flock, her foot healed, her cough better. But all the time that she had been shut in the box, Babe had spent every moment that Fly was out of the stables chatting to the old ewe. Already he understood, in a way that Fly never could, the sheep’s point of view. He longed to meet the flock, to be introduced. He thought it would be extremely interesting.

  “D’you think I could, Ma?” he had said.

  “Could what, young un?”

  “Well, come and visit you, when you go back to your friends?”

  “Oh ar. You could do, easy enough. You only got to go through the bottom gate and up the hill to the big field by the lane. Don’t know what the farmer’d say though. Or that wolf.”

  Once Fly had slipped quietly in and found him perched on the straw stack.

  “Babe!” she had said sharply. “You’re not talking to that stupid thing, are you?”

  “Well, yes, Mum, I was.”

  “Save your breath, dear. It won’t understand a word you say.”

  “Bah!” said Ma.

  For a moment Babe was tempted to tell his foster mother what he had in mind, but something told him to keep quiet. Instead he made a plan. He would wait for two things to happen. First, for Ma to rejoin the flock. And, after that, for market day, when both the boss and his mum would be out of the way. Then he would go up the hill.

  —

  Towards the end of the very next week the two things had happened. Ma had been turned out, and a couple of days after that Babe watched as Fly jumped into the back of the Land Rover, and it drove out of the yard and away.

  Babe’s were not the only eyes that watched its departure. At the top of the hill a cattle truck stood half-hidden under a clump of trees at the side of the lane. As soon as the Land Rover had disappeared from sight along the road to the market town, a man jumped hurriedly out and opened the gate into the field. Another backed the truck into the gateway.

  Babe meanwhile was trotting excitedly up the hill to pay his visit to the flock. He came to the gate at the bottom of the field and squeezed under it. The field was steep and curved, and at first he could not see a single sheep. But then he heard a distant drumming of hooves and suddenly the whole flock came galloping over the brow of the hill and down toward him. Around them ran two strange collies, lean silent dogs that seemed to flow effortlessly over the grass. From high above came the sound of a thin whistle, and in easy partnership the dogs swept around the sheep, and began to drive them back up the slope.

  Despite himself, Babe was caught up in the press of jostling bleating animals and carried along with them. Around him rose a chorus of panting protesting voices, some shrill, some hoarse, some deep and guttural, but all saying the same thing.

  “Wolf! Wolf!” cried the flock in dazed confusion.

  Small by comparison and short in the leg, Babe soon fell behind the main body, and as they reached the top of the hill he found himself right at the back in company with an old sheep who cried “Wolf!” more loudly than any.

  “Ma!” he cried breathlessly. “It’s you!”

  Behind them one dog lay down at a whistle, and in front the flock checked as the other dog steadied them. In the corner of the field the tailgate and wings of the cattle truck filled the gateway, and the two men waited, sticks and arms outspread.

  “Oh hullo, young un,” puffed the old sheep. “Fine day you chose to come, I’ll say.”

  “What is it? What’s happening? Who are these men?” asked Babe.

  “Rustlers,” said Ma. “They’m sheep rustlers.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Thieves, young un, that’s what I do mean. Sheep stealers. We’ll all be in that truck afore you can blink your eye.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Do? Ain’t nothing we can do, unless we can slip past this here wolf.”

  She made as if to escape, but the dog behind darted in, and she turned bac
k.

  Again, one of the men whistled, and the dog pressed. Gradually, held against the headland of the field by the second dog and the men, the flock began to move forward. Already the leaders were nearing the tailgate of the truck.

  “We’m beat,” said Ma mournfully. “You run for it, young un.” I will, thought Babe, but not the way you mean. Little as he was, he felt suddenly not fear but anger, furious anger that the boss’s sheep were being stolen. My mum’s not here to protect them so I must, he said to himself bravely, and he ran quickly around the hedge side of the flock, and jumping onto the bottom of the tailgate, turned to face them.

  “Please!” he cried. “I beg you! Please don’t come any closer. If you would be so kind, dear sensible sheep!”

  His unexpected appearance had a number of immediate effects. The shock of being so politely addressed stopped the flock in its tracks, and the cries of “Wolf!” changed to murmurs of “In’t he lovely!” and “Proper little gennulman!” Ma had told them something of her new friend, and now to see him in the flesh and to hear his well-chosen words released them from the dominance of the dogs. They began to fidget and look about for an escape route. This was opened for them when the men (cursing quietly, for above all things they were anxious to avoid too much noise) sent the flanking dog to drive the pig away, and some of the sheep began to slip past them.

  Next moment all was chaos. Angrily the dog ran at Babe, who scuttled away squealing at the top of his voice in a mixture of fright and fury. The men closed on him, sticks raised. Desperately he shot between the legs of one, who fell with a crash, while the other, striking out madly, hit the rearguard dog as it came to help, and sent it yowling. In half a minute the carefully planned raid was ruined, as the sheep scattered everywhere.

  “Keep yelling, young un!” bawled Ma, as she ran beside Babe. “They won’t never stay here with that row going on!”

  And suddenly all sorts of things began to happen as those deafening squeals rang out over the quiet countryside. Birds flew startled from the trees, cows in nearby fields began to gallop about, dogs in distant farms to bark, passing motorists to stop and stare. In the farmhouse below Mrs. Hogget heard the noise as she had on the day of the Fair. She stuck her head out the window and saw the rustlers, their truck, galloping sheep, and Babe. She dialled 999 but then talked for so long that by the time a patrol car drove up the lane, the rustlers had long gone. Snarling at each other and their dogs, they had driven hurriedly away with not one single sheep to show for their pains.