Barry (5 page)

By the time the rescue party drew their sleds up to the door, everyone inside the hospice was ready. Two marronniers went outside to help. They lifted two of the men from the sleds and carried
them into the sitting room. Two of the men were able to get up and walk with the aid of a cleric on each arm. The clerics walked these men around and around in circles. Then they sat them down before the fire. Michel and Brother Martin knelt and took off the men’s boots and rubbed their feet. A marronnier who worked in the kitchen brought each man a goblet of hot wine. The travelers sat and sipped the wine and sighed with gratitude. As I stood near the fire and watched the two travelers, I saw the color return to their faces. I wagged my tail. One of the men smiled, reached out, and stroked the fur on my back.

“Thank you,” he said.

Why thank me? I had not done anything. Perhaps to him, all of us dogs looked alike. But this was good news, yes? This meant that I was getting big enough to go out in the snow and rescue
travelers. I felt the excitement coursing through my body.

Then I turned to see what was happening with the other two men. The marronniers had stripped off all their clothing. How pale and still their bodies looked. That worried me. Then I watched in astonishment as the clerics lowered them into the basins of ice and snow!

One of the men began to shout and splash about. The blue of his body grew pink and rosy. He sputtered. I think he was angry with the marronniers for dunking him in the cold water, and I cannot say that I blamed him. But the marronniers just smiled. They helped him out of the basin and toweled him off and dressed him in dry clothing. Then they led him to bed.

Meanwhile, the other man just lay in the basin of ice and snow, his eyes staring up at the rafters. Michel looked at Brother Martin and they shook their heads. They lifted his body out of the ice and wrapped it in a blanket and carried it back into the snow. Outside of the hospice, there was a special building where the marronniers brought the bodies. The cold kept them fresh until the ground was soft enough to bury them or their families came to claim them and bring them home.

The White Death had claimed one of the men, but the other three had been spared.

Two months later, I was one year old. On a spring day when the snow was deep, Brothers Martin and Gaston took me out for a walk in the snow. I stopped and looked back at the hospice.

Where is Michel?
my eyes asked.

Michel was my special walking companion.

“What’s the matter, Barry?” Brother Gaston asked. He exchanged a secretive look with Brother Martin.

“Come along, Barry,” said Brother Martin as he set off briskly in the snow.

Though disappointed not to have Michel at my heels, I took the lead and ran down the path. It was the path that ran south toward Italy. Brothers Gaston and Martin followed along behind me, poking
their long sticks into the snow as they walked.

We were only a short distance away from the hospice when suddenly I smelled something familiar. The scent was coming from a bank of snow a little way off the path. I stopped and tested the air with my nose.

I knew what I smelled.

It was Michel! But where was he? I could not see him. I spun around and looked. There was nothing but snow everywhere. I ran all over the bank of snow with my nose to the ground, my tail between my legs, sniffing frantically. I ran in a wide circle. As the smell grew stronger, the circle shrank. Finally, I stopped and lifted my head. I barked loudly to call the brothers over. They were some distance away from me.

“What is it, Barry?” Brother Martin called out.

“I think our furry friend may have found
something,” Brother Gaston said.

They struggled toward me through the drift, poking their sticks into the snow. They were so slow! I could not wait another moment. I started digging. After a while, behold, there was Michel’s pale face, looking so very cold! My friend was buried in the snow! I licked his face, his hands. I looked over at the brothers. Wasn’t one of them going to go back and get the sled? Weren’t they going to bring Michel back to the hospice to warm him up and give him hot wine and soup and dry clothes and blankets? I licked and licked my friend until the pinkness bloomed in his skin.

But what was this? Michel was laughing! Brothers Gaston and Martin had begun to help dig him out, and they were now laughing, too! As far as I was concerned, this was no laughing matter. Michel had been buried alive in the snow. I stared
from face to face. Brother Gaston needed to blow his nose, he was laughing so hard. Brother Martin wiped tears of laughter from his eyes.

“Oh, Barry!” Michel said. “The look on your face!”

Then it was as if the clouds rolled away and the sun beamed down on my head. I understood! This was what the older dogs did when they went out on rescue missions. They sniffed around in the snow and found people buried in it. This was a test. Did this mean the brothers thought I was ready to go out in the snow and rescue people?

When Michel emerged from the snowbank, he leaned down and wrapped his long arms around me and hugged me hard.

“Barry, my fine young dog,” he said, “it appears that you have a nose for finding people in the snow!”

T
HE
W
HITE
D
EATH

The second winter of my life it snowed very hard, but that did not discourage people from making the trek over the mountains. All sorts of reasons drove people to take this trip. There were merchants who carried their goods in heavy packs strapped to their backs. There were farmworkers and their families traveling to pick crops. There were others going to visit friends. But no matter how much snow fell, they all kept coming.

Each morning and afternoon, one marronnier headed south down the path toward Italy. A second headed north toward the valley of the Rhône River. Their job was to search for travelers who might have gotten lost in the snow or who were too cold to continue. There was a cave just off the northern path where travelers stopped to rest. The marronnier was always careful to check the cave. They brought a dog or sometimes two with them. Even though I was a young dog, I liked to go out on my own. Michel permitted this because he had seen that if there was someone lost in the snow, I would find them.

Why was this? you ask. As Michel had said, I had a nose for the work. Even if the wind was against me, I could smell a human being up to two miles away. I could smell a man buried
under many feet of snow. And I could sense well in advance when an avalanche was coming.

One day when I was about four years of age, I was patrolling the route on the way to Italy when I smelled men nearby. I could not see them anywhere, so I wandered off the track and soon came upon a group of them carrying bundles on their backs. Unlike me, they were not able to find their way by smelling what was beneath the snow, and they had wandered off the path. I guided them back in the right direction. They seemed dazed from the cold. It was my opinion that, for their own safety, they should return to the hospice, which they had left that morning.

“He wants us to go back to the hospice,” said the loudest-voiced man, who seemed to be the
leader, “but we cannot lose another day. We are already late with our delivery. Sorry, dog, we aren’t going that way.”

“Well, I, for one, will never make it to Italy without another night of warmth,” said another. He was so cold his teeth chattered in his head.

They argued until the cold man won out over the leader. They let me take them back to the hospice. While we walked, they grumbled. They complained of hunger and weariness and cold.

“When will we reach the hospice?” the Cold Man said.

I knew it was only a short distance away. I kept making tracks through the snow, until suddenly, I stopped. The men halted behind me.

“The dog stopped. Why is the dog stopping?” the Leader asked.

“Come on, dog,” said the Cold Man. “You
wanted us to go to the hospice. Let’s get there before my tongue freezes in my head.”

I did not move. I had stopped because I sensed something coming. Something Big. And I knew, as surely as my name was Barry, that if we kept going in the same direction, this Big Something was going to bury us alive. I turned around and went the other way. When the travelers refused to follow, I barked at them to show that I meant business.

“This is crazy,” said the Leader. “We’ve made a decision to go back to the hospice and that is where we should go. We can’t go around in circles like this.”

“I don’t know,” said the Cold Man. “The dog seems to be wary of something. These dogs have a reputation for being very smart. I’m going to play it safe and follow the dog.”

The men stood in the snow and argued while I
whined. What was the matter with them? The Big Something was coming and we needed to be gone from this spot. There was no time to lose.

When they stopped arguing, two of them had decided to follow the Leader back to the hospice. The Cold Man and two others followed me away from it. I had done what I could.

We had walked for about fifteen minutes when we heard it behind us: the roar of a mighty river of snow and ice and rocks as it rushed madly down the mountainside toward the valley. I knew that the avalanche had probably overtaken the three who had not heeded my warning.

The three in my care jabbered and wept and prayed for the lives of their companions. They also knew that had they not followed me, they would now be under the snow. I turned around and set off in the direction of the hospice. The path now
lay buried in debris. The air was filled with a fine film of snow and dust. The men were nowhere to be seen. I took off at a run, leaving the three survivors on the site while I raced to get help. When
I got to the hospice, I barked and barked until I summoned two marronniers from their chores.

“I have the feeling that Barry has found some avalanche casualties,” one of them said. “I am betting it is the party who left here this morning.”

Brother Gaston, Michel, and Brother Martin got their cloaks and sticks and followed me, dragging the rescue sleds. Bernice and Jupiter came, too. I would need their help to find the bodies buried in the snow. Fortunately, the avalanche was not so very far away from the hospice and we arrived in less than an hour. The three survivors cried out when they saw us. Brother Gaston wrapped them in blankets and sat them on one of the sleds while we dogs set to work.