Barry (6 page)

We ran in circles, our noses to the rubble brought down by the avalanche. I was the first to catch the scent. I stopped and barked. Michel came
over and poked his stick far down in the snow. He stopped when the stick was about half buried. The stick would sink no farther. It appeared that it had hit something solid. It might have been a rock, but I had a feeling that it was a man. I wagged my tail.

“Good work, Barry,” Michel said to me.

My chest swelled with pride. It made me happy to please the clerics and the marronniers.

“He is down about six feet,” Michel said to the others.

They got their shovels from the sled and began to dig away the snow. I helped with my paws. Meanwhile, Jupiter and Bernice continued to sniff for the other two men. By the time Jupiter started to bark, we had dug the Leader out of the snowbank.

He spat snow out of his mouth. Then he looked at me, his breast heaving. “I should have listened to
you, dog. You were right and I was wrong.”

The clerics hustled the man over to the sled, laid him out, and bundled him in blankets. Then we went over to where Jupiter stood barking. Again Michel poked his stick down in the snow. The stick sank almost entirely.

“He is buried very deeply,” said Brother Martin with a hopeless shrug.

My brother and I dug along with the clerics until finally we uncovered the man at the bottom of the pit of snow. To everyone’s amazement, he was still breathing. The clerics lifted him and laid him on the snowbank. While they went to fetch the sled, I stretched myself out next to the man and warmed him with the heat of my body. Jupiter licked his face. By the time the clerics had gotten him onto the sled, his eyes were open. He was blinking hard, but he could not yet speak. Later, at the dinner table, his tongue would loosen enough to speak of this brush with the White Death as if he were the hero of the tale instead of a fool who hadn’t listened to me.

Bernice was standing some distance down the mountainside from us. She was barking fit to burst.

She had found the third traveler. It looked as if the avalanche had carried him halfway down to where the mountainside dropped off into the valley below, and where the snow that had come down in the avalanche mixed with gravel and big boulders. Could a man survive such a tumbling and tossing? Bernice’s bark had a note of bleakness to it. Jupiter and I whined. We knew what that bark meant and so did the clerics.

When we dug up the man, life had already left his body. But as the clerics struggled to bear him up the mountainside to the sled, they were as gentle with the body as if he were still alive.

On another occasion, I woke up one morning and ran up to the top of the stairs. Out the window, I could not see the crags of the pass. At first, I thought it was because of snow. But the air in the
hospice felt warm. And then I knew. It wasn’t snow. It was fog. I had seen fog but never fog this thick. I scratched at the front door. There were bound to be travelers lost in a fog as thick as this.

Brother Gaston let me out. “Don’t get lost in the pea soup, Barry!”

I ran along the path. There were pockets of fog so deep I could not see beyond the end of my muzzle. The fog was filled with smells that confused me. If I did not keep my nose to the ground, I would lose my way, too. The fog was quiet. It was like a big white blanket that lay across the shoulders of the mountain.

Suddenly, I heard voices. The voices did not sound worried at all. They were singing. I followed the sound. I went off the path and in a downhill direction. I did not like the direction the voices were taking me.

I came upon two travelers walking along with heavy packs strapped to their backs.

“Look!” said the taller of the two travelers. “It is a bari dog come to rescue us.”

“Hello, bari dog. It is good to see you, but as you can tell, we are not in need of rescue,” the shorter of the two said.

I begged to differ. I clamped my mouth around the wrist of the taller man and pulled and tugged at him.

“What are you doing, dog? Leave me alone!” he said, trying to wrestle his hand back. But I would not let go.

“Maybe there is something wrong with the dog,” the Short One said.

The Tall One snorted. “Maybe we should get out our gun and shoot the crazy cur in the head.”

Just then, a breeze came along and parted the
fog long enough for the travelers to see exactly where they stood.

At the edge of a sheer drop.

The Tall One staggered away from the edge of the precipice. His foot dislodged a rock. The rock went over the side. It was a long time until we heard it land, far, far below us in the valley.

The two travelers stared at each other. That rock might have been one of them!

Then another breeze came along and the fog was back.

The two travelers huddled next to me.

“Show us back to the path, dog,” they begged. “We need your help.”

I gladly led them up the slope and back onto the path. Needless to say, there was no more talk of shooting me. It was “good dog” this and “smart dog” that from then on. And when I delivered
them to the hospice door, they patted me on the head and offered me a piece of dried meat from one of their packs. I took my reward and went back out into the fog to see if there were any other travelers who might have been lost in its swirly depths.

In the years to come, I rescued others from the fog. I have to say that I preferred working in snow. With snow, you always knew where you stood. But fog confused even me sometimes. It made things that were far away seem close. It fooled my nose and it fooled my ears. Fog was a trickster.

T
HE
P
ROMISE

One winter’s day when I was six years old, I woke up with a bad feeling in my gut. I thought I might have gotten a piece of spoiled meat in my dinner bowl the night before. I was not one to complain, but I felt I should let Michel know that I was not feeling like my usual self. I went to where he sat polishing some boots by the fire.

He set down his boots and looked at me carefully. “What is it, Barry?” Then he saw that the
light in my eyes was dull and my tail was tucked between my legs. With gentle fingers, he felt my nose. It was dry and warm.

“Feeling a little under the weather, Barry?” he asked.

I might have said that. Even my droopy ears felt like they drooped more than usual.

“What do you think about taking a nice walk in the snow?” he asked. I managed to wag my tail once or twice, although I never really got it going. He took my feeble wag as a
yes
and got his cloak and stick.

I know it might sound strange to you. When you feel sick, the last thing you want to do is take a walk in the snow. But for a dog like me, a walk in the snow was, as I believe the saying goes, exactly what the doctor ordered. The first burst of cold air hitting my face was like a soothing balm. It did
not entirely restore my health, but I did feel better. Thoughtful fellow that he was, Michel had chosen the path that headed north so the winds whipping up from the south would not hit us head-on. I trudged along beside my friend instead of bounding ahead in my usual eager manner.

We entered a small valley. The hospice was well out of sight by then. We climbed down one side and were just climbing up the other when the wind died down and the world turned quiet and still. Too quiet and too still. I stopped and did not move a muscle.

Michel said, “You’re tired, Barry. Let’s return to the hospice. I can see this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

He started to go back down into the valley, but I grabbed the sleeve of his cloak in my teeth and held him there. I growled. My eyes said,
Heed me,
Michel, and do as I say. Do not go down into the valley
.

Michel looked surprised. “It’s not like you to growl at your old friend Michel. You really aren’t yourself today, are you?”

Not true! My sickness was all but forgotten and I was as much myself as ever. I knew one thing and one thing only: we must not go into that valley. Something was coming, and it was coming very soon. Michel tried to get me to release my hold on him, but I would not. If I did, he might go into the valley. And I could not let that happen.

Then we heard rumbling like thunder in the crags above us. Michel’s eyes widened and he stared at me. He understood. Michel threw himself on the ground next to me and wrapped an arm around my neck. The very next moment, an avalanche came crashing down into the valley.

When the earth had settled, Michel sat up and smiled at me. “You must be feeling better, eh, boy?” he said.

I stood up and shook the snow out of my coat. He stood up and brushed the snow off his cloak.

Just then, we heard the bells of the chapel ringing. Michel said, “Well, I guess it’s safe to go back
to the hospice now. They will worry that we were caught in the avalanche. Let’s go and calm their fears.”

But I was not going anywhere. Something beckoned to me, something farther down the path in the direction we had been heading when the avalanche hit.

Michel grew weary of trying to coax me to go back. “Well, Barry, my furry friend,” he said, “I am sorry to say that I am cold and I have duties back at the hospice. I am returning now.”

But I knew that I would wander as far as I had to go to track down the scent that tugged at my nose. The snow was deep and the wind was strong, but finally, I came out of the valley and onto level ground. I knew now where the scent was leading me: to the cave in the northern mountainside.

When I arrived at the cave, I found a woman.
We did not get many women on the mountain. But I knew one when I saw one. She was bundled against the cold and huddled up against the back of the cave. She looked cold and very weak. I went over and licked her, but her face remained as pale as ice. Then she rolled aside, and I saw that in the shelter of her body lay a little boy, not much bigger than a baby. When the woman moved, she must have wakened him. He whimpered and reached out for her. In weak and shaking arms, she gathered up the boy and held him out to me.

“Lick my son, bari, and keep him warm,” she said as she set the wee lad on the cave floor before me.

I licked the boy’s face and hands. He squirmed, but I wouldn’t let him get away from me. I lay down next to him and gave him my biggest, warmest bari hug. He soon calmed down. He knew he needed
the warmth of my tongue and my furry body.

Then the woman slowly hoisted herself up on one elbow. She removed the red shawl from around her shoulders.

“Roll over on your side, bari,” she told me.

Obedient as I was, I rolled over next to the small boy. With the shawl, the woman bound the boy on to my back. She tied the shawl so tightly it was difficult for me to breathe, but I understood she wanted to keep her boy securely tied to my back. “There. See that no harm comes to him,” she said.

I stood up slowly with my new burden on my back. It was difficult, carrying such a load. I was unsteady at first, but I managed to find my balance.

The woman looked up at me. “Promise me you will carry my boy to safety,” she said.

I barked softly and leaned down to lick her face. It had worked wonders on the son; perhaps it would work on the mother. But I could tell that life left her body even as I nuzzled her. Now it was just the boy and me.