My back legs were pinned under snow so heavy it felt as if Lucas were lying across them. If he were here, if Lucas were here, he would know what to do. Panting, I struggled to get free. I remembered him lifting me out of Wayne’s arms over the fence. That was what I needed, my person taking me into his arms, pulling me clear. I whimpered. I could not move the part of me that was buried, so I strained with my forelegs to drag myself forward. There was some give, just a tiny amount. I pulled and I was able to move one leg a little, and then the other. Now I could drive with both rear legs, and with a final attempt to hold me prisoner the snow released me, and I shook myself, exhausted.
While just moments before the air had been filled with a noise so powerful it obliterated everything, even thought, there was now an odd silence. I looked around, trying to make sense of it all.
The dog. He was uphill from me, and he was sobbing, a frantic fear pouring off him. Though we were not a pack, the instinct to help rose within me and without hesitating I ran toward him, the ground beneath me oddly firm now, as if the noise had somehow packed everything down.
The dog was just at the tree line, digging, the snow flying into the air behind him. He was a huge dog, larger than I was, with thick dark fur. He did not even glance at me when I approached, didn’t acknowledge my presence. His cries of distress as he dug were not hard to interpret. Something was very bad. But what? Why was he attacking the snow so frantically?
I do not know why, but a moment later I was digging next to the male dog, my movements just as frenzied. Something was bad and we were burrowing down. I knew nothing more than that.
We had not been at it very long when I smelled humans—the two men who had been so angry.
“There! Over there!” one of them shouted. “See? They’re digging!”
I kept at it, scooping hard, dense ice as best I could. My nose now told me what was buried here—a man, the same man whose scent was painted on the male dog. We were digging to save the man.
Bent on my mission, I only glanced at the two men as they glided up on long shoes. One was taller and had darker skin than the other. They kicked the strange shoes off.
“These must be his dogs!”
The men knelt next to us and now there were two dogs and two people digging. They punched their mittened hands down, their long arms helping them as they shoveled great handfuls of snow.
“Got his shirt!” Both men moved up near where the male dog had been digging, and the male dog moved over but didn’t pause.
“His mouth is caked. God.”
“Is he alive?”
One of the men whipped off his mitten. “Still got a pulse!”
“He’s not breathing!”
The men dug armloads of snow away from the buried man’s face. I could feel their frenzied fear. Soon they had his shoulders exposed. They stood, each holding an arm, heaving back.
“Jesus!”
“Keep pulling!”
The men fell down and the buried man was now somewhat out of the hole. The male dog licked his face, crying.
The taller man held up a phone. “No signal. I’ll go back to the cabin and get help. Can you do mouth-to-mouth? Gavin?”
“Yes!” The shorter man began kissing the male dog’s person.
The other man put his big shoes back on, moving with quick, jerky motions. “I’ll be back as soon as I can!”
The man who was doing the kissing nodded but kept taking deep breaths and putting his mouth on the unconscious man’s. “Still got a pulse!”
The tall man wearing the big shoes picked up poles and shoved off with them, moving quickly through the snow in a gliding gait I had never seen before.
The male dog seemed to notice me for the first time, though he only took a single look at me. His tongue was out and his body was trembling, and his eyes were wide. He did not lift his leg or sniff under my tail—he pressed forward, nearly on top of the half-buried man, still whimpering.
There were no sounds for several deep breaths of the kissing man, and then the one lying in the snow started to moan.
“Oh, thank God, thank God,” the kneeling man said. He turned to look at me. “He’s going to be okay, I think. He’s breathing now on his own.”
The other man did not open his eyes, but he did cough and wheeze, and the male dog licked and licked his face.
*
I stayed with the moaning man, the dog, and the other man, who was nice enough to feed both dogs a piece of bread. Eventually I heard loud machines approaching from far down below, but I still stayed—not just because of the bread, but because I felt that I had to be there, the way I had to help Ty and some of my friends who were sometimes sad and needed a dog. It was my job. The bread-man was agitated and distressed, while the moaning man seemed unaware of much of anything.
“Dutch, is that your name?” the bread-man asked, looking at the collar of the male dog. “Hi, Dutch!”
I could tell by the male dog’s reaction that this was what people called him.
Bread-man reached out and touched my collar and I sniffed his hand, smelling Dutch and the bread and not much else. “What’s your name? Why doesn’t your collar have a tag?”
I wagged. Yes, I would have more bread.
When the loud machines arrived they each carried two people on their backs and also dragged along a flat sled. There were three women and a man on the machines, and they carefully lifted the male dog’s person onto the sled, strapping him down. The man groaned loudly when they moved him but he still did not wake up.
“Is he going to be okay?” the bread-man asked one of the women.
“Depends on how long his brain went without oxygen. It’s a good sign, though, that his heart never stopped beating. You did the right thing.”
“I’ve never done that. Artificial resuscitation, I mean,” he replied. “Wow.”
“You okay?” she responded kindly.
“Honestly? No. I’m still shaking.”
“You saved a man’s life. You should feel good.”
“I’m going to have a martini, then I’ll feel good.”
The woman laughed. I wagged my tail at the sound, but Dutch was anxiously watching the people strap his person to the sled. I sniffed him, practically able to taste the anxiety pouring off him.
“What about his dogs?” the bread-man wanted to know.
“Oh,” answered the woman.
“Will you send somebody to get them?”
“That’s not—we aren’t really equipped to take care of dogs.”
“Huh.” The man put a mitten down to stroke my head, and I rubbed up against him like Big Kitten greeting me. “Well, they belong to the guy you’re taking to the hospital.”
“That’s really unfortunate. We’re mountain rescue; we’ve never had a situation where a victim has a dog.”
“I see.” He patted my head again and I wagged. “So what is going to happen to them?”
The woman smacked her hands together in a spray of snow, brushing the flakes off her coat. “That’s up to you, I guess.”
*