A Dog's Courage--A Dog's Way Home Novel

by W. Bruce Cameron

  “Lucas! Are you okay?”

  Lucas sputtered, pulling his head out of the water. “Airbags worked after all,” he mumbled. With a snap of his belts he fell down and now all three of us were in the water, but I was the only one swimming.

  I did not know why we were here but I was relieved the car ride down the steep hill was over. Thrashing, we made our way out of the Jeep, which was lying with its wheels up in the air. Lucas ducked his head in the water and pulled out the sleeping pad. “Flotation,” he explained. “Even partially inflated, it’ll work. Let’s get to that island.”

  At first Olivia and Lucas waded, but then they were swimming, each holding on to one edge of the sleeping pad, which was sagging but floating. They were gulping air.

  The water was cold. I felt it as a penetrating ache in my bones. I did not know what we were doing, why we decided to drive into the lake, but I was glad to be with my people.

  Before long Lucas and Olivia were wading again, and then my paws struck rocky bottom. I climbed out onto shore and shook myself. A trembling seized my body and my legs were shaking. We were on a small rocky place out in the lake, with water on all sides of us. The inconsistent clouds of heat, arriving on the dancing wind and then blowing quickly away, did nothing to dispel my bone-deep chill.

  Olivia and Lucas stood and held each other.

  “I thought we were going to die, Lucas,” Olivia whispered. “I really did.”

  He nodded and swallowed. “I’ve never been more afraid, but we made it.”

  I climbed up on my rear legs and put my paws on his hips and thrust my head into their hug so they’d know I loved them both. They needed my comfort—I was a good dog who could sense such things.

  Lucas smiled down at me, then frowned at Olivia. “You’re cut.”

  Olivia pulled her sleeve back and I smelled the blood as it ran down her arm. “Oh wow, I didn’t even feel it. Maybe when the windshield blew out?”

  Lucas examined the bleeding gash. “It’s going to take a few stitches.” He looked around. “Okay, I’ll go back to the Jeep and get my kit and a few other things.”

  “What? You can’t swim in that water again! It’s too cold.”

  “I won’t. Swim, I mean. See? Look to my right, see how much more shallow the water is over there? I’ll wade to shore. I won’t ever be in over my head.”

  “There? That’s where the fire is! You can’t be serious.”

  “Obviously I won’t go all the way up on shore where the trees are burning. As soon as the water is shallow enough, I’ll turn right and get to the Jeep.” He picked up the sleeping pad, coughing into his fist. “I’ll take this along. Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “I know you would, but I want you to keep pressure on that arm. I realize it’s risky, but it’s the only way we’re going to survive. We need the cookstove and dry clothes—we could literally die of hypothermia if we don’t do something.”

  “I’m just terrified you’re heading straight where the fire looks the worst!”

  “You watch, I’ve got this.”

  Olivia wiped tears from her face. “Wait. Wait. When we were driving down the mountain, when I thought we were going to be killed, all I could think of was how important you are to me. I can’t lose you, Lucas. I can’t have you die on me.”

  Lucas put his hands on her shoulders. His teeth were chattering. “That’s what I thought, too. How lucky I am that I met you.”

  After another fierce hug, I was mystified when Lucas turned and, dragging the sleeping pad, marched over to the shore and walked out into the water. What were we doing?

  I followed, though, because I was his dog.

  For the most part I could touch bottom in the icy lake, but what concerned me far more was that we were heading straight toward smoke and flames. In front of us the steep slopes sent hot, billowing clouds to the sky, the wind thrashing the burning trees in a storm of sparks. I kept looking up at Lucas. I would follow him, but I did not want to go ashore where everything was on fire.

  “Okay, Bella, that’s close enough.” I was relieved when Lucas turned and headed in the direction of the Jeep. His body was quaking violently, and when the lake bottom dropped he stumbled and seemed weak. I swam close, anxious and afraid.

  At the Jeep, he heaved me up so I was standing on metal between the wheels. He ducked into the Jeep, returned with his hands full, and piled things onto the sleeping pad, which cratered when he placed the cooler on it. His hands trembled when he patted the pad. “Okay, let’s go, Bella.”

  I leapt into the water and paddled after him. We cut a different path back than on the way out, and I saw that the shrieking fire and smoke were much closer to the Jeep and the shoreline than they had been before. We swam for a distance, and then Lucas was wading again, breathing in short gasps. My feet finally found purchase, but the lake bed was uneven. Lucas tripped and went down.

  “Lucas!” Olivia rushed forward, splashing, while I anxiously nosed my boy. He was on his hands and knees and his face was almost touching the water. Olivia reached under his arms, dragged him upright, and half pulled, half carried him to shore, his hand still gripping the sagging sleeping pad and the items he had placed on it.

  Once on dry land, Lucas struggled to his feet.

  “Your lips are blue!” Olivia told him. I heard the alarm in her voice.

  “Cookstove,” Lucas croaked. He began pulling off his wet clothes. “I should have grabbed an extra bottle of LP.”

  Olivia lifted the familiar metal box off the sleeping pad, and when she opened it, I turned my nose toward the delicious odor of meats past. “We’re good, there’s plenty of gas in the tank.” There was a coughing sound and then I felt heat wafting out of the box.

  Lucas bent and picked up rocks the size of his fist and placed them in the box and slapped the lid shut. His hands were shaking uncontrollably as he fumbled with his backpack. “We need to heat our cores first,” he slurred. “Put on dry clothes, honey.”

  Olivia reached into her pack as Lucas struggled into a thick shirt and some pants. Soon she was yanking a sweater over her head. “I can’t feel my hands or feet,” she complained, her teeth clicking. “It’s like getting dressed wearing oven mitts.”

  Lucas pulled out two towels, grabbed a long metal tool, and opened the box. “Okay, we’ll roll the heated rocks up in the towels and hold them between our chests and our clothes. We warm the center mass, our torsos, first, then the extremities.” He pulled out the rocks and placed them on a towel. He folded this up and handed it to Olivia. “Put this under your shirt.”

  “You first.”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “Lucas, you look like you’re dying. Your lips are almost black.”

  My boy nodded and shoved the rolled-up towel into his shirt and put more rocks in the box and closed it.

  “I was watching the fire up in the hills while you were at the Jeep,” Olivia said, her trembling forcing a warble into her voice. “You wouldn’t believe how fast it’s spreading. A whole hill, one minute fine, the next completely on fire. It’s more like a bomb going off than anything.”

  Lucas shook his head grimly and took out the rocks. They smelled different, having been cooked. He put them on a second towel and rolled it and handed it to Olivia, who thrust the bundle up her sweater.

  “How does that feel?” he asked.

  “It feels fantastic.”

  This was how we passed much of the day—I watched as the two of them put the warm rocks in towels and placed them in the front and back of their clothing. Eventually they started rubbing me with the towels, and my skin felt alive under the deliciously warm cloth. I spontaneously ran around the shoreline, which took almost no time before I was right back where I started.

  Lucas opened the cooler and peered into it. I watched him hopefully. “I’ll make coffee, and we should eat these hard-boiled eggs and some cheese, get some fat into us. Shivering takes a lot of energy. How are yo
u doing?”

  Olivia smiled. “A lot better.”

  The whistling wind blew hot, smoky air at us, and sometimes glowing pieces of wood sparked as they landed on the stony shore of our island.

  “Okay, I hate to say this, but it’s time for me to get to your cut,” Lucas told Olivia.

  “Why do you look so serious? It’s just a little cut, right?”

  “Well, sure, but it hasn’t stopped bleeding, even with the towel tied around it. I’m going to need to put in stitches.”

  “Okay,” Olivia replied slowly. “But you can do that, right? I mean, you’ve done it.”

  “Yes, of course. On, um, grapes.”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t actually stitched a person yet. We’ve been practicing on grapes.”

  “Oh my God, you went to medical school to become a fruit doctor?”

  Lucas laughed. “I’m pretty good at it, don’t worry about that.” Then he stopped laughing.

  “Don’t worry about that.…” Olivia repeated. “About that. What should I worry about?”

  “I, uh, don’t have any actual anesthetic in my kit.”

  “Oh.”

  “So it’s probably going to hurt a little.”

  “You’re going to stick needles in my skin and it’s going to hurt a little.”

  “A lot. It’s probably going to hurt a lot, honey. I’m really sorry, but I don’t think we’ve got a choice.”

  Olivia sat on a rock and Lucas pulled out a small bottle of very strong-smelling liquid and a square cloth. “Isopropyl. This will sting,” he warned.

  Lucas gave Olivia’s arm a bath. She sucked in air and winced and I felt a flash of pain from her. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Just get it over with.”

  I did not know what was happening, but it seemed to me that Lucas was hurting Olivia. She looked off in the distance, biting her lip, but when I followed her gaze, I saw only the flaming trees and black smoke whipped into the air by the raging wind.

  “All done. That was amazing, Olivia. I would have screamed my head off,” Lucas admired.

  “That’s why men don’t have babies,” Olivia responded lightly. “If they did, every family would have just one child.”

  We cuddled together on the oddly floppy sleeping pad for the night, but it wasn’t long before I caught the scent of an animal, wild and intense and unfamiliar. I lifted my head and stared into the odd light—the glow from the fires was diffused by the smoke, but I could see something standing in the shallow part of the lake, something very big.

  I growled a warning. Olivia sat up. “What is it, Bella?” She put out her hand and stroked me reassuringly. Then she gasped. “Lucas! Wake up!”

  Lucas was instantly alert. “What is it?”

  I stopped growling because I had done my job and alerted my people.

  “It’s a bear. See?”

  Lucas peered into the dark, and now we were all staring at the huge, hulking creature, whose dank odor wafted to me, strong even with all the smoke. “Is it a grizzly?”

  Olivia shook her head. “No. Grizzlies are extinct around here. But it’s a huge black bear, which can be pretty dangerous.”

  They were saying “bear,” and I decided that’s what this wild, dangerous-looking animal was called. Bear.

  “Wonderful,” Lucas drawled. “What do we do?”

  Olivia thought for a moment. “I think for now we just keep an eye on it. He’s running from the fire; he’s not interested in us.”

  I smelled another animal, too—several of them, a pack. Soon my eyes confirmed what my nose told me as deer emerged from the gloom and stepped into the shallow water.

  “Look at that,” Lucas murmured.

  “They are standing right next to a bear,” Olivia marveled. “But they’re so afraid of the fire, they don’t even care.”

  Lucas and Olivia put their heads back down eventually, but I maintained my vigil. I knew that the big bear was a danger to us and would not allow it to come any closer.

  When the sun rose, the bear wandered off, and so I finally stretched out to sleep. When Lucas woke me by yawning, the deer were gone, too.

  The smoke smell was still heavy upon us, but the flashing flames had receded for the most part. The winds were calmer and I could hear a few birds reassuring each other from deeper in the woods.

  Lucas stood and surveyed all directions. “Fire’s mostly out.”

  “It burned everything. There’s no more fuel,” Olivia agreed.

  “How did you sleep?”

  “I think I slept. I was completely exhausted from all that shivering. But I kept waking up and watching the fire. It was almost beautiful, you know? But I was afraid it was somehow going to make it to our island.”

  Lucas nodded. “Same here. I was worried we might be overcome with the smoke, but the wind kept blowing it away.”

  They cooked eggs on the hot box and gave me some. For a long time, neither of them spoke.

  Finally, Olivia set down her coffee cup. “Okay,” she said.

  Seven

  Lucas nodded. “Okay.” He stood and carefully looked around. “I don’t think it would be safe to leave this island in any direction except straight back behind us, our six o’clock, if the Jeep’s at twelve. See how pretty much everywhere there are still jets of smoke coming out of the ground? We might step in a hot spot and burn ourselves. But behind us, that rocky area didn’t get hit with fire. There’s no foliage for fuel. So, what do you think? Should we try going that way?”

  Olivia drained the last of her coffee. “I’m game. I don’t want to spend another night here, that’s for sure.”

  Lucas and Olivia put on their packs and went wading. I stayed next to them but the frigid water was deep enough for me that it was mostly a swim. An intense odor of smoke rose from the surface as I paddled.

  “The lake is just black,” Olivia commented despairingly.

  “And cold,” Lucas agreed.

  When we were close enough to the smoking shore that I could walk in the water without it touching my belly, Lucas put down a cautioning hand. “That’s far enough, Bella.”

  I didn’t know what he was saying to me but I stopped to look at him and sensed his approval as I heeded him.

  “You could burn your paws, Bella,” Olivia told me.

  I glanced at her when she said my name.

  Lucas turned and waded along the shore. “My feet feel like ice blocks, but I think we need to stay in ankle-deep water and see if we can get to that gully.”

  My boy’s pull on my leash kept me from climbing onto shore. I gingerly picked my way over the pebbles and small stones under my feet. I did not see any squirrels or any ducks or any creatures worth chasing, but at least I was no longer swimming.

  When we finally stepped out of the water, we were in a rocky area that sloped upward with no trees or bushes. I stayed close to Lucas.

  “This is probably the streambed for when the snowmelt fills the lake,” Lucas speculated. “Let’s head upstream and see where it goes.”

  The rocks clattered as Lucas and Olivia led me up the slope. Wind gusted hard at us, blowing smoke up my nose and making it difficult to smell anything else, which was why I didn’t detect the animals until we were upon them. They were bright white, with bushy coats and horns coming out of their heads. All were bigger than I, and any dog knows a pack is more dangerous than any single creature.

  I growled a low warning.

  “Mountain goats!” Olivia exclaimed.

  Lucas nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them at such low altitude. It’s okay, Bella.”

  “Do you think this means the fire got all the way to the summit of the mountain?” Olivia asked anxiously.

  “I’m guessing these guys didn’t wait to find out.”

  Lucas commanded me to do Heel. Heel is where I am supposed to remain right by his side and not run off despite provocation—even a squirrel. I am not always a good dog when I am asked to do Heel but that is
because where we live there are a lot of squirrels who try to take advantage of the situation. I don’t consider that to be my fault, but Lucas does.

  I could tell the reason my boy wanted me to do Heel was because the big creatures were eyeing us nervously and moving ahead of us as if we were chasing them at a slow speed.

  Lucas grinned. “I’ve never been this close to a mountain goat before.”

  He kept saying the word “goat.” There were no goats around that I could see, just the odd shaggy animals who were not dogs but probably wished they were.

  At a place where the path broadened out wider than a street, the strange not-dog, not-goat creatures bunched together and then suddenly reversed course. Lucas yanked my leash as he and Olivia jumped to the side. The horned animals raced past us, their hooved feet making ringing impacts on the rocks. I saw several juveniles running with them. They seemed to have no trouble skipping across the loose, rocky surface.

  “Whoa!” Lucas exclaimed. He held my leash taut as the shaggy not-dogs thundered past. He shook his head, marveling at the sight. “What do you suppose spooked them? Us?”

  Olivia shrugged. “Honestly, I think the fire has them in panic mode. They’re just trying to stay safe.”

  When the last of the animals was beyond us, Lucas played out the leash and we went back to our walk.

  The sun was much higher in the sky when we followed a dark dirt path and came out onto a road that was rutted and filled with stones. “What do you think we should do now?” Lucas asked. “Uphill? Or down?”

  Olivia pointed. “Down.”

  So now we were walking in the middle of a road. It was much easier. There were places where trees were fresh and green and still standing, and places so barren and burnt that my eyes stung and I felt an oppressive, sooty heat pouring out of the ground.

  The road twisted and turned, but I had faith that Lucas and Olivia knew where we were going. Humans always know.

  I had my nose down and was not really watching my boy when he exclaimed, “Hey, look. It’s a car.”

  Olivia and my boy led me to a car that was sitting with its windows rolled up. Olivia put a hand on Lucas’s chest. “Honey, I’m afraid there might be somebody in there. Somebody who’s…” She trailed off.