the retriever out of the brush. Nobody came. When he thought to check for a
collar and license, he found none.
“Surely you’re not a wild dog—are you boy?”
The retriever chuffed.
“No, too friendly for a wild one. Not lost, are you?”
It nuzzled his hand.
He noticed that, in addition to its dirty and tangled coat, it had dried blood
on its right ear. Fresher blood was visible on its front paws, as if it had been
running so long and so hard over rugged terrain that the pads of its feet had
begun to crack.
“Looks like you’ve had a difficult journey, boy.”
The dog whined softly, as if agreeing with what Travis had said.
He continued to stroke its back and scratch its ears, but after a minute or two
he realized he was seeking something from the dog that it could not Provide:
meaning, purpose, relief from despair.
On your way now.” He gave the retriever a light slap on its side, rose, and
stretched
The dog remained in front of him.
He stepped past it, heading for the narrow path that descended into darkness.
The dog bolted around him and blocked the deer trail.
“Move along, boy.”
The retriever bared its teeth and growled low in its throat.
Travis frowned. “Move along. That’s a good dog.”
When he tried to step past it, the retriever snarled. It snapped at his legs.
Travis danced back two steps. “Hey, what’s gotten into you?”
The dog stopped growling and just panted.
He advanced again, but the dog lunged at him more ferociously than before, still
not barking but growling even deeper and snapping repeatedly at his legs,
driving him backward across the clearing. He took eight or ten clumsy steps on a
slippery carpet of dead spruce and pine needles, stumbled over his own feet, and
fell on his butt.
The moment Travis was down, the dog turned away from him. It padded across the
clearing to the brink of the sloping path and peered into the gloom below. Its
floppy ears had pricked up as much as a retriever’s ears can.
“Damn dog,” Travis said.
It ignored him.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, mutt?”
Standing in the forest’s shadow, it continued to stare down the deer trail, into
the blackness at the bottom of the wooded canyon slope. Its tail was down,
almost tucked between its legs.
Travis gathered half a dozen small stones from the ground around him, got up,
and threw one of the missiles at the retriever. Struck on the backside hard
enough to be stung, the dog did not yelp but whipped around in surprise.
Now I’ve done it, Travis thought. He’ll go for my throat.
But the dog only looked at him accusingly—and continued to block the entrance to
the deer trail.
Something in the tattered beast’s demeanor—in the wide-set dark eyes or in the
tilt of its big squarish head—made Travis feel guilty for having stoned it. The
sorry damn dog looked disappointed in him, and he was ashamed.
“Hey, listen,” he said, “you started it, you know.”
The dog just stared at him.
Travis dropped the other stones.
The dog glanced at the relinquished missiles, then raised its eyes once more,
and Travis swore he saw approval in that canine face.
Travis could have turned back. Or he could have found another way down the
canyon. But he was seized by an irrational determination to forge ahead, to go
where he wanted to go, by God. This day of all days, he was not going to be
deterred or even delayed by something as trivial as an obstructive dog.
He got up, shrugged his shoulders to resettle the backpack, took a deep breath
of the piny air, and walked boldly across the clearing.
The retriever began to growl again, softly but menacingly. Its lips skinned back
from its teeth.
Step by step, Travis’s courage faded, and when he was within a few feet of the
dog, he opted for a different approach. He stopped and shook his head and gently
berated the animal: “Bad dog. You’re being a very bad dog. You know that? What’s
gotten into you? Hmmmm? You don’t look as if you were born bad. You look like a