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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 thehospice 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 thefog 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 deliveredthem 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