Part 2
The eye closed again, but Claire was already moving.
“She’s alive. Wade, bring the carriers. Dad, stay by the door and keep the light on me.”
The red puppy flattened himself against his mother’s neck and showed his teeth. The sound that came from him was thin and exhausted, but he put his body between Claire’s hand and the adult dog.
“I’m not taking her from you,” Claire said.
She lowered her field bag and waited. When she reached again, she touched the mother’s hind leg first, away from the injured shoulder. Her fingers searched beneath the fur.
“Weak pulse. Slow breathing.”
One of the puppies beneath the mother moved. Its coat was dark gray, almost black, and its head seemed too heavy for its neck. The other was cream-colored and lay so still that Eli mistook it for a fold of burlap until one paw flexed.
“They’re the same age as Red,” Claire said. “Just much weaker.”
The red puppy pushed the bread closer to his mother.
Eli looked at the bread. One old crust had been gnawed almost to the hard outer shell, another lay scattered in crumbs through the netting, and the heel the red puppy had delivered that morning was torn open beside the smaller pups.
“He’s been feeding her.”
Claire glanced at the bread, then at the narrow drainage opening. “And she’s been keeping the others warm.”
Wade returned with a carrier in each hand and stopped beside the ruined shelving near the main door. His headlamp passed over the latch.
“I put that chain on Monday,” he said.
Eli looked at him.
“The wind had torn the latch loose. I saw tracks by the wall, but I figured they were old.” Wade set down the carriers and turned toward the side entrance. “I should’ve walked the inside.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Eli said.
“No. But I could’ve looked.”
Wade circled outside with the bolt cutters. A moment later, the chain snapped.
He and Eli began digging snow away from the outward-opening door while Claire assessed the dogs. It took nearly fifteen minutes to clear enough of the drift for the door to move. Behind it, a fallen shelving frame and a mound of fishing floats blocked the lower half of the opening.
Even with the chain cut, the adult dog was too weak to force her way through the remaining debris.
Claire lifted the cream-colored puppy first. It made one soft sound when she moved it, then went limp against her palm. She dried it, wrapped it in a towel, and placed it in the insulated carrier beside a warming pack covered with three layers of cloth.
The gray puppy tried to bite her glove.
“Good,” Claire said. “You keep that opinion.”
Both smaller puppies were thin and cold, but neither showed the deep stiffness Claire feared. The shed had stayed dry beneath its covering of snow, protected from the worst of the wind. In one corner, the dogs had licked a shallow hollow into the drift that pressed through the foundation gap.
They had shelter from the wind, a little snowmelt, and the bread the red puppy had carried. It had been just enough to keep them alive until Thursday morning.
The mother’s front leg was not trapped, as Eli had first thought. A section of shelving had fallen across the netting beside her, striking her shoulder and partly blocking the nest. She could shift her body, but pain and weakness prevented her from climbing over the debris or the drift outside.
Wade secured the sagging shelf to a wall stud and removed the floats one at a time, testing each board before putting weight on it.
“Roof’s holding,” he said. “It may not hold long.”
Claire spread the canvas rescue litter beside the mother. “She has to stay level. No pulling on the front leg.”
The red puppy stood over the bread, watching each hand.
Eli knelt beyond the dog’s reach. “We can’t leave you here.”
The puppy’s lips lifted.
“You’re very persuasive.”
Claire pulled off her scarf and handed it to Eli. “Wrap him before we move her. If he gets under the litter, somebody will step on him.”
Eli reached slowly. The puppy backed into his mother until he could retreat no farther. His whole body shook, yet he did not run toward the foundation gap.
Eli had seen the same tremor in young deckhands who braced both hands against a bulkhead and insisted they were fine. He laid the scarf across the puppy’s back.
“You can keep the bread,” he said.
The dog snapped once without touching him, then sagged as Eli gathered him up. The bread remained clenched between his teeth.
Eli held both against his chest.
Claire and Wade slid the adult dog onto the canvas. Her eyes opened briefly when her injured shoulder moved. She did not cry out; her muzzle turned instead toward the two carriers.
“They’re coming,” Claire told her.
Wade lifted the front of the litter, Claire the rear. Eli followed with the red puppy tucked inside his coat, one end of the damp bread protruding beneath the zipper.
Outside, the snow had thickened. Ruth’s voice came over Wade’s radio, checking their status three minutes before the scheduled call.
“Four dogs,” Wade reported. “All alive. We’re starting back.”
There was a pause.
“Say that again,” Ruth replied.
“All four alive.”
“I heard you the first time. I wanted to hear it twice.”
They secured the mother’s litter to the pulk and placed the two smaller puppies in carriers insulated from the metal frame. Wade strapped the equipment tight, then looked toward the service trail. Their reflective markers already faded in and out behind curtains of snow.
The red puppy struggled inside Eli’s coat until he could see the pulk. Once his mother was in view, he stopped.
They had traveled less than a quarter mile when Claire raised her hand. She knelt beside the pulk and touched the mother beneath the blankets.
“What?” Eli asked. “She’s stopped shivering.” “That means she’s warmer?” Claire looked up at him. “No,” she said. “It means she may not have the strength anymore…”
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