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

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  Dedicated with love to the memory of my parents,

  William J. Cameron MD and Monsie Cameron.

  I miss you both so much.

  Prologue

  Michael “Bud” Butters turned up the stereo because it was playing one of his favorite country western songs—Zac Nelson singing “Life is Wonderful.” Bud indulged himself in a high warbling singalong that would have offended the musical tastes of just about anybody. Life is wonderful. That, Bud thought, summed everything up pretty well.

  Life was wonderful. Sixty-two years old with a somewhat—okay, very—checkered past, he was closing in on a full year of driving a Freightliner tanker truck, 231-inch wheelbase, 350 HP Cummins engine, 4,500-gallon capacity. Bud Butters, driving a truck! For a long time he hadn’t even possessed a driver’s license, and now look at him. A professional, that’s what he was.

  With a regular job, he was making steady progress on his credit card bills, though giving up working a ranch to sit behind a steering wheel had supplied him with an uncomfortable tightness to his fifty-four-inch waistband. That’s how he registered it: his stomach was the same, it was his pants that were changing.

  His route today took him north along Wyoming Highway 26, up to Moran, where he would turn on 191 toward Jackson, eventually continuing south to his home in Rock Springs—some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in the world. People running gas stations were always glad to see him because he was their lifeblood. Once a man of little value to society and himself, he was now an important part of the local economy.

  Even better: his son Nate had recently met a gal named Angie, and she was the polar opposite of that poisonous Marna, who had told Nate he was to have nothing to do with Bud ever again. Marna refused to believe Bud had turned it around, that he was sober going on two years, that a man could change. Marna ate at Nate’s soul like acid, turning him against his own father. Which meant Bud was cut off from his grandson, little Ian—Not even Marna’s kid!—and that fact alone almost drove Bud back to the bottle—at least, that’s how it felt, a perfect excuse, What more do you need? Any man would need a drink! But that was just the seductive weakness whispering to him—he was working the program, and it works if you work it. The whisper would always be there, you just had to not engage with it. He went to meetings. He could sit and watch his friends drink until they fell off their barstools and not touch a drop himself, though one by one his buddies had drifted out of his life, ironically made uncomfortable by Bud’s choices.

  That was all in the rearview mirror. Life was wonderful. The random drug and alcohol tests at work further helped keep him clean. Nate finally came to his senses and vicious Marna was gone, kicked to the curb, good riddance, and Angie, sweetest thing on the planet, met Nate at church and stole the boy’s heart with pure goodness. Angie herself had personally called Bud to meet at a truck stop down in Lander, saying Nate was too ashamed to pick up the phone. Ian, such a big boy at age ten, ran to his grandpa and that was it, Bud had his family back.

  All you had to do was forgive. It was the magic formula. Good people forgave Bud, and Bud forgave everybody.

  Well, maybe not Marna.

  After completing his stops in Dubois, Bud was taking a little side trip, headed up toward Fish Lake Mountain to visit Ian, Nate, and Angie.

  He navigated the half-full tanker up the mountainous curves with care. A fuel tanker can both jackknife and roll over more easily than a traditional trailer. In bad weather, Bud drove almost rigidly with caution, but today was a glorious, windless summer day. The weather was so dry it easily explained why Dubois had once gone by the name of Never Sweat, Wyoming.

  Bud had heard all about it one time. Never Sweat. The postal service refused to allow it, insisting on Dubois instead. Faced with a choice between a designation most apt or something forced on it by a government agency, the folks of Never Sweat, with typical cowboy rebellion, accepted the name but not the pronunciation—which was French, for God’s sake. Doo-boyce, locals called it. Doo-Boyce, Wyoming.

  The road twisted and rose steeply, but there was little traffic on this life-is-wonderful day.

  Bud appreciated having the pavement all to himself. Some yahoo in a pickup, swerving into the wrong lane, had recently put a coworker of his in the hospital. Worse, Bud’s friend’s tank had broken loose and wheeled like a gigantic rolling pin down into some oncoming vehicles. The resulting gasoline spill had shut down all lanes of I-80. Nobody died, thank God.

  At the crest the song ended, and Bud stopped singing—if that’s what you could call what he was doing—and punched the player into silence, pulling over. The descent from here into the valley was breathtaking: soaring stone-faced cliffs, a river below, green aspen trees.

  Bud’s job was to drive a truck through heaven.

  He inhaled and let the clean air whistle out in satisfaction. Little Ian was going to love taking a ride in the big truck with his grandpa. The thought made Bud smile.

  From here he could see several fire trucks along a side road below. A stand of dead lodgepole pines climbed steeply up from the river, and the firefighters were conducting a controlled burn to reduce the chance of a disastrous wildfire. Bud didn’t really understand the idea behind the whole operation—burning trees to keep them from burning?—but he could see that the firefighters were being careful, arrayed along the fire line, hoses ready to prevent the flames from jumping the break they had cut with their chainsaws.

  From his perspective, there had to be a thousand, two thousand acres of dead pines, and he didn’t see how the firemen could possibly get to them all.

  As Bud eased his big truck forward, his mind was on little Ian, and he committed a rare mistake, letting himself automatically shift up. It would be far safer to keep in low gear, speed checked by the engine.

  Bud did not notice as his speed increased, because his heart, so full of love, suddenly seized up inside him. The blockage was complete and the attack immediate and fatal. Bud slumped sideways, his vision dark in an instant, his engine whining as the truck traveled faster and faster.

  Down below, the firefighters lifted their heads in unison as Bud’s tanker smashed head-on into one of the parked pumper trucks. Then they were running, desperately running, as the tank itself bounded down the steep slope and directly into the controlled burn.

  Bud would never know the extent of the disaster his death had unleashed, but almost no one else in the Rocky Mountains would be untouched by it.

  One

  I was enjoying the sort of nap that, as a dog, I had long ago mastered: sprawled out on sparse grasses, my nose filled
with the fresh smell of trees, ears barely registering the small noises of birds and other rustlings. Sleeping outside near my boy, Lucas, his scent giving me an overall sense of his presence, is one of the most wonderful things to do on a lazy afternoon after a walk in the mountains. I was drifting on well-being, happy to be alive.

  Lucas shared my contentment; I could tell by his relaxed breathing. He was sitting drowsily in the sun with his dog and his Olivia.

  So I was startled when all of a sudden, tension jolted him. I instantly popped open my eyes and lifted my head, blinking away the sleep.

  “Nobody move,” he urged. I glanced over at him, but then turned my full attention to what I could suddenly smell: a cat, female, a big one, somewhere close, lurking in the bushes. The feral odor was unmistakable.

  For a moment I thought it might be a very particular mountain cat, one I knew as well as any animal I had ever met or smelled, but I quickly realized that no, this was a stranger, a new intruder.

  She wasn’t moving, so I didn’t spy her at first. Then she shifted slightly, and I saw her. She was stocky and powerful and larger than the cats who lived in the house down the street, almost bigger than any cat I had ever seen. Her head would easily reach my back. She was spotted, with alert ears held high and a rabbit dangling from her mouth. I could smell the rabbit as strongly as the wild cat.

  So, no, this wasn’t any animal I knew, though she did bring to mind a mountain cat that was much larger than this one.

  The cat and I locked eyes, frozen. Lucas and Olivia were both motionless and tense, but not afraid. “Do you see it?” Lucas asked in the barest of whispers.

  Olivia stirred. “I’ve only seen one other bobcat in my whole life. This is so cool!”

  Lucas nodded ever so slightly. “It’s beautiful.”

  I was still staring at the cat and the cat was still staring at me. It was the type of moment I often share with squirrels, when we’re both immobile, right before one of us bolts and the chase is on.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to chase this particular animal, though.

  “I’m going to reach for my phone,” Lucas murmured. “Get some video of this. Bella, no barks.”

  I did not understand why my boy would tell me No Barks when I wasn’t barking, or making any noise at all. I noticed his hand creeping ever so slowly, but it was movement enough to remind the big cat that she had other things to do than just stare at two people and their wonderful dog. With motion as quiet as Lucas’s whisper, she turned and was quickly in the bushes and gone, though her powerful smell lingered long after she vanished.

  If I were going to give chase, now would be my moment. But I did not want the cat, or her rabbit. I had not yet been fed dinner, and did not want to be off in the woods pursuing wild creatures when it was presented.

  “Amazing, that was amazing,” Olivia enthused.

  “I’ve never seen one before. Wow,” Lucas agreed. “You know, I used to camp all the time and I never came across anything but elk. But with you we’ve seen bears, that eagle, a mountain lion, and now we can add a bobcat to the list.”

  “You’re saying I’m good luck.”

  Lucas grinned at her. “I’m saying that now that I’m with you, maybe I notice more of what’s good about life.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  I wagged.

  “Why do you suppose it came so close to our campsite?” Olivia asked. “What does it mean?”

  “Mean? What, like a sign, or an omen? A message from the cat gods? I don’t think it needs to mean anything. It was just a wild animal checking us out.”

  Olivia shrugged. “It’s just pretty unusual behavior for a felid. Humans are really their only natural enemy.”

  “Felid!” Lucas howled. He crawled across the grass to Olivia and pulled her onto her back, laughing at her. “What the heck is a felid?”

  Olivia was smiling up at him. “It’s just a name for a wild cat. I was showing off that I know some words that my brainy doctor husband doesn’t know. And it is almost an omen to see a bobcat sneaking up on people instead of the other way around, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t stalking us at all; maybe it wanted to get a look at Bella. Our canid.”

  I wagged at my name.

  “Canid! My husband is so smart.”

  “My wife is so smart. So, okay, what else about bobcats?”

  “I know they’re territorial, like mountain lions. If a female is in her territory, she’s queen and nobody messes with her. But if she accidentally wanders into another female’s range, it’s open season. She goes from predator to prey. Sort of what would happen if some nurse tried to flirt with handsome Dr. Lucas Ray.”

  Lucas laughed. “I still don’t think Felid the Cat was an omen.”

  I had the sense that they were talking about the cat and the rabbit, but I didn’t feel motivated to pursue it into the trees. My place now was with my people, my Lucas and Olivia. We lived together in a house with a room to sleep in, a room to eat in, and a room where all the food was kept, called “kitchen.” Sometimes I would lie on the floor of the food room, just to drink in the wonderful smells.

  I never know why, but on occasion Lucas packs things into a car he calls “the Jeep” and drives us up into the mountains. On those nights we sleep in a single, soft-sided room Lucas and Olivia would temporarily erect near the vehicle. That’s what we were doing now.

  Not long after the wild cat ran off with her kill, Lucas opened some packets and made dinner, an action I found to be a very positive development.

  They sat in chairs Olivia unfolded. While I watched attentively for dropped food items, my thoughts returned first to the cat with the rabbit, and then to how her appearance had instantly brought to mind a much larger cat, one with whom I had spent many, many days and nights in these same mountains. Though she grew to be a huge creature, I always thought of her as Big Kitten, because she was a kitten when I met her.

  Lucas tossed me a piece of dinner. As I deftly snagged pieces of food out of the air, I realized how the feral odors of the wild cat were more imagined than actually sensed, now that she had faded into the woods with her rabbit. That’s what happens in the mountains—it isn’t that a dog can’t find a particular odor out there, it’s that there are so many other smells competing for the primary position in the nose. I gave up trying to track her—she was long gone. In fact, after a time, I was back to reflecting on Big Kitten, calling up the memory of how she smelled when we curled up for sleep together, the snow coming down on both of us in a soft blanket.

  Often when I am sprawled at my boy’s feet at night I will ponder how different my life is now that I am back with people. For a time, I was a dog who hunted and roamed the trails with a giant cat, and didn’t sleep on beds, or get fed dinner twice a day. I was often hungry and afraid, but my companion and I survived. Big Kitten and I were a pack through two winters, relying on each other.

  I usually thought about Big Kitten whenever Lucas and Olivia took me up into the mountains, because it was in the mountains where I first encountered her.

  When I found Big Kitten she was smaller than the she-cat I had just seen with the rabbit, and she was alone. Her mother had recently died because of something two men had done to her. That’s what I concluded as I sniffed the mother cat’s lifeless body sprawled in the dirt, because there had been a loud banging noise and the two men were running toward me, shouting excitedly to each other. The powerful odor of fresh blood clung to the mother feline’s motionless corpse, and the air still carried the sharp tang of an acrid smoke that was growing stronger as the men thrashed through the woods, headed in my direction. I was tensed and ready to flee when I spotted the baby cat watching me from the bushes.

  I decided in that moment that the big kitten hiding in the bushes, though larger than any adult cat I had ever seen before, was the baby of the gigantic cat who lay dead and bloody in the sand.

  I needed to protect her from the bad men. I had the sense that whatever the
y had done to the huge cat to kill it, they would do to the big kitten, and probably to me as well.

  Over time, I became Big Kitten’s mother cat. In a way it was a natural role for me, because when I was just a puppy, long before I met Lucas, my mother dog was taken from me by a different set of bad men, and I wound up living under a house with a family of cats. My littermates were kittens, and their mother was my mother.

  This lasted a short time, until Lucas took me home, and then I lived with people instead of cats.

  I taught Big Kitten how to hunt. She and I went for long, long walks together because I was a lost dog. I had been separated from Lucas, my person, and was making my way home to him. Big Kitten came with me. Along the way, we fed together, and Big Kitten grew until she was much larger than me.

  I loved Big Kitten, but I loved being a dog to Lucas even more. So as I did Go Home, Big Kitten remained behind in the wilds, watching me walk away from her, out of the mountains and toward the smells and sounds of a big, open city with cars and many, many people.

  As I left Big Kitten and descended toward the streets and buildings and traffic, I couldn’t separate my boy’s smell from the countless human scents on the air, but I could sense him, feel him, and I knew I would be able to find my way home to him.

  I never saw Big Kitten again, but it was not hard to imagine, as I drifted off to sleep many nights, that she was right there next to me, keeping me warm, keeping me company: the best animal friend I ever had.

  Often when we took car rides in the Jeep, ranging along bouncy mountain roads, I would thrust my nose out into the wind and concentrate on trying to find her, searching for a single whiff of cat to let me know she was still alive. Thus far I had been unsuccessful, but Lucas always found new places for us to stay, and I thought it likely I would one day see my dear friend again.

  I looked forward to that.

  Lucas and Olivia were eating chunks of meat, but they did not neglect a good dog like me. I was dazzling them with my Sit. That one always works.