As they waited
they both agreed that what they had heard must have been Buddy. They saw no signs of a dog at the campground
where the trailer had been parked.
However, there was a campground just a mile or less on down the Shell
Creek. That was beginning to nag at
Uncle Ricky. What if the barking had
come from that campground? Surely Buddy
had not crossed the river. If she had
why did she not come back? He began to
panic, again. What if she had started
for home? It was at least thirty miles
over some rough terrain. Then there was
the chain. That cussed chain.
He remembered how
Buddy had learned to get over the chain-link fence that surrounded the huge
yard when they had lived on the school property in 1982 and the spring of
1983. Buddy would climb the fence much
like a cat climbed a tree. Some of the
school people had told him that the dog should not wander around on the school
grounds. Why could a dog not be advised
of the laws imposed by people and do as all the people mandated? That was when the chain first became
necessary. Buddy did not seem to mind
the chain but it was such a bother.
Uncle Ricky would tie the end away from Buddy to a metal clothesline
post. Still Buddy would get it wrapped
up until she had only a few feet of slack.
Then came the
edict from on high. The authorities at
the school had put out two pages of rules and regulations for those people
living on campus. One of the rules
stated that dogs larger than a small house dog could not be kept on
campus. That, along with a rent
increase, caused Aunt Jeri to do some house hunting. She found a place along the Popo Agie River. They had purchased this place and lived there
for two years. That was the place where
Buddy had gotten caught in the snare and managed to gnaw the cable in two and
come home. God had truly answered Uncle Ricky’ prayer on that one.
Once in a while
Uncle Ricky had chained Buddy to the front step at that house. She could get under the porch for shelter. He always got such a thrill when he got home
and there Buddy was waiting. Her tail
would wag so furiously it would shake her head.
Even when he did not chain her she would be lying on the porch. When he drove into the yard the wagging would
begin. She would bound out to the car as
he was getting out and begin boxing at him with the white paw. “How you doing Dudder?” Uncle Ricky would ask
in his nick-name habit.
Buddy would open
her mouth wide and give what sounded much like a long human sigh. “aaArgh.”
The pitch started low and gradually ascended to a high squeal. “aaArgh.”
The greeting was the same and just as genuine. Uncle Ricky would imitate her and Buddy would
respond with the same reply, “aaArgh.
Uncle Ricky
valued those greetings as precious as any thing or anything money could
buy. He was roused back to the
present. The chain. That cussed chain.
Aunt Jeri roused
Uncle Ricky from his review of the things that had brought them up on the
mountain all night – his love of that dog, Buddy. “I guess it’s not going to bark. Maybe we better go back up to the logging
road and wait for sunrise,” she said.
When the engine
started the clock on the dash lighted up 5:30 A.M. Uncle Ricky guided the pickup back up the
familiar road and turned onto the logging road.
As they drove he thought of the time when they had left the house on the
Popo Agie. He, his brother, and Buddy
had come from their mother’s place to get the belongings. Buddy had ridden in the cab of the truck with
Uncle Ricky. They had gone into Lander
to get some plumbing supplies. Uncle
Ricky’s brother put Buddy in the back of the pickup along with the washer and
dryer and some miscellaneous boxes. When
they got to Lander and were going to the hardware store Uncle Ricky had said to
Buddy, “Wait here Buddy. We’ll be right
back.” He worried all the time they were
in the hardware store but upon returning to the pickup there was Buddy, curled
up in a space just waiting. The tail
began to wag vigorously. Uncle Ricky
reached out and gave the head a loving caress.
“Good girl Bud. Good girl,” Uncle
Ricky said, his heart swelling with pride.
He was jolted out
of the trip down memory lane by Aunt Jeri’s sudden, “Stop!” Aunt Jeri had been riding with her window open. She said, “I heard a whine back there just a
few feet. Back up.”
Uncle Ricky
backed the little pickup back down the logging road until Aunt Jeri said,
“Whoa. This is about where we were when
I heard the whining.”
They decided to
sit right in that spot until daylight and then work their way down to the road
below. Aunt Jeri was convinced that
Buddy was in that area.
The moon was
just about gone. In the east the ember
of the sun, the same ember that had gone to the west twelve hours earlier, was
beginning to glow ever brighter. It was
still too dark to make out objects and details.
Uncle Ricky was tired but hopeful.
His mind wanted to finish the memory he had been reviewing earlier.
He recalled the
time, the year 1985 and 1986; they had been living in a house on Aunt Jeri’s
parents’ place. Uncle Ricky had traveled
between his parents’ place and the place of Aunt Jeri’s parents. Uncle Ricky had been helping the folks. His father had been very sick. Buddy always went with Uncle Ricky. She liked the farm because it was loaded with
cottontails. Buddy would pursue the
small, swift rabbits until she could hardly walk.
In 1986 Uncle
Ricky and Aunt Jeri decided to move to Kansas.
They found a place in town. Now
they had a problem. There was the beagle
– Courtney; there was Sonya; there was Buddy.
Uncle Ricky’s mother offered to keep Buddy. These memories flashed through Uncle Ricky’s
mind. The sun continued to gather
momentum in its attempt to climb the Big Horn Mountain Range. Uncle Ricky switched the key to ON. The dash board lighted and the clock said
5:40 A. M.
Aunt Jeri was
explaining her plan again on where she thought they should begin their
search. She poured the remaining coffee
from the thermos. Oh could it be
possible they might find Buddy. The
thought raced through her mind and she only could hope that they would be
successful.
Uncle Ricky was
eager to follow the plan. He knew Aunt
Jeri, with her scientific approach, had figured things down to an exact
procedure. He thought, “We’re going to
get you Buddy. Help us. Say something.”
This brought him
to continue the review of his life with Buddy, or in the case of where he had
left off, without Buddy. His mother had
been so good to relate Buddy’s activities whenever they talked by phone or in
her letters. Uncle Ricky cherished these
anecdotes and loved to hear them. It was
in 1987 and his mother was alone then.
Grandpa had died and she was living on the farm alone. They called him Grampa because the boys had
begun to call Uncle Ricky’s father by that name. Granny, as the boys called her, arose one
morning and was preparing breakfast. She
heard Buddy barking in an excited manner.
When she looked out the window she was taken aback. There was a man with a knapsack, earlier
probably referred to as a hobo, and there was Buddy. Buddy was holding the stranger at bay and he
was trying to hit her with his knapsack.
Buddy continued her defense of the place until Granny went out to see
about things. Buddy remained on vigil
until the man departed.
When Uncle Ricky
and Aunt Jeri had decided to return to Wyoming Uncle Ricky was torn. He knew his mother had become attached to
Buddy, too. Yet he had thought
continuously about the time when he and Buddy could be reunited. Two years had been a long time. He saw Buddy from time to time and she always
came into the little house where he and Aunt Jeri slept and spent the night
with them, sleeping at the foot of the bed as she had done when they were all
together. Granny had decided that Buddy
should go to Wyoming. That’s when the
deer chasing had started. That’s when
that cussed chain became necessary, or so Uncle Ricky had come to believe. Now he knew different.
Aunt Jeri roused
him from this last memory. “I think we
might be able to see enough to begin,” she said. She began to pull on her shoes, coat, and
gloves. Uncle Ricky did likewise. He could see his wristwatch now. It showed 6:00 A. M.
Chapter IV
The Next Day
Uncle Ricky and Aunt
Jeri stepped out of the little pickup.
The morning air was brisk. It was
cold and the mud in the tracks of the logging road had frozen to a hard,
rock-like texture. Uncle Ricky walked
behind the pickup and let his eyes scan the slope of the area that they were
about to walk down. He felt a bit small
and a hopeless feeling flashed through his consciousness. Would they be able to find Buddy? He said nothing. He also had that feeling one sometimes gets
that this effort would be successful.
Aunt Jeri walked
a short ways up the road, ahead of the pickup.
She surveyed her path she planned to take down the slope. She called out to Uncle Ricky, “Are you ready
to go?”
“Yep, let’s go,”
he called back.
They each walked
to the edge of the road and stepped over the crown which was the high part of
the slope. From this crown the slope
began its immediate mild descent. Slowly
they moved down the hillside, their eyes moving back and forth, ahead, and back
to where their eyes had begun the careful search.
Uncle Ricky had
moved down the slope about thirty feet and stopped. Suddenly his ears heard it. The little whine, more like the sound Buddy made
as she yawned a long wide yawn. It was
just a soft, short “Aaagh.” His eyes
darted toward the sound as if his eyes, not his ears had heard the sound. His heart seemed to jump into his throat. There she was. There she sat! It was Buddy!
“Here she is!” he screamed, “Here she is!” The sound that came from his throat was
barely loud enough for his own ears.
Aunt Jeri couldn’t possibly have heard it. Besides she was upwind from Uncle Ricky.
Scarcely able to
believe his eyes, Uncle Ricky began to run down the slope. The distance between his beloved Buddy and
him was probably about fifty yards. The
path was covered with about three inches of frozen snow. Dead trees and large rocks littered the way
down to where Buddy sat. The light was
still dim and he could just make out Buddy’s white front and the light golden
tan of her coat that rose from the white front and upward to the black that was
shaped like a saddle.
Uncle Ricky
blinked and looked back. He couldn’t see
her. His pupils widened in the dim light
of sunrise and there she was, no mistake.
“I have her!” he yelled to anyone or anything that could hear him. Down the littered slope he ran and walked as
rapidly as he could go without falling.
“I’m coming Buddy, I’m, coming.
Good girl. Stay right there,”
Uncle Ricky called to Buddy. “How
silly,” he thought, “as if she could go anywhere.”
He was soon down
at Buddy’s side. He dropped to his knees
in the snow and took the dog’s head in his arms and hugged her close to him for
a long time. “Oh Buddy, oh Buddy,” he said
over and over. Buddy wagged her tail as
if to show him she was glad to see him.
She boxed at him with first one front paw and then the other. Uncle Ricky continued to hold the dog close
to him as a few tears welled up in his eyes.
“Thank you, God,” he whispered, “Thank you again.”
After a time
Uncle Ricky stood up and began to call out to Aunt Jeri in a loud, pure voice
now, one which he was sure she could hear.
She responded but Uncle Ricky could not make out what she was saying. “Over her, over here,” he yelled.
Uncle Ricky began
to untangle the chain. At the end was a
spindle of a dead tree. It was about six
feet long. The chain was almost in the
middle of the tree. The slender, spindle
had lodged, like an anchor, between two standing trees. From there Buddy had circled another standing
tree and worked her way under a downed tree.
She had about two feet of chain that was not tangled around something. This was how she had spent the night, on a
two-foot tether. She probably had either
sat on her haunches or lay down.
Uncle Ricky heard
Aunt Jeri’s voice now, “Do you have her?
What were you yelling about?
Where are you?”
“Over here,”
Uncle Ricky hollered. “Buddy’s here.”
Aunt Jeri
made her way toward the voice and then she appeared where she could see Buddy
and Uncle Ricky. They could see Aunt
Jeri. “Well Buddy, what in the world did
you do?” Aunt Jeri said in a mock-scolding voice as she too knelt down and ran
her hand over the head, ears, and neck of Buddy who was anxious to be free from
the short tether she was still being held with.
Uncle Ricky
snapped the clasp of the chain from the ring in Buddy’s collar. Buddy began to run around in ever expanding
circles, sniffing at the snow as she ran.
“Still want to hunt, Huh?” Aunt Jeri laughingly asked Buddy. Buddy stopped and looked back at her as if to
say, “Let’s go.”
“You stay with me
Dudd,” Uncle Ricky called out to Buddy as he continued to unwrap the chain from
the downed tree where Buddy had sat for so long. Finally he had it all unraveled. “Here girl,” he called to Buddy. Buddy came back to him. He snapped the clasp back on the collar
saying, “I am not going to lose you again; however, I’m going to hold the other
end of this chain. Let’s go home, okay?”
As they made
their way up the slope to where the little pickup sat, Uncle Ricky continued to
think to himself about how very, very fortunate he had been to find Buddy this
time. Yes, surely someone was watching
over them. “Thank you God,” he whispered
again. Did God really care if Uncle
Ricky found Buddy he asked himself. “Yes
he must. I and Aunt Jeri could never
have found her by ourselves,” he concluded.
They arrived at
the little pickup. Uncle Ricky dropped
the endgate and said, “Up you go.” Buddy
looked at him as if to say, “We haven’t done anything yet!” Both Aunt Jeri and Uncle Ricky began to
laugh. They got in the pickup and headed
back to where the big pickup sat loaded with wood. Uncle Ricky went to the big pickup, got in
the cab, started the engine and looked again to see if Buddy was still in the
little pickup. He could see her moving
around to look out the windows. “Thank
you,” he said again and headed the big pickup towards the road. Aunt Jeri followed in the little pickup.
The sun was
shining bright and warm as they drove on the main road that led back to the
highway. Uncle Ricky looked at his
watch. It was 7:30 A.M.
EPILOGUE
There are some
people who argue that animals can’t think or reason. They don’t think dogs can understand
speech. Aunt Jeri would say, “It’s the
tone of voice they understand.”
“No, I think they
know what I’m saying,” Uncle Ricky would argue.
As the days
turned into weeks, the weeks into months both Aunt Jeri and Uncle Ricky were
astounded and unable to believe the change that had come over Buddy. When they went out to feed the horses or just
walk around the place, Buddy would accompany them but never show any sign of
even wanting to run away.
Uncle Ricky
occasionally would test her by leaving her alone on the porch while he went in
the house to get something. He would
hurry to the door and look out. There
Buddy would be, sitting and waiting, maybe looking over the hills but
nevertheless, she would be right there, waiting. To this day Buddy still stays near the house
or her people. She comes to either Aunt
Jeri or Uncle Ricky for a good petting; demanding a good petting by putting her
nose under a forearm and raising her head to force the hand to move to the favorite
place for petting: just behind the ears.
THE
END
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