“Was it Ed Hayes?” he asked.
“Yes. And his dog.”
“Xena. Yeah, I know him. Everybody knows Ed and Xena. Because he’s the only person most of us have ever met who did have a live find. Or at least one that wasn’t made immediately after the avalanche. Most of the time our dogs aren’t on scene that quickly.”
“Do you ever think about that?” she asked. “I mean, why we’re even doing this if the chances are so minuscule that we’ll save someone?”
“I think about it all the time,” he said. “Especially every time I have to justify requesting more money for people who think they’re just paying for patrollers to have an excuse to bring their dog to work each day.”
“What do you tell them?”
He looked down at Hunter, who was silent now and lying at Scott’s feet. “I point out that dogs are great PR. Customers love dogs. They love seeing them on the slopes. Then I tell them if there’s a chance to save even one life we should take it. And I tell them that every single person who has ever lost a loved one due to an avalanche would say the same.”
She looked away, voice rendered useless by the tears that clogged her throat. But she would choke to death before she cried in front of Scott. So she dug her fingernails into her palmsand looked straight ahead, staring at the back of the pilot’s head and wondering how deep the snow would be where they were going.
SCOTT THOUGHT ABOUTClark on days like today, all blue sky and deep powder. His best friend’s idea of heaven was first tracks on snow as light as feathers. Clark whooped and hollered as he skimmed over the surface with all the speed and agility of a cheetah.
He was doing just that the last time Scott saw him, leaving lines in the snow like a swooping signature on clean white paper. One moment Scott was admiring the way Clark made it look so easy and listening to his friend’s shouts echoing off the surrounding mountains, and the next he was watching in horror as the whole top of a mountain fell down on him, like a building toppling.
Clark was wearing an avalanche beacon, but Scott couldn’t find the signal. Much later, they would discover the beacon had been torn from his body by the force of the avalanche. It was two days before they found him, after hundreds of hours of probing by dozens of volunteers.
A dog could have found him sooner. Maybe not soon enough to save his life, but it would have saved his family and friends two days of agony. Even that was worth something, wasn’t it?
“Look down there!” the pilot shouted over the roar of the engines and rotors and pointed to their right. Scott leaned forward and craned to see out the right side of the aircraft. There, as if a giant had dragged two fingers through cake frosting, was the clear outline of ski tracks, leading from the woods that marked the ski area border, across a clearing and into the national forest.
The chopper rose and circled back, then arced down to hover low to the far left of the tracks. “I can’t land in this snow!” the pilot shouted. “You’re going to have to throw out your gear and jump out after it.”
Lily stared at him, wide-eyed. Scott picked up his skis and tossed them out the door. His pack followed, then her skis and pack. When he reached for Shelby, Lily finally sprang to action. “You’re notthrowingher anywhere,” she said. Before he could say anything, she hoisted the dog into her arms, moved to the door, and jumped.
THE SNOW WASdeep and soft as a featherbed, but it still made for an awkward landing. Lily landed on her back, with Shelby sprawled across her. The dog scrambled away, and she sat up just in time to see Scott, with Hunter in his arms, make his exit. As soon as he hit the ground, the chopper rose again.
She got up and started collecting their gear. She had to dig for one ski, but they recovered everything, and within a few minutes she was upright and ready to go. She stomped her feet, making an even place to stand on her skis.
Scott skied up beside her. “I wasn’t going to throw your dog,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that.”
She nodded. One thing she did know about him was that he took care of his dog. “It got me out of the chopper in a hurry, anyway,” she said. She looked around them. “Where are the tracks?” Except for the spot where they had landed, the landscape appeared to be a smooth expanse of white.
“This way.” Scott started to follow the tree line east. In a few minutes he stopped and pointed one pole at the line of ski tracks. Lily was startled at how faint they were. “Later in the day, they’ll be invisible in the sun,” he said. “It’s only the way the light is slanting right now that helps them stand out.”
They decided to flank the tracks, the better to keep them in sight, and set out. There was enough of a downhill slant to the terrain to help them navigate without much problem on skis, but the dogs had to fight the snow, porpoising through the deepest stashes. “They’re going to wear themselves out,” Lily said.
“Ski behind me,” Scott said. “The dogs can follow in our tracks.”
She fell in behind him, and they commanded the dogs to do the same. The canines still struggled at times, but the going was a little easier. The tracks they had been following led into another thick stand of trees. Scott slid in between two trunks, and Lily followed. They wound their way in and out, stopping from time to time to reorient and make sure they were still following the faint track.
“We’re almost out of the trees,” Scott said when they had been skiing about fifteen minutes.
Five minutes later, they emerged, then stopped and stared. Two sets of tracks extended across the snow in front of them.
“Is that the track we were following?” She pointed with one ski pole to the smaller, fainter lines on the left.
“I think so,” Scott said.
“Then who is that?” She indicated the second set of tracks—longer skis and deeper indentations, laid out scarcely a foot from the smaller, fainter tracks.
Scott looked back over his shoulder. “I don’t know. But I didn’t see any other tracks back there.”
“Neither did I,” she said. “Do we keep following them?”
